- Joined
- Mar 22, 2005
- Messages
- 818
Hello to my PM family. It's been a while since I have posted or even checked the boards. I think I last posted that in October is was diagnosed with a Pulmonary Embolism. After 5 weeks I had scans which showed that the "embolism" wasn't going away and was actually increasing in size. I was was told I needed emergency open heart surgery to remove the "embolism" .I immediately flew down to San Diego and three days later I was having open heart surgery to remove the "Embolism" and while they were in there they they discovered my coronary artery was 70 % blocked so they did a bypass as well. Sadly the embolism turned out to be a sarcoma of the pulmonary Artery. This is a super rare and very deadly cancer. I was advised that I might have 12 months to live. I immediately began searching out the best expects in the field who have dealt with this type of sarcoma. Sadly there are very few since therehave only been around 300 reported cases of this. Thankfully I found a great oncologist at MD Anderson who advised me that I needed to start chemo asap. And so in May I started the chemo which was calledAIM and required 5days 24/7 in hospital infusions. I had 2rounds of this chemo and it was brutal. Doing competitions and the prep is nothing compared to having to do this chemo. Thankfully my pet scan after these 2rounds of chemo showed that the cancer not only had not spread but was resolved. There was an area on my pulmonary artery that they still have some concern about which they saw on the CT angiogram but they are not certain if it is scar tissue or inflammation or still some tumor so I am doing two more rounds of chemo . Thankfully they elminated one of the chemo drugs and the chemo now is just a 1hour outpatient infusion. I did the first of these two rounds last Friday and will do the last on July 26. Hopefully these two rounds will fully resolve the area of concern. Through this journey I have lost 40lbs but while I do not want and will not get back to the size I was, I will put back on some muscle and have that beach body that I will be happy to live with. I am so thankful to be alive and can and will live with my new body reality.