Gary Brausen survived Stage 3B lung cancer | bronchoscopy | adenocarcinoma | cisplatin | alimta

DESCRIPTION

In 2010, Gary Brausen started coughing quite a bit, which he thought was no big deal until it continued to get worse.  He got a chest x-ray, then a bronchoscopy, in which tissue samples are obtained.  Then his pulomonologist called Gary and told him he had lung cancer, an extremely aggressive form of adenocarcinoma.  Further biopsies and scans and brain MRIs resulted in a diagnosis of Stage 3B lung cancer.  Despite this horrific news, Gary vowed to not let it be a death sentence.

Gary’s left lung was saturated with cancer cells, and doctors said it would have to be removed.  First up was a procedure called a mediastinoscopy, which searches for cancer in places other than his left lung.  If the procedure comes back negative, the care team could go ahead with the removal of the lung. 

Given the green light to do the surgery, it was extensive and tricky and painful because it cut through nerve endings in his back where nerve endings attach to the spinal cord.  But the procedure was a success and Gary’s left lung was removed. 

Gary Brausen was allowed a four-to-six-week break before going on an aggressive chemotherapy regimen.  It included the time-tested medications, cisplatin and alimta, with four treatments over three months.  Next up came another four-to-six-week break, then seven weeks of radiation treatment.  When that was over in October 2011, Gary said, “There wasn’t left of me.”  He had lost all of his muscle mass and 25-30 pounds. 

Then Gary had three more chemotherapy treatments.  After that, he went in for his first scan and the oncologist was stunned to look at the results and say he didn’t see any cancer and that Gary’s lymph nodes and organs looked good.  These tests were repeated every six months for five years after which Gary’s doctor said, “I don’t see any cancer.”  After two more years of clean scans, the doctor said, “I think you might have beat this.”

In 2017, Gary had a scare when he was diagnosed with a plural effusion, an infection of the lung.  He underwent a great deal of treatment, but the threat of a return of his cancer looming, test results revealed an infection but no cancer and the infection eventually went away.

Gary Brausen has achieved survivorship, defying the odds and getting the best of Stage 3B lung cancer; but his cancer journey continues with his serving as a mentor to lung cancer patients.  He tells them about what one can expect with a diagnosis, how to deal with chemotherapy and radiation treatment and how to deal with the stigma attached to lung cancer, as many people incorrectly think at every turn lung cancer is tied to smoking tobacco.

Additional Resources:

A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation: https://www.abreathofhope.org

TRANSCRIPT

Bruce Morton: Greetings and welcome to the @CancerInterviews podcast.  Thanks for joining us, I’m your host, Bruce Morton.  Our guest on this episode went through an arduous journey before surviving lung cancer. Along the way, he lost a lung, but Gary Brausen of Bloomington, Minnesota, has made it his life’s mission to give back.  So, now let’s hear his story, and Gary, welcome to Cancer Interviews.

Gary Brausen: Hello, Bruce.  Great being here.  Thank you for having me.

BM: Now, what we like to do at the beginning is learn a little bit more about our guest, which happens to be you.  If you would, fill us in on where you are from, what you do for work, and when time allows, what you do for fun.

GB: I was born in St. Paul.  I am a lifelong Minnesotan.  I am the middle son of three boys.  Growing up, my passion was sports, and we say we played everything with the neighbors and we would play whatever sport was in season we would play.  I would say golf and hockey were my two favorites.  I attended the University of Minnesota, have an undergrad degree in electrical engineering, so I am kind of a nerd, and I have a master’s degree at University of St. Thomas in software engineering, and then over the years I have been working in a variety of high-tech companies in various capacities.  I currently work for a company called Verdium LLC in Southern California.  I work out of an office in Minnesota, and I am director of engineering for that company.

BM: Growing up in Minnesota, playing hockey.  Did you play hockey outdoors?

