Patrick Owen survived Renal Cell Carcinoma | Immunotherapy | Radiation Therapy |Renal Cancer

DESCRIPTION

Patrick Owen fractured his right femur when jamming his foot into a ski boot.  That led to a PET scan, which led to a diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma, a form of renal cancer.  Patrick was able to avoid chemotherapy, and instead went with a regimen of immunotherapy, which brought him to survivorship. He shares his story with the @CancerInterviews podcast.

Patrick Owen loves to travel and hike and scuba dive.  He also loves skiing.  On a ski trip three hours from his home in Salem, Oregon, he was trying to get his right foot in his ski boot when his femur snapped in half.  After he was done screaming in pain, he told his wife he thought he had cancer because one doesn’t just break the strongest bone in one’s body while putting on a ski boot.  Patrick was taken to a hospital, where a rod was put in his femur from his knee to his hip.  An ensuing PET scan revealed the diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma.

He was given the option of a relatively-new form of treatment called immunotherapy, which he chose over chemotherapy.  It consisted of 12 weeks of two different types of medication infusions.  He would be hooked up to an IV and did that every three weeks for 12 weeks.  Then he went to one infusion once every four weeks.  Patrick felt amazed and blessed that he didn’t have any of the side effects.

Patrick said his right leg was a problem even before his diagnosis.  A month prior to the diagnosis, after getting out of bed, he stepped down on his leg and felt a sharp pain just above his knee.  He admits he didn’t think much of it, the pain went away, but his wife repeatedly said he should see a doctor.  In retrospect, Patrick thinks that morning, he might have partially broken the femur.  Even after achieving survivorship, sometimes his leg is a source of pain and sometimes, he limps. 

Patrick Owen still undergoes periodic scans on his femur.  He is told it is healing, but will never completely heal.  He is grateful to have survived renal cell carcinoma, and tries to be as healthy as he can with a sugar-free, low-carb diet. 

Additional Resources:

Kickin’ Cancer: https://www.kicking-cancer.org

TRANSCRIPT

Bruce Morton: Greetings and welcome to the @CancerInterviews podcast.  Thanks for joining us.  I’m your host, Bruce Morton.  Every cancer journey is different, but our guest on this episode has a story that distinguishes itself in that he didn’t need someone else to tell him he had cancer.  He is Patrick Owen of Salem, Oregon, a survival of renal cancer.  Here he is, and Patrick, welcome to Cancer Interviews.

Patrick Owen: Thank you so much.  Appreciate it.

BM: Patrick, it is our custom to start off from the same place, as we would like to learn more about your life, exclusive of cancer.  So, if you would, tell us where you are from, what you do for work, and what you do for fun.

PO: I have been moving west my whole life.  I started in Syracuse, New York, moved to Rochester, New York, went to school in Cleveland, Ohio.  My roommate and I were avid skiers, so we moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado our senior year and got three hours credit for independent study in advanced skiing, came back, graduated, both of us moved out there, I stayed three winters, then I came to Portland, Oregon.  He’s still there.  Anyway, I came to Portland, went back to college and I became a chiropractor.  I retired here in 2017 as a chiropractor.

BM: And for fun?

PO: I ski and scuba dive and travel.  I have been in all 50 states, and I have traveled many, many different countries around the world, and I love to scuba dive and ski.

BM: As mentioned earlier, the way you learned you had cancer is unique because it didn’t include a standard diagnosis.  Tell us how it happened.

PO:  I told you I am an avid skier.  My wife and I for Valentine’s Day, I took her over to Mt. Bachelor in Bend, Oregon, about three hours from where I live and bought a week’s worth of tickets.  I came out into the parking lot, opened up the car door and started jamming my foot into my ski boot and I fractured my right femur.  It just snapped in half.  After I got done screaming, I told my wife I had to have cancer because you don’t break the strongest bone in your body putting on a ski boot.  I stood in the parking lot for an hour and a half, standing on to my left leg, holding to my car door.  The ski patrol came out, gave me two shots of morphine, which did nothing.  They tried to lay me on a backboard but didn’t stabilize my leg and I started screaming like crazy again.  The ski patrol guy said, “Did you hear those bones crunch?  I hear those bones crunching!”  They took me to the hospital and put a rod in my right femur from my knee to my hip.  They did a PET scan and discovered I had renal cell carcinoma.

BM: How does one develop or recognize a connection between a fractured femur and renal cancer?

PO: That’s what the PET scan was for, but from my experience, I just knew you don’t break the strongest bone in your body putting on a ski boot.  So, I knew I had to have cancer, but I didn’t know where or how.

BM: Well, once you found out this terrible news, did you have treatment options?

