Good News! My Cancer Cells Have “Significant Mutations”

This means they can be treated with targeted therapies and immunotherapy.

Genomic Alterations Identified: EZR-ROS1 fusion, EGFR amplification, FGFR1 amplification.
These make the cancer cells susceptible to some targeted therapies. We’re starting with crizotinib which is “effective for treating patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer whose tumors are ROS1 positive. ”

Molecular Pathology Report shows High PD-L1 expression.
This means there is an immunotherapy that is effective.  It’s not as effective as the targeted therapy, above. Since doing both simultaneously carries a 10% risk of death, we’re going to start with the targeted therapy.

Radiation Therapy needs to be done first.
Radiation therapy for my eye needs to be spread over 5 weeks.  That’s too long to wait to start treating the core cancer so we’re going to put that on the back burner, for now.  Honestly, I’m personally okay with losing one eye. I would rock an eye patch.

Radiation therapy for the brain, however, can be done in one big dose so we’re going to do that Wednesday.  The risks are pretty low since the brain tumors are small.  It doesn’t mean I won’t still use “brain damage” as an excuse whenever I do something dumb.

Treatment in summary:
Wednesday radiation therapy for the two little brain tumors. Friday I start crizotinib. I’ll check in every 4 weeks to see how that’s going. If it’s not going well, we switch to immunotherapy. There are also 2 other targetted therapies we have in the back pocket for my mutations.

Overall, we’re pretty thrilled with the news.