September 2024
The area around Park City, UT, is known for its natural beauty, world-class ski slopes and trails. Like many of those who make Park City their home, Bill often enjoyed trail running, mountain biking, and back country skiing. “I’d wake up at 5 in the morning. I’d go to the gym, I’d eat well. I was doing everything right,” he said.
So he took it in stride when he pulled his back shoveling snow a year and a half ago. “When you get to your 40s, that stuff happens.” But the pain lasted longer than he expected, and he was told he had a mild scoliosis. After nearly three months of twice-weekly physical therapy with no improvement, Bill scheduled an MRI. But a few days before his appointment he seized up to the point he couldn’t walk – and ended up in the emergency room.
That’s when he found out he had lung cancer. “It had spread all the way up my spine and into my brain and down my hips. It was wildly metastatic.”
In this short clip, Bill talks about the moment he learned his diagnosis
He was taken by ambulance to a major hospital. “My spine had essentially crumbled from the cancer itself,” he explained. He had a kyphoplasty, where bone cement is injected into the spine, but in post-op, it exploded.
In the meantime, his wife, Sloan, was doing her own research. She called on an oncologist friend who recommended biomarker testing, and soon Bill was at Huntsman Cancer Institute. He had radiation and a spinal fusion; the biomarker results showed his cancer had the EGFR exon 21 mutation. “That’s when there was actual hope,” he said. After starting targeted therapy, “within a month it was amazing. Like, my whole life had changed completely,” he said.
“I thought I was done for. The osimertinib really changed everything.”
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Bill also wants to draw attention to some of the risk factors that fly under the radar. “My big thing is radon,” he said. “I’m trying to bring about more radon awareness, especially out here in the intermountain region, and I’m on the Utah Radon Board.”
He also is sharing information with a biotech company, which is tracking his data points as he goes through treatment.
Bill’s journey hasn’t been free of complications, however. Gallstones were a separate issue that required several surgeries to remove them and, ultimately, his gallbladder. Subsequent testing showed that while his brain and spine metastases were shrinking, his lung mass was growing quickly.
Bill is now in a clinical trial and feeling positive about his progress. “You know, 10 years ago my wife’s father had prostate cancer – stage 4, like my diagnosis. That was a death sentence, right? But now, it’s totally different. These clinical trials are helping prolong my life and other people’s lives so much.”
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