PO: I was very fortunate.  My son was an ICU nurse and his girlfriend worked for Oregon Health Sciences University.  They called around and they found two doctors, one was an orthopedic, because a lot of orthopedics won’t touch bone cancer, and they also found me a cancer doctor.  So, I went in and saw him.  There is a new treatment program called immunotherapy, which is different than chemotherapy.  It is good specifically for renal cell carcinoma and melanoma.  It is fairly new, so they didn’t have a lot of research on it, but I starting seeing this doctor up in Portland.  They did 12 weeks of two different types of medication infusions.  I would go in and they would hook me up to IVs and I did that every three weeks for 12 weeks.  Then I went to one infusion once every four weeks.

BM: Out of that treatment regimen, what was the toughest part?

PO: You can have side effects with it, but I didn’t have any of the side effects, so I was really blessed that way.  You go in once a month first for two hours then one hour.  They give you drinks, and popcorn and you sit there, play with your phone and it’s not too bad.  It wasn’t anything major that I had.

BM: Patrick, any of us who have experienced a cancer diagnosis need support, physically, mentally, emotionally.  From where did you get your support?

PO: My wife has been phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal.  My kids have been phenomenal, having a son with a nursing degree, the other son a pastor, my daughter who lives close with our grandkids.  They came over and set my house up, got me settled in. they have been calling and visiting constantly, huge, huge support, and then my church has been phenomenal.  I had to have a medical transport from Bend back to Salem.  I called a buddy of mine, who said it was $1500 for the transport.  Within 20-30 minutes, he called back and said he had raised the money calling my church friends and they came up with the $1500 for you.  I was in a wheelchair, and people from the church put in a ramp so I could get into the house, they fixed up the bathroom so I could use the shower and the toilet, they had prayer meetings for me, just absolutely been amazing.

BM: I don’t know about the physical part, but the mental part and the emotional part, everything you’ve mentioned had to have given you a big boost.

PO: Yes, exactly.  I have done mission work in many countries, so I have had people praying all over the world for me and I have family and friends all over the US and they have all been praying for me, and that has been a huge, huge thing I get text messages and e-mails, huge amount of support, all over the world.

BM: So, it sounds like for you, from where you sit, that prayer works.

PO: Prayer definitely works.  Two quick stories.  One is that when the church was having a prayer meeting for me, I couldn’t go because I was in the wheelchair and I was at home, so we did a Zoom thing and they put the pastor in a chair, and they all came over and put hands on him and prayed for him.  He was my surrogate, he was me.  His wife said got a vision from God seeing the cancer leaving my body, so that was a huge, huge thing that happened.  The other story was that when we were in Kenya, my sister worked over there for three years in a hospital and got to know a young woman named Freida.  We went over and met Freida, met her twice, visited her house, it was one room, a mud hut, mud walls, mud floor.  When my sister told Freida about my diagnosis, Freida e-mailed me and said she was going to school to become a social worker, but when she heard of my diagnosis, she was going to send me her tuition money to help pay for my medical expenses.  I was very grateful but turned down that very nice offer.  Then she said she would form a prayer team that would meet every Saturday night and pray for you.  Next, she and her pastor called me and prayed for me over the phone.

BM: In terms of your cancer journey, when did you sense things were changing for the better?

PO: The leg has always been a problem.  A month before I came down with cancer, I got up one morning and stepped down on my leg and felt this sharp pain just above my knee.  Didn’t think too much of it and it kind of went away.  My wife said repeatedly that I should go see a doctor, but I thought I was fine.  So, I probably partially broke when I got out of bed that morning.  The leg has been a problem, and it continues to hurt me.  I still limp sometimes if I do too much, so I still have pain there, but health wise, the cancer never seemed to have really affected me.  I never felt sick.  The infusions never bothered me, the immunotherapy never bothered me, so I never felt terrible.  I fatigued faster than usual and a little more lethargic, I sleep longer, and I take naps, which I never did before. Other than that, I always felt pretty good.

BM: We have had guests who have gone through the rigors of chemotherapy and despite all it does, when the treatment is done, they are glad they underwent chemo.  Are you glad you went with immunotherapy?

PO: Oh yeah.  Tremendously.  I started it in March 2021, then in March 2022, I went in and had another PET scan done, and they found I had absolutely no cancer anywhere in my body.  When they did the first PET scan, I had four tumors on my lungs, one on my right adrenal gland, one on my left adrenal gland, one on my left kidney and a large one behind my spleen, plus some smaller ones.  On March 8, they did a PET scan, and all of the cancer was gone.  Menawhile, in 1992, I had a large tumor on my left kidney, and they watched it for six years.  Every six months they did a CT scan, and for four years every two years I would get a CT scan and it never changed, never grew.  They thought the tumor was benign and there was no reason to watch it.  I now think that was the source of my cancer.  The doctor after the March 8 PET scan told me that he wanted to have my left kidney removed and the tumor behind my spleen removed.  So, on June 29, they took that tumor behind my spleen and took out my kidney and did a biopsy on it and a couple weeks later I went to see my oncologist and he was absolutely totally amazed.  He said there was absolutely no cancer in those tissues at all, the kidney or the tumor behind my spleen.  He said he had never seen this happen.  Originally when I went in, he told me I had 18 months to two years, but because I was in pretty good health, he expected me to live longer.  I read someplace else that people with my diagnosis, the survival rate is five percent to 14 percent.  He said he hated to tell me I was cured because he had never seen this happen before.  As a result, he said he wanted to do the immunotherapy for another year to make sure it doesn’t come back.

