I was diagnosed with kidney cancer, stage four.
It was devastating news. I don't think she had much more than three
months to live if she would have even had that. Hard to describe the feeling, you know?
My name is Tatiana Baker. I received my treatment at MedStar
Georgetown University Hospital, and it saved my life.
We live in Boynton Beach, Florida. And we started to investigate her type of cancer
and found that it's a very difficult cancer to treat and that it doesn't respond to chemotherapy or to
radiation, and it had spread aggressively. I had it in my kidney, in my lungs,
between the lungs, all over my lymph nodes. And the most painful, I had a tumor in my
spine. The oncologist told her that there was really not much he could do for her
at this point and sent us home. That was not an
answer that I was ready to live with. So I started to investigate every clinical
trial going on everywhere in the country and found Dr. Atkins and decided to
travel to Washington, D.C.
I was dying, and I remember this moment Dr. Atkins came, looked at me, and he's so
nice. Dr. Atkins had recommended this immunotherapy clinical trial that he had
going on. It's a drug that actually awakens your immune system to attack the
cancer. We told her she was participating in a clinical trial. The purpose was to
see whether or not this treatment would work in patients with kidney cancer. And
therefore, we had no guarantee that it would work in her, as is the case with
any therapy, but particularly the case with experimental treatments being used
as part of clinical trials. And she understood the risks and wanted to move
forward with the trial. She started the immunotherapy trial November 4th of 2014.
That was her first treatment, and her immune system was just kicking into high
gear. She had a lymph node on her neck that
was the size of a golf ball. And within three weeks, it was the size of a garden
pea. We told her that the anti- PDL-1 treatment Atezolizumab was likely to be
associated with some side effects. Typical side effects happen in about 5%
to 10% of patients including skin rash or liver abnormalities or diarrhea or
endocrine abnormalities such as thyroid dysfunction or pituitary dysfunction. And
if she got those, we may have to halt therapy to treat those side effects.
After three months, I didn't have any tumor. After three months. It's really true.
I didn't have cancer anymore. I don't have it.
We were like what just happened here? She got better so quick. It was almost
surreal because she was so sick. Everything had returned to normal. There
was nothing in her lungs, lymph nodes were normal, her spine was healing. It was
just astounding. Now my life without cancer, it's normal life. I wanted to
forget I have cancer. I'm from Ukraine, and three weeks ago my daughter was
married. And I'm so happy. I think about Dr. Atkins, and my heart feels so much
warmth for him and people in this hospital. I feel like it's my family, and
I feel so thankful for what this hospital did for me.