Who is my travel buddy and how I live together with him

If you think I’ve never tried to get rid of him then you are wrong, really wrong.
To be honest I thought I had got rid of him after that far 2009 and 4 years of silence from his side.

Everything started in January 2009 when, after a dermatological examination I had a quick surgery to remove a mole. When I went back to the doctor to remove the stitches, the fateful sentence arrived: "Mr. Ferla, I have bad news for you: the result of the histological inspection has arrived… it is a Melanoma IV level of Clark"

I remember that when I left the doctor’s studio, bringing with me a long list of examinations and inspections to do, I watched the people around me on the road and on the underground while going back to the office and I felt different from them.
They were talking, laughing, listening to music with earphones or reading the newspaper.
I realized I had a cancer, that makes me feel different from the other people and that makes me also feel a fucked looser. Normal reaction and, as I see it now, it was also a legitimate reaction. After the first impact then, day by day and learning to live together with him, I came back to normality and to a sense of belonging to what surrounds me.
As for the hospital where to make the different required examinations, I decided to go to the Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori of Milan. It’s been a perfect choice. The first step to make normal what was everything but normal for me.
And it’s happened also thanks to the competence and the kindness of all the doctors, nurses and volunteers who work in the institute. They look like angels sent from the paradise on earth to help and support you during your illness journey.
After the first visits and examinations,  I had a surgery to remove the sentinel lymph node. The biopsy showed that there were three lymph nodes in metastasis in the left armpit region. Then I had a full armpit lymph nodes resection and I started the follow up process with TAC, PET and RMN scans and medical examinations, first each month, then every four months and last every six months. Every time the check ups were getting nearer, a bit of stress and fear arrived, but at the end everything ended up smoothly.

At the beginning of 2013, almost 4 years after the Melanoma was removed and very close to the 5 year  milestone which statistically signs a sort of goal towards complete healing, I started having strange messages from my body. I started having a sort of deja-vu, something like forgotten old memories coming from the past combined together with strange rumors and voices echoing in my mind. I was not able to give any meaning to these old memories. On top of that I started having a bothering pain at the right eye, in particular during awakening. These alarm signals started worrying me and I started being a bit afraid while waiting for the periodic check up planned for the 8th of April 2013.
A few days before I talked with Maria explaining my fears and doubts. I felt I had to disclose her that an ungood novelty was yet to come.

And it came indeed, but even in a worse way than expected. The morning of the 7th of April I had a very intense deja vu (which then I understood it is called “epilepsy aura”) followed, a few moments later, by a generalized epilepsy crisis. I woke up three hours later in the emergency room of an hospital with a strong pain at the chest due to the chest massage needed to recover me from the cardio respiratory arrest induced by the crisis. 
Maria was looking at me as watching a person coming back directly from the place of the dead.
After all, I went so close to death that I almost touched the dead by hand and for her, that acted as a spectator during my crisis, it is still a horrible memory.
Once back to life in the hospital I went through an RMN scan and it was immediately clear that my travel buddy was back again. Brain metastastatic Melanoma lesion of 24 mm in the right temporal lobe with no chance to be surgically removed.
This is the way I started my life together with the thing in my head, based on Gamma Knife, chemotherapy and newly released melanoma drugs. In the meantime, the thing grew up to 37 mm of maximum diameter, but it looks like there is plenty of empty room in my head as there is still room for him and for the rest of my brain…
Right, I was almost forgetting that at end of January 2014, because of an optic neuritis at the left eye due to drugs and therapies, I fully lost the view from my left eye.

Eventually, in december 2014 I had experienced the Christmas holiday period in Hospital, where I stayed for almost 3 weeks because of an acute pericarditis followed by fluid effusion in other organs and body districts. Another unexpected experience, in particular for the timing, but which gave me the opportunity to learn a people and interesting stories and to spend all christmas period anyway sorrounded by a lot of friends and relatives.

A couple of facts could help explaining why, no matter what I’m going through, I’m still optimistic and I believe to be, somehow, a lucky guy.
First of all, new generation drugs such as Ipilimumab and Zelboraf were not available in 2009 yet. So if the brain metastasis had been present at that time today I would certainly not be here and I would not have had enough time to realize and accept my destiny.
The second fact drives me back to the 7th of April 2013. I had the epileptic crisis in a thermal center where a medical staff was present and in the room where I fell there was a nurse who suddenly helped me and these are the only reasons why they brought me back to life in time.
So, as a matter of fact, it is not my time yet. It was not in 2009, and it wasn’t in 2013 and it wasn't as well in 2014. And after such a start in 2015 I believe it's not yet the time again.

I’ve lost an eye but the other is enough to see and understand the world around. And who is next to me, helps me to see the rest with her eyes.

The destiny allowed my to live during 2015 mine and Maria dream: we get married. Around and together with us all our dears and friends

2016 is arrived, 3 years has passed since I have in my mind the travel buddy and I'm going on with the therapy. I don't believe anymore it is a fight against the cancer but rather a strange form of cohabitation!

But this cohabitation, from time to time, call for a cost and, during 2016, the price to pay is a Femoral Head avascular Necrosis. The 9th of June I will have a surgery for the total hip prostheses as the necrosis is to advanced. If instead of the hip was the other eye with a necrosis or another optic neuritis it would have been worst. The hip can be substituted :-)

But 2016 was not yet over. In september the MRN shown a new metastahsis in the left brain ventricle and I went through a new radiosurgery treatment as surgery was not possible.

Beginning of november instead I had a problem due to my hurt immunology system. I took the Herpes Zoster, also knows as Shingles, at the right leg. I had to stop chemiotherapy and took dedicated drugs to manage the disease.

To the most curious ones, here is the list of the therapies I’ve done since the moment that my travel buddy came back. But first I want to thank again the Istituto Tumori di Milano and all the angels who work there day and night for everything they are doing for me and for  all the people that each day enter the institute gate.

I would also thank the staff of Cardiology an Oncologic departments of Lodi hospital for the cares, attentions and empaty to patients I had the chance to appreciate during the 'Christmas Holidays 2014-2015"

List of Therapies 2013-2016:

  • Stereotactic radiosurgery: 5 fractions
  • Chemotherapy: 3 cycles of Temodal. Interrupted after 3 months as the thing in my head went on growing
  • Stereotactic radiosurgery: other 5 fractions to treat the part of cancer grown during the chemotherapy
  • 4 cicles of Yervoy (Ipilimumab) when, once completed, the tumor shrank some millimeters
  • After the optic neuritis at the left eye and the restart of growth of the thing in my head I started the therapy with  Zelboraf (Verumafenib) which I’m still doing since February 2014.
  • Stereotactic radiosurgery: in october 2016 5 fractions to treat the new metasthasis in the left part of the brain