Concerned, I sought input from my primary care doctor. He ran many tests, and referred me to a specialist after seeing something on my lung X-ray. It took a while to get in with that doctor, who initially thought I may have COPD, but a lung biopsy in April 2017 revealed I had adenocarcinoma. At first, I thought that meant I had lung cancer, but my surgeon and oncologist explained that an endoscopy showed that my cancer had started in my stomach and metastasized to my lung.

Being generally healthy, it came as quite a shock that I had Stage IV stomach cancer, and I decided to get a second opinion on treatment at MD Anderson Cancer. As it turned out, the broad strokes of my diagnosis didn’t change much, and my early treatment plan involved a FolFOX chemotherapy infusion every two weeks for about seven months. Concurrently, since I was HER2+, I also began receiving Herceptin, a monoclonal antibody which specifically targets and binds to HER2 receptors in some cancer cells. While I haven’t had chemotherapy since 2017, I never stopped taking Herceptin, and will continue the protocol indefinitely.