GB: I did up to the age of fifty, Bruce.  I started probably when I was eight, and I would go with my father to the local rink at Falcon Heights elementary school, which is where I went to school.  I didn’t stop playing, I had buddies that I would meet on Saturday and Sunday mornings, up to the age of fifty, up until I was diagnosed with lung cancer, I was still playing outdoor hockey.  It’s probably one of the greatest experiences in life.

BM: It sounds like an easy way to get cold.

GB: I remember one time vividly.  We played one morning, and we did it just to be able to talk about it later.  It was nine degrees below zero, we went out and played we played for about 45 minutes.  We took all we could take, and I was wearing glasses because my contacts would freeze to my eyes and I would wear glass, and they got steamed up.  I took them off and they just crumbled in my hands.  That’s how cold it was.  That was probably the coldest we ever played at, but we had a lot of great years doing it, a lot of great hockey, good hockey players, too, a lot of high school, former high school, former college players would come down.  It was pretty high-end hockey, and a lot of fun.

BM: Now, Gary, let’s get to your cancer journey.  It sounds you were leading a pretty healthy lifestyle prior to your diagnosis.  When did you notice something wasn’t quite right?

GB: It all started in November of 2010.  It was probably right around Thanksgiving, I started noticing a cough.  I didn’t think much of it, I had phone calls with my father at the time, he was coughing too, everybody was coughing at that time of the year.  What was different about mine is that it was just getting progressively worse.  He got better, I didn’t.  I went to a doctor, and she said I just had a cold.  But as this thing progressed, I was coaching my son’s hockey team, and I was playing indoors three days a week with my buddies, and I had a really aggressive travel schedule for work.  I actually stepped down from being my son’s hockey coach.  I couldn’t run the practices anymore because every time I would yell, I would cough and then I was delaying travel, too, because I was just not well enough.  I think what really got me thinking that something serious was wrong, was when I was walking around work and a dear friend of mine came up to me, gosh, you look terrible.  I decided to look at myself in the mirror and take a look at myself, and I thought I looked like I am dying, and I actually was.  After a few doctor’s appointments, they figured out what was going on, and I was actually dying, 

BM: So, at that time were you diagnosed, or was there a further chain of events that led to you diagnosis?

GB: We have these things called mini-clinics.  I went in for a quick appointment.  I was coughing, and the doctor said I probably have bronchitis and so she gave me some pills.  That didn’t work.  Then I went to my primary care physician.  She said I have a cold and it will go away, and of course it didn’t.  Then I went back a third time and my doctor said this was really nothing to be concerned about.  I think you should just rest and get well, and as I stood and I turned to walk out the door, a voice in my head said get a chest x-ray and get it right now, so I turned around and looked at her and I said I wanted a chest x-ray and that I wasn’t leaving until I had one.  So, I got a chest x-ray and then they thought it was pneumonia, then they treated me for pneumonia.  They gave me the most aggressive antibiotic that typically treats pneumonia, and of course, that didn’t work.  The thing that got us finally thinking that this was something really strange or odd, I had a CT scan done and the doctor, the pulmonologist I went to see, he said, “I would have thought these were the lungs of an 80-year-old man,” and here I was, 50 years old, I am in as good a shape as I have ever been in, in my life, strong, playing hockey three mornings a week with really good hockey players, you’ve gotta really be in great shape, and that’s when they it was something a little more serious.  I had a bronchoscopy, they take some tissue samples, and they test ‘em and that’s where it came back as lung cancer.  I was notified of this diagnosis over the phone.  My pulmonologist called me, I was sitting in my house, nobody else was home.  He said, “I am sorry, Mr. Brausen, but you have lung cancer,” and that started the whole thing.  My neighbor was my pathologist, so he did all the slide work, he expedited everything for me.  After I got the phone call, I was watching for him to come home, because I was terrified.  I went over and told him to tell me what he had found.  He said, “Let me get you a beer first.”  So, we sat down, and he said I have an extremely aggressive form of adenocarcinoma.  He then said I should figure out how to spend my last days.  He was no-nonsense pathologist.  That’s how it all happened, how I found out.  Then there were biopsies and scans, brain MRIs and other ways to figure out how advanced it was diagnosed as Stage 3B lung cancer, which is just weeks from Stage 4.  They typically won’t treat Stage 4.  They don’t attempt to cure Stage 4 cancer.  It is different today.  A lot of things have changed today, but back then, nobody would touch Stage 4 because there would not be a good outcome for somebody trying to treat Stage 4.

