“I feel an incredible bond with everyone, right down to the chef who makes eggs in the cafeteria — because you’re not just a patient at Fox Chase.”‐David Heckscher
I’m a 61-year-old professional singer-songwriter. As you might expect, this means I’ve worked a lot of other jobs — construction and restaurant management, to name a few. They’ve all given me experience building something up, losing it to an economic crash, and trying again. As a result, I’m not a “give up” kind of guy. So when I was diagnosed with gastrointestinal stromal tumors, otherwise known as GIST, I was ready to fight.
Not Just a Burst Appendix
In early 2014, I developed a pain in my side. I figured it was from shoveling snow, so I took a muscle relaxer, but the pain kept getting worse. Finally, I felt so terrible that my wife had to drive me to an emergency room near our home in Maryland. A scan showed my appendix had burst, and I had to have emergency surgery in the middle of the night.
The next day, when the surgeon came to see me, he told me he’d found cancer in my intestine. He said he’d done a bowel resection to remove it but that I needed to see an oncologist.
The oncologist I went to diagnosed me with GIST. She put me on an oral chemotherapy drug, and I went for regular abdominal scans. After about two years, I started getting another pain in my side, so I went to see my family doctor. He sent me for a scan, and when it came back, it showed a tumor, in his words, “the size of an orange.” It turned out my oncologist hadn’t been looking at my scans at all.
After getting a second surgery to remove that tumor, I immediately switched to a more well-known cancer center near where I lived. Six months into treatment, my new doctors announced that my cancer had come back. When they told me I probably had only six to nine months to live, it felt like they’d hit me in the face with a two-by-four.
Then the lead oncologist mentioned that a physician they knew at Fox Chase Cancer Center was running a clinical trial on GIST, and there was a chance he could get me in. “Let’s go,” I said.
A Lifesaving Clinical Trial
The clinical trial was being run by Dr. Margaret von Mehren, an oncologist at Fox Chase. I was accepted into the trial, and the first time I met her, she told me, “Don’t worry, I’m going to get you at least a couple of years.” After the prognosis of six to nine months, that was music to my ears.
She also promised me that I would always be involved in every decision about my treatment. We would work together as a team: I would share what was going on with my body, and she and her team would give me as many options as they could for next steps.
I put my faith in Dr. von Mehren and her team, and they didn’t let me down. I was enrolled in a clinical trial for ripretinib, which is also known by its brand name Qinlock. It’s in a class of drugs called kinase inhibitors and works by blocking the action of an abnormal protein that signals cancer cells to multiply.
After three months, half of my tumors were gone. After six months, there were no tumors left. For the next five years, I enjoyed cancer-free bliss.
Successful Surgery
In 2022, the drug became ineffective because of mutations in my tumors, so we needed to make a change. The next chemotherapy drug we tried was also ineffective for my particular cancer, which meant I would need surgery to remove the tumors that had developed. This is when I met the nicest surgical oncologist you’ll ever meet, Dr. Jeffrey Farma, also at Fox Chase.
He removed the tumors and, in his words, “reset my clock.” After that, Dr. von Mehren tried putting me on another chemotherapy drug, but that one wasn’t effective either, so I needed another surgery. This time, Dr. Farma needed to perform “de-bulking,” where he and his team performed major surgery to get all the tumors out. He introduced me to Dr. Stephanie Greco, another surgical oncologist who had a lot of experience with this type of surgery and would partner with him for the eight-hour surgery in January of 2024.
When I woke up, Dr. Farma and Dr. Greco told me they’d removed all the lesions they could see and that they felt very positive about the surgery. I spent five days recovering in the hospital and about three months recovering at home.
I also restarted another new medication that I’d been taking before the surgery. When I got a follow-up scan at three months post-surgery, it showed no cancer. It was the best result we could have hoped for. I’ve now been cancer free for six months, and every time I go back to see my doctors, I give every one of them a hug. I’m a big hugger. They’ve gotten used to it.
More Than a Patient at Fox Chase
I’ve found that in my life, when bad things happen, the right people step in. Fox Chase is home to many of those “right” people. I feel an incredible bond with everyone, right down to the chef who makes eggs in the cafeteria — because you’re not just a patient at Fox Chase. You become a part of the lives of the staff and part of the fabric of the building. That’s not something you can find in most places. But I found it at Fox Chase.
Learn more about treatment for GIST at Fox Chase Cancer Center.