There are many overused sayings in our cultural lexicon (ie: stressed out, it is what it is, at the end of the day, think outside the box - to mention a few), so I don’t want to perpetuate another preposterous platitude, but what recently happened to me medically is truly a miracle. On so many levels.
As a recap, in case you’re new to the crew, I just went through a CAR-T infusion, which basically entailed taking out my damaged (cancerous) dysfunctional t-cells, sending them to a lab to be re-engineered to function better (ie: fight my cancer), putting them back into me (a mere 45:00 infusion process), and them beginning to fight the good fight to kill my Multiple Myeloma cancer cells off, all with no adverse effects to report as a result. Any one of those things alone is miraculous enough, but all of them - whew - deserving of the accolade.
- It’s a miracle that this comparatively young and ground-breaking new therapy, developed in the 1980’s and first approved in 2017, was conceived and brought to peoples’ arms (from bench to bedside) in such a relatively short amount of time
- It’s a miracle that science figured out a way to isolate the diseased t-cells and genetically modify them to better identify cancer cells and kill them
- It’s a miracle that the frozen “jacked up” t-cells could be returned in around a month’s time, and then harmlessly and painlessly reintroduced into my system in less than an hour
- It’s a miracle that I was fortunately among the roughly 50% of patients treated with my specific CAR-T (Carvykti) who have no side effects from the procedure (e.g: CRS, ICANS, HLH/MAS, etc - get out your PDR)
- It’s a miracle that this targeted therapy can so effectively and efficiently pinpoint my particular area of greatest need, while avoiding damaging the surrounding area/organs - which is so common with many chemotherapy treatments
- It’s miraculous the potential for how this liquid-cancer centric therapy could have benefits for solid tumor cancers, as well as autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases and even possibly asthma - to mention a few
So, I don’t think it’s hyperbole or false hope to herald the current accomplishments of CAR-T, nor to see this as a great new theory and therapy for treating diseases that plague us all. I’m honored and grateful to have had this opportunity.
