Chris Wong is a workout warrior.
So when he developed pain in his lower back and left leg early in 2009 he assumed he?d pulled a muscle or pinched a nerve. But the pain kept getting worse.
?I was moaning with pain in the evenings and had great difficulty just getting around,? Wong, now 46, wrote in an account of his battle with what turned out to be anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a very aggressive form of cancer. He got that diagnosis after he finally went to the Baptist Medical Center emergency room on Memorial Day 2009.
By then, the cancer, which had progressed over the course of three months to stage-4, had begun to eat into his skeletal structure. His left femur had deteriorated so severely that he had to undergo surgery to have a titanium rod inserted into the bone.
While Wong was recovering from the surgery, he was visited by oncologist Augusto Villegas who told Wong his cancer was treatable but had a high degree of recurrence.
?It was crushing news,? Wong wrote.
In the next two years, Villegas would treat Wong with two rounds of chemotherapy. The first round of chemotherapy put the cancer in remission in October 2009. Wong then underwent a transplant of some of his own stem cells, which had been harvested and stored, at Shands at the University of Florida.
But in February 2011, following the surgical removal of bumps on his head that Wong had initially thought was acne, a biopsy revealed the lymphoma had returned.
?To have the cancer on my skin caught me completely by surprise,? Wong wrote. ?I was pretty shook-up by this devastating news, but received comfort from my family and friends.?
That was treated with radiation. But after Wong continued to lose weight and suffer chest pain, Villegas ordered a bone scan in early June.
The scan found that the cancer had begun to eat into Wong?s rib and pelvis bones. Starting in mid-June, he checked into Baptist Medical Center every four weeks for five days of inpatient chemotherapy treatments.
A PET scan in late July seemed to indicate the cancer was again in remission.
But Villegas was concerned that the lymphoma might return again. ?Typically, it?s harder to cure non-Hodgkins lymphoma after relapse,? he said. ?Chris is a young guy, healthy as a horse. We needed to do something.?
That something, Villegas thought, might be a new drug just approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Adcetris, unlike most other forms of chemotherapy, targets only the cancer cells while leaving the healthy cells unharmed, Villegas said.
Villegas, who practices with Cancer Specialists of North Florida, called Adcetris ?a smarter way to treat cancer? and said it was designed specifically to be used on patients with anaplastic lymphoma after they have relapsed.
?This drug has a very, very specific niche,? he said.
?I was so relieved to have an alternate treatment approach,? Wong wrote. ?This was much better than dosing my whole body with chemo treatments for 4-5 days.?
In early October of last year, Wong began going to Villegas?s office every three or four weeks for an infusion of Adcetris. Last Nov. 19, a PET-CT scan showed him cancer free.
Then in December, he went to Shands at the University of Florida where he received a stem cell transplant from a donor.
He was allowed to resume his work as an IT coordinator for a health care company in May, working from home. Then in July, he was allowed to return to his office. On his last scan, in August, Wong remained cancer-free.
?I?m enjoying life,? the father of four said during an interview. ?It?s a lot to go through. But it gives you a better appreciation of life.?
And he?s still a workout warrior.
Charlie Patton: (904) 359-4413
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