BM: Gary, obviously, no parts of your answer are going to be pleasant, but I want to hear you articulate it.  You had mentioned you were terrified, as I suspect anybody would be when they got that news, but what were some of the things that went through your mind when you got that horrific news?

GB: I had two young boys, they were ten and thirteen.  Those were very impressionable ages as you can imagine.  I felt like I had a lot of life to give still.  I didn’t want to miss out on their growing up as men.  I never accepted this as a death sentence for me.  I felt like I was too young to die, and I had two young boys that I wanted to be here for.  That’s all I thought about.  You know, nothing else mattered but those two boys and my wife, and making sure that I could be on this earth longer and see them grow up to be men and spend some more time with my bride.  Those are the things that went through my mind.

BM: And to what degree were your wife and sons a source of support?

GB: Just amazing.  My wife was my drill sergeant.  We’re a pretty fit family and on the days that I didn’t want to walk, I was so sick I couldn’t even walk around our block.  In March I was playing hockey and that following year I couldn’t even walk around the block, that’s how sick I was; but she would push me to get my rear in gear because exercise in my opinion is really important when you’re battling something like this, both for your mind and in the body.  She set up a Caring Bridge site.  It’s a website where you can communicate what’s going on to your family and friends, and they can offer support.  I was not a fan of that because I thought the only people who participated were people who were dying, and I never believed I was dying, but she talked me into it.  It’s the greatest thing she ever did.  It made her life easier, I got lotsa support through it, then my kids.  Rosie was my drill sergeant and my advocate, and my kids, they have deep faiths.  They prayed for me night after night, they would get their knees and pray for my healing and pray for my wellness and pray for my recovery.  They have amazing faiths, and they continue to do so today, and we attribute a lot of my healing to that.

BM: Gary, it sounds like those prayers have been answered.

GB: They have.  In spades.  You know, the thing that I don’t understand, Bruce, is that there are a lot of people that are prayed for that are in difficult situations like mine or even worse.  We cannot figure out why some people survive and some people don’t .  It is one of the great unanswered questions that we have in this life, and we may never know why, or we may find out later, I don’t know.  I prayed myself, I get on my knees and pray Scripture over myself.  When you have cancer, and you know this, everything is stripped away, nothing matters.  You’re stripped down to the bare essentials in your life, and what is left?  Your faith and your family and your friends, and that’s it.  You look at all my possessions.  Nothing mattered.  My house, my cars, all the stuff I have, it didn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter today.  I am forever changed.  That stuff doesn’t matter.  I place huge value in relationships, family and friends.  That’s what it’s all about.

BM: After getting this awful news, you had to be treated.  If you would, describe your treatment regimen.

