One year in, April 08, 2025, and i am still chugging along the routine of blood draws, CT scans, infusions, and weeks off where life is mostly normal.

What has happened so far? Well, i am below 300lbs for the first time in my adult life and hey! No workout or dieting needed! Huzzah! Silver lining! More importantly, CEA numbers are still below detection levels though there is the spike up.

The spike up seems to be due to activity of Sebastian’s liver mets, some of them seems to be stirring about and appears to be enlarging on the last CT scan.

So, we are going to go for a MRI scan instead. Better resolution hopefully and perhaps we can get a better picture of how the liver mets are behaving. Also, there may be a revisit to radiotherapy intervention depending on if there are mets that are positioned correctly for strategic and directed ablation.

The last infusion was number 17 or 18 i think. The GI symptoms continues to get a bit more apparent. There is more disruption in the rhythm of bowel movements during the infusion period and there is now a new symptom in the way of pretty hefty cramps in the lower abdomen during the latter half of the infusion week.

For the last infusion, we paused the infusion of anti-VEGF due to the fact that the bloody hemorrhoids are still not healing properly and spotting/weeping still. The paus on the anti-VEGF allowed for the burst vessel that caused the hemorrhoid to heal properly and form good vascular walls (VEGF is central in the formation of tight and well organized vessels, under the use of anti-VEGF, blood vessels that form are leaky and compromised, which is why it is quite efficacious in cutting off the nutrient supply to tumors).

So, we are still looking at somewhat stable disease and will adjust accordingly depending on how Sebastian and his metastatic friends behave. Nothing is off the table, though with the increased discomfort, there is more a part of me wondering what the limits will be.

This experience really just brings to light the need of better and more compassionate therapeutics for cancers, especially metastatic colon cancers.

As PTM continues to pitch and attempt to raise funds to advance our programs, i can only be optimistic and hopeful that, though i may not see the benefits of my work, i can leave something behind that may benefit someone somewhere down the line.