Happy New Year's to all!!!!! Just wanted to share my story with all of you. In 2008 I was diagnosed with a 4.1 mm melanoma lesion. Everything held together until 2012, then the zhit hit the fan. My melanoma spread to my brain, both lungs, kidney, gall bladder, liver and left adrenal gland. The only item that pleased me was a $100K life insurance policy offered at my employment without a medical exam. At this point in my life I accepted the fact that my time on earth was becoming quite limited, At this time period stage IV patients had an 11% chance of making two years. Then hot jeeper's crow, Dr Allison and Dr. Honjo brought upon us some marvelous immunotherapy therapies, Yervoy, Opdivo and Keytruda, (we should be seeing them in the news instead of the Kardahians constantly). I was so fortunate to be accepted in the very first clinical trial with the Opdivo and Yervoy therapies. At times I hardly ate for two weeks, hardly slept for a couple of weeks and just kept realizing my time was coming to an end. In August 2018, I to my surprise, was declared NED. Our group of 53 in the trial, had an 80% survival rate after two years. All of us are so fortunate to be living in the cusp of immunotherapy treatments, never has the oncology world seen such an improvement in patient's lives. So I am going to give all of you – hope. Hope is the only item that can defeat fear. Stay well, stay happy and keep all of the hope in your back pocket.
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