Billy Tauzin
September 6th, 2007
I beat cancer. Fortunately, for an ever-increasing number of cancer patients, my story isn’t uncommon. Just about four years ago, my doctor said words to me that no one wants to hear. I was diagnosed with an aggressive abdominal cancer. There was a lot that the doctors could do, there was some hope, but there wasn’t much time. The cancer was killing me and I had to prepare myself and my family for the worst.
With my wife and family’s love and support, and along with a fantastic team of doctors, nurses and healthcare professionals, I did everything that could be medically done to try to halt the cancer’s spread. But because the cancer was so aggressive, things were not going very well. As the number of medical options decreased, I had extensive abdominal surgery and was looking at a long, tough course of chemical and chemotherapies that my medical team hoped would help. But my prospects weren’t good. I had already received the last sacraments of my church and I was preparing to say good-bye to my wife and children.
Then, my medical team made a proposal. There was one last thing they wanted to try – a new drug, Avistan™, which had recently been approved for a different kind of cancer. Avistan ™ was one of the new cancer drugs being developed to cut off the blood supply to the cancer, essentially starving it to death. My doctors didn’t have much hope. They told me that it could help me, but it could just as easily undo any good the surgery may have done. The bottom-line, however, was that I was running out of options.After talking and praying over the decision with my wife, I choose to give it a try. Fortunately, the drug worked for me and today I am cancer-free. Had I been diagnosed a year earlier, Avistan™ would not have been available and I would have lost my fight with cancer. The research and development on Avistan ™, like that on any new drug, wasn’t a sure thing. It began more than a decade before I needed the drug and, like thousands of potential drugs every year, it could have failed at any time during the testing phase and never made it to a pharmacy shelf.
Fortunately, it was there when I needed it. And, with over 650 new medicines now in development to help treat cancer, there may be even better medicines and options for the next patient suffering from the cancer that nearly killed me.
I am alive today, living my life and enjoying my wife and family because of great doctors and nurses but also because of some remarkable medicines. I am not alone. While much work remains to be done in the fight against cancer, there are new and better medicines coming every year and more and more patients are, like me, living with their cancer and even beating it. I won’t be happy until we can beat cancer completely and no one has to go through what my family and I experienced. But because of the research now being done in laboratories across America and the globe, I have hope that day will come.
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