Alice - minute 36:25 - ASCO 2018 presentation - compassionate care patient
Hi! My name’s Alice, and I live in Florida. I had the benefit of being a breast cancer survivor. So I got to do the whole eight months of torture, prior to becoming a metastatic merkel cell [patient]. As I was getting ready to celebrate the eight months, or eight years, nine years actually, almost ten free of cancer, the metastatic merkel cell showed up. So as my doctor was getting ready to fire me, I told him, I said, no, no, not yet. Because the multiple choice pathology came back on my arm and it turned out to be merkel cell. So two years after that - at that time he had shared with me that there was no chemo that would work on merkel cell. And two years later, it became metastatic. And during that two years, I had been making up my mind on how I would tell my husband and my son that I refused to go back and do chemo again. And that I would make the choice to leave the planet before I would go back through that. And that was a decision that was not going to be an easy one. My son was in college, and my husband and I had a wonderful life planned. We were getting ready for retirement. Luckily my friend who was a doctor. His wife demanded that he find a cure for me, and he had knowledge of this process, and he contacted the company, and in turn, gave me the information, and I contacted them. And in no time at all, they accepted me as a compassionate case. And, not many people can say that they got to go to Israel to be cured, and I was blessed with that experience. Today, he is a wonderful doctor who actually gives me my injections here in the United States. It’s quite interesting. I get the phone call, Alice, your bomb has arrived in the office. When will you come in for your shot? And, the best part is, you know, it was a week long process, sometimes two weeks, every time I got my chemo shot. And now, I go in, and then I’m out. I’m running around, enjoying my friends, going to dinner after I get my shot from my vaccine.
And I’m six years out. Actually six and a half, ‘cause Sarah [Rigby- another compassionate care patient] and I were very close to each other, the time frames, when we both enjoyed our blessing. You know, and my husband (someone says something) - yeah, they gave me nine months to live. Nine months to live. And no fix. No fix.
It was, you know, and now people are going to have the right to try.
You know, it’s like I feel so blessed to be able to share and speak about this product to people. I just, you know, I just don’t have words. I … don’t make me leak!… you know, but, you know, life is good. All of us should have an opportunity to not to have to choose to leave the planet.
Thanks.
AI
