John McCulloch, 40, is an up-beat and active individual whose passion for life and positive attitude is as inspiring as his story battling colorectal cancer. March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month and to raise awareness about the condition and inspire the thousands of Canadians that are affected by it each year, this is John’s story.
Since February 2008, John’s life has been turned upside down by a terrifying diagnosis of Stage IV, colorectal cancer that has spread to his liver and lungs. Since his diagnosis, John has gone through numerous chemotherapy treatments. He was originally treated with the most commonly used treatment, which was effective for eight months, however, his cancer eventually came back and he had to move on to new treatment options.
After several unsuccessful rounds of chemotherapy, John was tested for his eligibility to receive a new class of biologic drugs that interfere with a common pathway involved in cancer spread called EGFr. In patients whose tumours have a mutation in a gene called KRAS, cancer cells continuously receive messages to grow and divide – these patients do not respond to anti-EGFr therapy. Luckily for John, his results showed that he was one of the 60 per cent of colorectal cancer patients who have the normal KRAS gene, making him a candidate for this new type of treatment. Continue reading ‘The Things You Learn Through Cancer…’ »