BM: Considering how much you have overcome and the numbers you just provided, the percentage possibility of survival, taking all that into consideration, taking all that into consideration, how grateful are you?

PO: Oh, phenomenally so.  Grateful for all of the prayer support, the love I have had, it has just been tremendous.  My wife has been phenomenal.  There have been a few things we have done to enhance the immunotherapy.  One is I went to a naturopath and had ten infusion of Vitamin C, which builds up your immune system.  I also did a bunch of research and have been taking 80 supplements a day, mostly things that fight cancer.  One of the things that really helped was I went on the Budwig diet.  There are people who swear they got rid of their cancer by doing nothing else but taking the Budwig diet.  Cancer feeds on sugar and so, I have been sugar-free since February 2021.  Absolutely no sugar and very low carbohydrates, everything’s natural, you know, grass-fed beef, no pork, which is kinda hard, no shellfish.  I have a sweet tooth, but my wife has learned how to cook totally sugar-free.  Part of the Budwig diet is, everything is organic and grass-fed, just as natural as you can possibly get. 

BM: You had trotted out some numbers a bit earlier, but I want one more.  If pre-diagnosis, you were 100 percent, how close are you that, these days?

PO: I’ll be honest with you, I am not 100 percent sure.  The reason is, I think as far as my cancer goes, it is as close to 100 percent as you can get.  I keep having x-rays done on my leg and the orthopedist says it is healing but not healed.  I still have a big chunk of bone missing out of that leg.  The rod holds it secure, so I am not going to break it again because of the big, huge rod that is in there.  She said it may not ever heal up.  I really want to go back to skiing, so I am still praying that my leg will heal up.  I still have pain there.  It’s mild, it’s not too bad, but it is not 100 percent.  One other thing.  I did have radiation on that femur.  Radiation kills the cancer, but it also kills the bone cancer and that slows the healing process.  So, I am waiting for my leg to heal. 

BM: But do you think there could be one day in which you go back on the bunny slope?

PO: I am sure hopin’ so.  I am counting on it.

BM: Patrick, we are going to wrap up now, and we are going to conclude the way we always do.  I want you to imagine you are one-on-one with someone who has just been diagnosed with renal cancer.  You may have lots of things to say to that person, but if there is one part of the message that stands out over the rest, what would it be?

PO: Prayer to me has been one of the most important things.  I think God answered a lot of prayers, but from a physical standpoint, immunotherapy.  It is a new therapy, since 2016, and I think immunotherapy is phenomenal and the Budwig diet.  Those three things.

BM: All right, Patrick, that is going to wrap things up.  We want to thank you for your time and a story that should hit close to home for a lot of people.  So, thanks again.

PO: Thank you for doing this and what you do for the world.  I appreciate that very much.

BM: Okay, Patrick, and once again, we want to remind you that if you are on a cancer journey or know someone who is, you are not alone.  There are lots of people like Patrick who have advice that can aid your journey.  So, until next time, we’ll see you on down the road.

Support Group:

Kickin’ Cancer: www.kicking-cancer.org

SHOW NOTES

TITLE:  Patrick Owen, Renal Cancer Survivor – Salem, Oregon, USA

Patrick Owen quickly realized he had some form of cancer when the seemingly harmless act of slipping into a ski boot resulted in a split femur. This is the story of how he survived a diagnosis of renal cancer through immunotherapy and faith.  He shares his journey with the @CancerInterviews podcast.

Additional Resources:

Kickin’ Cancer: www.kickin-cancer.org

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

Time Stamps:

03:06 Patrick reveals the unusual way in which he learned he had cancer.

05:18 His treatment introduced him to immunotherapy.

06:00 Treatment incredibly resulted in no side effects.

10:33 After treatment, he still has problems with his right leg.

11:54 Patrick says he is glad he chose immunotherapy.

13:15 Learned he was cancer free.

17:17 Asked how close he is to being physically 100 percent.

KEYWORDS (tags):

renal cancer

cancer

immunotherapy

cancerinterviews.com

bruce morton

radiation therapy

patrick owen

renal cell carcinoma