Fab

I lost one more friend. Fabrizio Pirrone, Fab, started out as my patient in March 2013. He was diagnosed in the prime of his health - just because he did a CBC for work purpose. We traveled together in this journey. There was a time when Indu and I took him to a burger place in Shadyside, as he was getting his chemotherapy. He was desperate to see the night lights and eat a burger. None of the nurses or the staff knew about it - till this day, it was our little secret. We were the most unlikely friends - a huge white guy and a tiny brown guy. He had such a generous heart, always the 'gentle giant'. He was loved by everyone. His leukemia was in remission, when one day he called me in November 2015 to tell me he relapsed, in fact, as soon as he heard the news from his medical team in Pittsburgh.We spoke for an hour and decided on further plans. I would get fax of his lab test results in Kentucky. He wanted me to be informed of all his treatment course. But things did not go as well as we hoped - his leukemia cells never went away with more chemotherapy. As I was traveling to India in March, we texted each other and discussed plans. I told him not to give up - I said I wanted a cancer campaigner for my cancer center in India. He replied, "I will be there in a heartbeat for you, Aju." Recently, we spoke from Seattle where he was away for a novel CAR-T cell therapy - the treatment had not done it's job. And, he was worried. Rightfully so. He asked me whether he should go for the rough and risky treatment or just let the disease take it's course. He decided to go down fighting. He died last night - three years after his initial diagnosis.

 

Tuesday, May 17th - a week before his passing away 

Hey buddy, just wanted to catch up with you about the treatment. So we're nearing the 21th day (Thursday) prior to testing and seeing where my results sits. 

The team meet up with me today while I was in infusion getting platelets, and talked to me about my blood still had lymphoblastic counts in it. Long story short the CAR  Tcells therapy didn't put me into remission, but It did lower the amount of blast inside my system so the Tcells are having an effects and killing blast cells. They said they would be willing to do another round with a higher dose of my cells (x10) with hopes that would possibly take care of it. But then again they can guarantee that it would work or not. 

They want me to make the decision if I want to proceed.