GB: I went, and I met with a surgeon, and I think that was really important in my recovery and my healing was to get most of the cancer out of my body.  My left lung was saturated in cancer cells.  Even though it was Stage 3B, which means it was starting to leave that one organ, they decided they were going to take this lung out.  I’ll never forget it.  I asked when this procedure was going to be done, and the doctor said, “Next week.”  Then did one more test, a mediastinoscopy.  They go down through your chest, they fish around, they are looking for cancer, if it comes back negative, they would be ready to go ahead.  That was on a Tuesday, then on a Thursday, and I’ll never forget it, April 7, 2011, I went in and survived, he said this was a really tricky procedure and it is the most painful procedure we do at this hospital because they cut through so much tissue through the back and there are so many nerve endings and there are so many attaching to your spinal cord, and it’s a painful procedure, which I found out in a real sense.  So, then after the surgery was done, they me about a four-to-six-week break and then said they would hit me hard with chemo because they did all the biomarker testing that they knew of at the time, so they used the tried and true that they’ve been using for 20-plus years, cisplatin and alimta were the two chemotherapies that they gave me.  I asked given the severity of symptoms and side effects, I asked where are these drugs?  And he said pretty harsh, and I found that out.  So, that was over three months.  I did four treatments, which may not sound like much, but that’s about all the human body can withstand, four treatments of that stuff.  My doctor said, “We’re going to take you to the edge of death, and then we’re going to back off ten percent.”  Then they gave me another four-to-six-week break, and we ended up taking a trip.  We went to London between chemo, then we were going to do seven weeks of radiation.  So, we went to London for two weeks, which was one of the hardest things I have ever done, being immuno-compromised, being through all that surgery, and we went to London.  Then I had seven weeks of radiation, and by the end of that in late October 2011, there wasn’t much left of me.  I had lost all of my muscle mass, I had lost 25-30 pounds.  I remember going to the gym, getting on a flat bench and trying to some dumbbell press and I could only do five pounds.  At the beginning of the year, I could do 60 pounds.  That’s how compromised I was.  They hit me with three chemo treatments, then I went to Dana-Farber in Boston for a second opinion, and they said they would do the same thing, so we had great confidence that this was a good plan for me.  They called the ‘Kitchen Sink’ approach.  They were throwing everything they had at it, but they didn’t expect me to live after all that.  In fact, I went in for my first scan and I remember looking at my oncologist’s face and he looked at me and he said, “I don’t see any cancer anywhere.  Your organs look good, your lymph nodes look good, there’s nothing anywhere.”  He was stunned.  We did that every six months for five years, and then the second scan came, and he said, “I don’t see any cancer here, either.”  Still stunned.  And then we got to two years of clean scans, and he looked at me and he said, “I think you might have beat this.”  Of course,, we are sobbing.  There are tears in our eyes, and then we had three more years of clean scans, and that was it.  I didn’t have to see an oncologist anymore.  I did have a scare in 2017.  I had a plural effusion, and that looked like a return of the lung cancer, but it turned out to be a lung infection, but it was terrifying.  You don’t ever want to go back there.  You have been there, you know how bad it is, and you don’t ever want to go back.  In 2017, it was terrifying and thinking of going back, I call it the Cancer Meatgrinder, where you’re getting treated, you’re getting scanned, getting poked and all these things, and just so very thankful that it wasn’t.

BM: I already asked about some bad news and want to ask about some good news, but first I want to circle back to your chemo experience.  Chemo can really tire people out, and you mentioned the dumbbell presses of five pounds.  Did you find yourself on the sofa sleeping a lot?

GB: Yes, I did.  All sorts of other weird stuff, too.  I think it was after chemo treatment number two.  Have you ever had a sty on your eye?  I had 13 of them around one of my eyes and it was because my immune system was so compromised.  I went to my oncologist because I also had a severe bacterial infection, and I told him I was quitting, that I can’t do this anymore.  That’s when he said he wanted to come in that afternoon.  I went down there.  He used to be an eye doctor before he went into oncology, he looked my eye and said he had never seen anything like this in his entire life.  That was a little scary because this guy had seen it all.  He is such a great oncologist and he looked at me with those steely eyes, and said, “I will have no part of you quitting.  This is your only path to survival.”  It took weeks and months for those sties to go away and for me to get better.  We were able to proceed with the other treatments, on schedule.  You know, chemotherapy is weird because there is no guarantee that you are going to stay on track.  The cycles are very important.  Mine was every three weeks.  They time it so that just when the drugs are starting to wear off, they hit you again so that they keep that three-week cycle intact.  We were able to stay were able to stay on track even though we had that bump in the road and we had others along the way, but you’re right, I had fatigue.  I also had this really bad taste in my mouth.  I could even drink water because it tasted like sewage.  I couldn’t eat anything, nothing tasted good, so he told me to try McDonalds, so I went to McDonalds three times a week because he said calories are the most important thing right now.  He said I needed calories and didn’t matter if they were healthy or not, I needed to get some food in my system, so that’s what I did.

