Part 2: Living Beyond the Statistics -The Fight Begins
It’s about time that I get to writing part II of my recurrence story, so here it finally is.
In 2024, I was a year and a half into a relationship, I was living with my brother at the time, living my best life, working remotely, going to the gym 4 days a week in the morning before work, mountain biking, backpacking, or rock climbing on weekends, going to concerts with my girlfriend or friends. Truly enjoying every drop that the world had to offer me as a late 20 year old man. All of a sudden there was 1 week, where I started to notice that my vision was “swimming” in my peripheral vision. It would come on after a high intensity activity, or workout, then would dissipate after an hour. It occurred to me that maybe this was just a blood pressure thing. Anyways, fast forward a week, and I had a pounding headache in just my right temple, nothing would appease it. So I checked myself into my local urgent care to be looked at. They examined me and did a vision test, and concluded that it was just a migraine. I insisted that I should have a CT scan to make sure, they said I would have to go to the ED for that, tossed me some migraine prescription and sent me on my way. Only 2 days later, the headache worsened. I couldn't concentrate or focus on anything, so I drove up to the ED a few minutes from my house and checked in. I waited for several hours to have a CT scan performed on my brain and lung. To my dismay they found tumors in both locations. I was utterly heartbroken. I couldn’t sleep, exercise, work or do anything. I was checked into the hospital overnight so that a biopsy could be performed on the tumor in my lung to diagnose and confirm what it was. The results came back as synovial sarcoma. I was completely shattered having thought for the last 10+ years that this cancer would never return to haunt me in life. My worst dreams came true.
A craniotomy was done to my occipital lobe to remove the large mass there, which was necessary for me to have systemic therapies, i.e. gamma knife radiation and chemotherapy. I had the heaviest dose of ifosphamide possible (14 grams) several times over the next few months from August through October of 2024 and my first gamma knife radiation session. I thought that a few rounds of chemotherapy would kill it off and I would be done with this nonsense quickly. Oh how I was wrong, I was naive to think that would be the case.
A large mass persisted in my brain stem. It was very frightening. It could induce a seizure, or cause my heart or lungs to stop functioning if it got any larger. Thankfully none of that happened. Keep in mind, I was still working full time through all of this. I would take 2 weeks off for chemotherapy. 1 week to be getting my dose in the hospital and the other week off would be to recover. Then I would be right back on the clock the following week. Anytime gamma knife radiation was scheduled for my brain, I would only take off 2 days. One for the treatment and one for recovery. In addition to all that I also would have to ensure lung radiation, which I was also driving myself to. It was 5 days a week, roughly 30 minutes per session. I have done this radiation course three times to date.
Taking a step back to the end of 2024, it was advised that I should look into hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Which is how I came across InLight Hyperbarics downtown Vancouver. I was amazed that there was a facility local to me. I started this in December of 24 at 6 times per week, and the results were mesmerizing. After several months of doing HBOT I started to finally feel and look like myself again. I was told in January of 2025, that I had months to live, but I refused to believe that. I knew that there had to be a solution to killing this off in my body once and for all.
That is the end of Part 2. I will continue with Part 3 soon which will cover the rest of 2025 and the start of 2026.
