CANCER UPDATE 06/13/2025

THIS WAS A REAL SURPRISE & VERY INTERESTING TO ME!

About 30 days ago I came down with pneumonia. It didn’t affect my cancer but it did affect my Emphysema/COPD.

I stayed home until the 11th June using D3/K2, Zinc and few other things but nothing worked. At about 5pm on the 11th I couldn’t move, total lack of energy. I had enough strength to dial 911 and say, “I can’t breathe”.

I can’t really describe the feeling of not being able to breathe other than to say it’s terrifying.

Within about 8 minutes an Ambulance and Fire Truck arrived with the kindest, sweetest most caring men and women I’ve ever met. They carried me in a special chair down 3 flights of stairs and immediately hooked me up to oxygen in the ambulance at 4.0 and a couple of IV’s and took me to Fairview Hospital.

I was treated by 4 doctors and about at least 20 additional nurses, again, the kindest, sweetest, truly caring people I’ve ever met, and so extremely well educated and if anyone knew that it would be me after 18 years of peer review research and over 100 books published.

I stayed until today and got home in a free hospital taxi about 3pm. EVERYTHING was free, the oxygen tank which I can keep as long as I want, the prescriptions and the emergency room and hospital services because I have awesome insurance.

When I called 911 my blood pressure was 80/40, dangerously low. That caused a condition where I’ll need to take Warfarin, a blood thinner, for the rest of my life and another similar drug for about 4 weeks to prevent blood clots in my lungs and possibly my legs. No problem. The objective is to live with cancer as long as possible regardless of adverse effects.

They sent me home with a 4 liter (huge) portable electric oxygen tank which I’ve been using all day, My oxygen saturation varies between 90 and 98 which is excellent. I can’t sleep with the oxygen on because the machine is just too loud so I use a nebulizer for 20 minutes before bed, with the oxygen tank, and nebulize Iphatropium with Albuterol which opens my lungs.

The pneumonia is quite gone but like all respiratory diseases, this one a bacterial infection, left me with some disabling conditions, minor, that I’ll have to deal with for a few more months and the Warfarin for life.

Amgen has a new drug FDA approved last for all cancers Wednesday. It’s not chemo or immunotherapy and reduced death from cancer death compared to chemotherapy by 40%.

The trial results were intended to serve as confirmatory evidence to support last year's accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of Imdelltra for patients with extensive stage small cell lung cancer whose disease worsened on or after platinum-based chemotherapy. That described me today even though my T-12 disappeared, my primary tumor is still about 60% smaller than upon diagnosis in 2022 but still growing very slowly. My other 3 tumors are and always were 0.4 centimeters which is the smallest a CT Scan can see. I’m still see slow growth and intend to start Imdelltra at the end of July this year.

The Amgen drug belongs to a class of treatments called bispecific antibodies designed to attach to a cancer cell and an immune cell (generally an NK cell), bringing them together so that the body's immune system can kill the cancer while leaving normal cells unharmed.

27% of trial patients treated with Imdelltra experienced serious side effects, including low white blood cell counts, compared with 62% of chemotherapy patients. Patients on Imdelltra reported improvements in cough and shortness of breath compared to the chemotherapy group. I’ve has white cell blood counts from chemotherapy and it’s not an effect you feel, it just shortens your life so Imdelltra is looking good to me.

Cytokine release syndrome, a potentially dangerous condition that occurs when the body's immune system responds over aggressively to infection or immunotherapy drugs, was primarily low-grade and manageable. My response to immunotherapy was explosive diarrhea for 10 days every 20 minutes 24/7 and a drop from 145 pounds to 117 pounds but Imdelltra produces a low grade and manageable response which sounds even better to me.

I’m lucky. I live a mile and a half from a hospital that allows its doctors to prescribe what they want. The pneumonia affected me so strongly that I was taking 30, 40 and 50mg a day of Valium instead of my normal 20mg so of course a ran out. Two of the hospital doctors understood and wrote be a prescription for thirty 10mg Valium which I picked up with the Warfarin and the other drug.

From day one of diagnosis I’ve had nothing but remarkably spectacular luck and the ability to interact with real doctors this week, still employed and providing amazing treatments, and I feel GREAT!

Peace,

JP

My Substack is free and always will be but it is monetized. Any help fighting Stage 4 Metastatic Lung Cancer is truly appreciated.