rbruce's Profile

58 year old married man with wife of 28 years, and 3 children, 28, 26, and 22. I live in El Dorado Hills, California just east of Sacramento. Still coming to terms of this diagnosis. I struggle everyday and just pray now for courage, strength and hope to beat this disease.
3/6/2012: I have much more hope today for tumor regression with all of the awesome research being done in terms of immunological agents to rev up our own immune system to beat back this disease. We will find a cure!

The circumstances of our lives have as much power as we choose to give them. David McNally

Waiting for treatment plan. UCSF is talking clinical trials of inhibitors like GSK 1120212 or PLX 4032 in conjunction with other components. I should know week of 4/25/11
Oops, not braf +, instead nras. Looked at all the trials available for me, but nothing new.
Chose biochemo at California Pacific Medical Center. Admitted today 6/01 to icu for my first week of a 4 week course.
After biochemo I was down 40 pounds and sick as a dog. Hair was falling out in clumps and I now have neuropathy in my feet. My scan at end of it showed no change, no growth, but no regression. Dr. Wang said, "next we'll try Ipi" and scheduled my first infusion. I wasn't feeling well enough to start IPI after reading about the potential side effects so I did not go in for infusion. I never heard back from Minor or Wang,, no follow up, nothin! I was furious.
Went back to UCSF, my first opinion after a local Oncologist, and met with Dr. Daud to discuss the upcoming Anti-PD1 trial they had coming up. In the meantime while waiting to get into that trial, and because I am Braf negative and Nras positive, he suggested a PI3k trial which seemed logical as the Melanoma Molecular Model shows that Nras responds to PI3k. It was a fairly easy trial with rashes and diareah as the only side effects. After 2 months, they took me off of it as my tumors were growing.
After a 30 day washout period I was one of the first 4 people to get into the UCSF trial of the Merck Anti-PD1. Started it on March 15th. Next scan on June 7th.