BM: Now, where chemo is concerned, you had the kitchen sink thrown at you, and yet I am guessing you will have the same answer to this question that a lot of guests have that underwent chemo treatment.  Chemo, I hope, is very much in your rear view mirror, but are you glad that you underwent chemo, as opposed to not doing so and experiencing the alternative that could result from choosing not to undergo chemo?

GB: I am glad I did it and here’s why.  I have devoted some of the free time that I have, to mentoring cancer patients.  I have done this since 2013, talking with other cancer patients, and unfortunately many of them have passed away; but to know what they are going through, to be able to relate, for me to tell them, hey, I have been through this, I have had chemo, I know what it feels like, and that resonates with these folks, and there is a trust that builds up with patients.  You know, when you are a cancer patient, there are things you can talk to your doctor about, there are things you can talk to your family and friends about, but many of them have never had cancer before, so there are things you want to discuss with another cancer patient.  Me, I didn’t have cancer patients that I could turn to that had a good outcome, and I am trying to be that beacon for other people that follow me, that I had a really serious case, I had surgery, I had chemo like you, I had radiation like you, I know what it feels like.  Here are some of the things that I did to cope with it, so in a long answer to your question, I know what it feels like.  It’s awful, it’s horrible, but it also helps me with them, it gives me perspective in my life now that I am a healthy man, I am so much more thankful in how I feel day-to-day because I know how horrible that experience was.

BM: Gary, here is something else that I hope resonates with the people with whom you interact.  I had asked you about the very bad news that came with your diagnosis, but you learned in stages that you were getting the upper hand on this cancer.  How exciting was that news and how exciting is it to share with the people to whom you speak?

GB: It was incredulous to us that this was actually happening.  The news from my story was horrible, horrible, horrible for quite a long time.  Then, all of a sudden, the tables flipped when I got that first scan result back and the doctor thought something really positive was going on here.  It felt really good, but one thing we learned that was really interesting was that when you are    in an oncology office and you get good news, and we were very aware of this, and you walk back into the waiting room, and there are all sorts of people there in all different stages and phases of cancer, we wanted to make sure that we kept our good news under out hats because we didn’t want other people to feel bad.  To the patients I talk to, if they are having good news, then I will share my good news with them, but I don’t share my good news if their news isn’t good.  So, I try to really careful about what I share and how much I share about my journey.  I do more listening and then communicating to them elements of my story that fit in without making them feel bad about what they are going through.

BM: And how important to your life as it goes forward, this whole notion of giving and sharing with others this information, and the listening part, too?

GB: I call it my mission in my life, and I don’t know what I would do without it.  You know, you can do a couple things when you are done with the cancer journey.  You can try to forget it ever happened and run away with your hands over your ears, or you can stay in the game and give something back.  When you come out of something like this, there is a lot of collateral mental damage, and I wanted to forget about myself.  I didn’t want to sit around.  I wanted to concentrate on other people and not think about my own situation and the focus is not on me anymore, it’s on them.  It has served me to forget about myself and forget about what I had been through and put my situation and my case in the rear-view mirror.

BM: You talked about this caring and sharing on an individual basis, but in terms of being affiliated with an organization, there is an organization in the Twin Cities that has been very aggressive in this sort of thing, and you’re a part of it, and that’s the A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation.  Could you just let our listeners and viewers know what A Breath of Hope does for others and services of which they can avail themselves by going through A Breath of Hope?

