After Keytruda treatment is paused due to immunotherapy-induced pneumonitis, Wayne shares the emotional reality of sleepless nights, uncertainty, and recovery. Despite the setback, recent scans remain stable, faith remains strong, and hope continues to guide his journey through stage 4 cancer.
There is a particular kind of quiet that shows up at three in the morning.
The house is dark. My wife is asleep. And I am lying wide awake, staring at the ceiling, because the steroids will not let my body rest. This has been most of my nights for almost two weeks now. My mind, with nothing to do and nowhere to be, goes to work on me.
Here is why. Two weeks ago, my oncologist paused my cancer treatment.
If you have never heard those words as a stage four patient, let me try to explain what they mean to you. For a year, Keytruda has been one of my cancer treatment tools, standing between me and a terminal outcome. It is part of the wall along with high dose IV vitamin C infusions, repurposed medications, vitamin D, and the Carnivore Diet. It may be one of the reasons I am still writing these updates. So when a doctor tells you part of the wall has a crack in it for a while, even for a good reason, something in your chest goes cold. It feels like setting down your shield partway in the middle of a fight and being told to just trust that the other cancer treatment tools will pick up the slack.
The reason is something called pneumonitis. After a year on Keytruda, my immune system got so revved up that it turned and started inflaming my own lung tissue. It is a known risk with this kind of treatment. The medicine that has been keeping me alive decided to take a swing at my lungs. So we stop the Keytruda, we calm the inflammation, and we protect what I have left.
That is where the steroids come in. Seventy milligrams of Prednisone a day, tapering down ten milligrams each week. There is an antibiotic too, three days a week, to guard against a pneumonia that likes to sneak in when you are on steroids this long. On paper, it is simple. In a body, it is not.
The steroids steal my sleep. My blood pressure has been dropping into the low nineties over fifty nines, low enough that I get dizzy when I stand up too fast. My doctor told me to push fluids and keep an eye on my blood sugar, because high doses like this can dehydrate you and send your sugar climbing. So this is the strange place I am living in right now. Wired and exhausted at the same time. Protecting my lungs from the very thing that has been protecting me.
You learn something in a season like this. You learn how fast normal can turn into uncertain. You learn how fragile this body really is, and how much of what we count on is held together by a thread we never even see.
But I promised myself these updates would tell the whole truth, and the whole truth is not only the hard part.
Because here is what I hold onto when the room is dark.
On April 7, I had a full scan. And there was no new cancer anywhere. Not in my liver. Not in my pancreas. Not in my spleen. Not in my kidneys. Not in my lymph nodes. Not in my bones. The spot in my abdomen they had been watching for so long? Gone. Not shrinking, gone. Not even visible anymore. The small nodules in my lungs that we have tracked for years? Stable. Holding the line.
Four years into a stage four diagnosis, and the scans are clean.
I do not believe I got here on medicine alone. I have prayed through nights a lot darker than this one, and I am still here. My faith is not a backup plan for when the treatment stops working. It is the floor I am standing on while I wait. And right now, waiting is the whole job.
The next scan comes near the end of June. It will be the first real look at my cancer since April, and I would be lying if I said I was not nervous about it. That is a lot of nights between now and then for the mind to do its thing. So I am choosing, on purpose, every single day, to point myself toward hope instead.
One of the things keeping me pointed there has been you. The reviews coming in on my memoir have meant more than you know. I never wrote that book for attention. I wrote it for the person sitting where I was four years ago, terrified and out of answers, who needed someone to tell them the road was walkable. To everyone who has read it, reviewed it, and shared it, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
One Honest Ask Before You Go
This is the part where I need you. Not as readers of the book, but as the people who know me and love me anyway.
Somewhere tonight, someone is exactly where I was at the start of all this. Scared. Alone. Convinced there is nothing left to try. Five minutes of your time could find that person.
Stop by the blog. Read the latest at WaynesCancerJourney.com and leave a comment. Knowing you were there carries me further than I can explain.
Share the book. If you know someone fighting cancer, or caring for someone who is, put Still Here in their hands. One share or one text could be the thing that reaches them on the night they need it most.
Leave a review on Amazon. This is the one I ask with everything in me. Reviews are how Still Here stays visible, so that when someone searches for hope at midnight, they actually find it. Two minutes and a few honest sentences from you could be the reason a stranger does not give up. I am not exaggerating. I have been that stranger.
Thank you for walking this with me. The treatment is on hold. The faith is not.
And I am still here.
Wayne