Joe Cortney CT UPDATE

Well folks got the results of the CT today and, I must say both my Doc and I are really shocked.

A brief history is probably in order. A little over a year ago I had a reoccurrence of my HPV+ SQ BOT.  There were a bunch of METS in my lungs and a new tumor that was wrapped around the muscle under the tongue and SQ was confirmed in my Thyroid and 3 lymph nodes.  A Thyroidectomy and a radical neck dissection were performed.  Short of getting into a PD-1 trail, I was classed as terminal.  The real fear at the time was "quality of life" issues surrounding the tumor under my tongue.  It was so wrapped around the muscle that my tongue was pointing almost straight to the right cheek.  Eating and swallowing were difficult to say the least and projected to worsen to the point of not being able to eat or speak very well.

My doc put me back on Eribitux (god I hate that drug) and for a while it did arrest the growth, but no improvement.  Then he said "this isn't working so I want to try something else".  The something else turned out to be a 40 year old drug (Methotrexate or MDX).  He said that in treating a few other SQ cases that the drug seemed to work well but that it was so "old" and out of favor that few docs try it any longer and it might buy us some time for a PD-1 trial to be available.

MDX, when it works, tends to work for maybe two months before it looses it's effectiveness but if it is effective, reductions can be substantial.  Well, in my case the first two months produced stable results in tumor size and a marked improvement in tongue function but no reduction.  I have been scanned every 8 weeks since we started the MDX and starting 4 months ago we started to see shrinkage of all the tumors.  As of today's results, my lung METS have shrunk by over 40% and some have been resolved completely.  My tongue function is ALMOST normal and the tongue tumor has shrunk by 25% and is stable.

Every scan my doc has warned me not to expect any further improvement and every scan the improvement has been substantial.  So much so that he's not really sure that any of the tumors are still alive and perhaps, what we are seeing is the dead mass coming apart.  Eight weeks from now we are going to do a PET and see what we see.

So, the moral of this story seems to be that someone always needs to be on the other side of the curve.  If for 90% of the people the drug works for two months, there obviously must be folks like me that it just works longer and better.

Imagine, a 40 year old (very inexpensive) drug that no one really uses anymore might have just given me a bunch more time.  Thank God for Doc's that give a crap and don't mind thinking out of the box.

Keep the faith.

Joe