GB: First of all, I am so proud to be part of this organization.  Nancy Torrison is our executive director and shortly after meeting her, and I made in donation in 2012 to the organization.  She gave me a call back and thanked me and I said if there is anything I can do to get involved, I would love to and we struck up a friendship and she said I should join their board.  I am now in my ninth year on the A Breath of Hope board and the co-chair of the board of directors there.  It has been an incredible journey serving in this organization.  It is Minnesota-based.  It is dedicated to lung cancer, you know, we don’t tackle other diseases, other lung-related diseases.  We are focused on lung cancer only and there are three prongs of what A Breath of Hope is all about.  First is patient support.  We have programs where we will pick up patients at their home and drive them to their appointments to make sure that they stay on track with their treatment schedule.  We have grief groups for widows and widowers, for patients and caregivers, so patient support is huge, and it is something that when I am talking to other patients that falls under the umbrella of our mission.  The second leg of this three-legged stool, we like to say, is the awareness of the disease.  We want people to know about lung cancer.  It is the deadliest form of cancer, globally and in the United States.  It kills more people per year than any other kind of cancer, and we want to know, too, that the outdated stigma that it’s a smokers-only disease.  That’s not true.  I never smoked a day in my life.  I am a ‘never smoker,’ and I know several other people that have contracted lung cancer that never smoked.  The other part of awareness is radon.  It can cause lung cancer, so we are very big spreading awareness on eliminating the smoking stigma and letting people know that radon can cause lung cancer, and what are the symptoms of lung cancer?  Cough, fatigue, shoulder pain, amongst many other possible symptoms.  So, we want to let people know about the disease itself, how severe it is, you know, what are the symptoms and then, educating them on radon and the fact that anyone with lungs can get lung cancer.  Then, the final leg of the three-legged stool is research.  We are very proud of this.  We basically fund our research fellows at various universities, projects that are lung cancer-specific.  We’ll have a new $150,000 fellowship and we will get applications from doctors from all over the country, from some of the leading medical research facilities in the country and then we will vet these projects, then we will choose one and we will fund this fellow for two years with $150,000.  Then they provide us status reports with what they are working on and there are some really exciting things that are happening now.  In terms of research, I cannot even believe what has happened since my journey with lung cancer.  It’s amazing.  Patients are living longer.  Patients are living better and more people are getting cured today the ever before, so there is a lot of hope.  Are we ‘there’ yet?  No.  There is a lot more work that needs to be done.  Even when I am not on the board anymore, I will stay affiliated with this organization until the day I die.  I cannot say enough about how efficient we are.  For every dollar we gain through donation, 80 cents is allocated toward our programming.  It is a very low overhead organization, so we take the money that we are given, and we give it to our programs.  They do significant things for the lung cancer community and the illness.

BM: And if somebody wants to contact A Breath of Hope, the web address is one big word: www.abreathofhope.org.  Gary, that’s going to wrap things up for this episode.  We really appreciate your story.  Very informative and very inspirational as I suspect is in lockstep with all the communication you have with people who are on a lung cancer journey.  Gary, thanks very much for your time, thanks for being with us.

GB: You’re welcome, Bruce.  It was my pleasure.

BM: That will conclude this edition of Cancer Interviews.  We want to remind you if you are on a cancer journey or a loved one is, that you are not alone.  There are plenty of people just like Gary who know what you are going through and have much to share.  So, until next time, we’ll see you on down the road.

Support Group: A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation  www.abreathofhope.org

SHOW NOTES

TITLE:  Gary Brausen, Lung Cancer Survivor – Bloomington, Minnesota, USA

After being diagnosed with Stage 3B lung cancer, Gary Brausen went through a painful journey that included radiation, aggressive chemotherapy and the loss of a lung; but he survived and now works hard to help others with their cancer journeys.

Additional Resources:

Cancer Interviews: https://www.cancerinterviews.com

A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation: www.abreathofhope.org

Time Stamps:

04:34 Gary’s cancer journey began with a cough.

09:50 Was told he didn’t have long to live.

12:15 Received tremendous support from his wife and boys.

16:04 Gary said his treatment regimen included removal of a lung.

19:53 Chemo and radiation relay took a toll.

21:05 Gary said after his initial post-treatment scan, no cancer was detected.

23:45 He almost quit chemo.

25:26 Chemo left a bad taste in his mouth.

26:25 Glad he underwent chemo.

KEYWORDS (tags):

lung cancer

bronchoscopy

cancer

adenocarcinoma

cancer interviews

mediastinoscopy

chemotherapy

cisplatin

gary brausen

alimta

bruce morton

plural effusion