MRI Scan Jan 2022

My MRI Scans continued and the first scan for the year 2022 was held on Friday, January 21, 2022 at UCLH (University College London Hospitals) in Central London. As mentioned earlier, my Oncologist Dr. Mulholland who was treating me from MVCC (Mount Vernon Cancer Centre) from early 2016 till September 2021, had given me an option to continue my further scan at MVCC, with a new Oncologist or may opt to come to UCLH along with him, as he had opted to work from UCLH on full time basis and the primary reason was that Dr. Mulholland is one of the top Oncologist in the UK (if not in the world), and he conducts his own clinical trails from UCLH. It was no brainer for me to follow him for my further treatment, from where ever he is based. This time it was going to be in very centre of London, what I had earlier rejected as an option when my treatment had started back in January 2016. At that point, I knew, I won’t be able to survive the train journey to the ‘city’ from my home, that lies in the outskirts of London. But after getting dozens of clear scans, I decided to go for further scans at UCLH, as it was going to keep me in vicinity of Dr. Mulholland and his trials (should there be any contingency of seeking further/alternate treatment). Secondly, Anu, as always. was going to accompany me each scan so the overall risk to my health was almost nil.

After the scan, I was waiting very keenly to know about the results. Even though I had a strong feeling that it would be yet another positive scan, but in the GBM Cancer, there is a consensus across all the research faculties in the world that any patient who crosses the 6 years of survival are termed as ‘long terms survivors’ and amongst them, there would be a minuscule minority that can aim for a normal life span ahead of them as can be seen from the Survival. probability curve below. After 6 years, the curve starts to stabilise and it can be deduced that there must a tiny percent of minority that is going to survive beyond 10 years after the diagnosis. I plan to be amongst those survivors and I desire that a lot – I want to live a normal life from here onwards as if Cancer never entered my brain. In fact that has been my strategy even before I had started the Chemotherapy back in the winters of 2015, almost seven years ago.

Kaplan-Meier survival plot of patients. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56574-w/figures/1

As expected my result was announced as yet another clean scan on 14th February, 2022, that made me thrilled. I keenly searched the Internet for the longest GBM survivors across the world and found few impressive personalities. A couple of them who turned out to be my favourites are:

Dr. Ben A. Williams, PH. D. (in psychology): One can read about him at https://www.glioblastomamultiforme.it/en/the-story-of-ben-williams/. He was diagnosed with GBM back in 1995 and published a wonderful book with a title of “Surviving “Terminal” Cancer: Clinical Trials, Drug Cocktails, and Other Treatments Your Oncologist Won’t Tell You About”. I read this book during my treatment and it inspired my a lot. He has survived for 27 years so far which I found very incredible. When I read his book, I found the keen interest he took to research various drugs that he would then propose his own cocktail of drugs to his Oncologists. Of course, I had no such faculty but incidentally my Oncologist Dr. Mulholland also gave the same cocktail of drugs that cured Dr. Williams. It is called PVC (Procarbazine, CCNU (or lomustine) and vincristine).

Cheryl Broyles: One can read about this equally impressive lady at https://endbraincancer.org/cheryl-broyles/. My second hero who was diagnosed with GBM in year 2000, is five years short of Dr. William mentioned able. She too has published her book with Title “Life’s Mountains” (she is a keen mountain climber). I am looking forward. to read her book and shall buy it very soon.

I must also mention a wonderful book that I read during my very early days of treatment titled “Anticancer: A New Way of Life”, in which a brilliant French physician and neuroscientist (and of course and author too), Dr. David Servan-Schreiber, gave tips on ‘super-healthy’ diet tips to beat Cancer in its own move.The book argued very elegantly how certain foods (fruits and vegetables) have ‘anti-cancer’ properties and can become highly potent complementary therapy.

Unfortunately, the world lost Dr. Servan-Schreiber in year 2011, after 20 years of his GBM diagnosis. I still follow his book to plan my diet as my tribute to the great professor.

My next MRI of brain is booked in UCLH on April 1st, 2022 and I look forward to get clear scans subsequent to that. Also, my aim is to contact my heroes that include Dr. Ben Williams and Cheryl Broyles, once I have completed a decade of my survival.