AGM: Pat Pangburn's storyAGM transcript: Pat Pangburn's story
Dr. McPherson: I'd now like to introduce Pat Pangburn. Pat comes to us
from Irving, Texas and she's going to have a few words to say. Pat?
You don't need the notes?
Pat Pangburn: I have my own, thank you. It's very nice to be here.
Thank you Dr. McPherson, I appreciate it. I don't think I'm
particularly unusual but apparently I guess I am. I think I'll tell
you just a little bit about why I'm here and share with you some
milestones when it comes to my health and what's going on with me.
Eighteen months ago after almost seven years of being cancer free and
cured of early stage breast cancer I was informed that the cancer had
returned to my lung. I was grappling with some very sobering
statistics mainly that women whose breast cancer has metastasized to a
vital organ has no greater than a 2 to 3% chance of living for five
years. I also found out that 50% of the women ever diagnosed with
breast cancer will die from it eventually. Maybe not in two years,
maybe not in five years but eventually it will die. I became and
joined the ranks of the dirty little secret of breast cancer, which
there is no cure. Fifteen months ago, I had just completed three
months of chemotherapy, a weekly regimen, I had lost my hair, I had
just lost my fingernails, had lost a little bit of my short term
memory, that's why I have notes, I had lost my appetite but gained
twenty pounds almost overnight and I'd broken a rib from incessant
coughing that had been weakened from surgery, I'd lost half of a lung
also. I felt like hell and I looked like hell and I was so exhausted
but I couldn't sleep, probably because of insomnia caused by the cold,
stark realization, the fear that I was a walking dead woman.
I looked at my oncologist and she, much to her credit, treated me like
an intelligent person that seemed to be aware of what was going on and
she didn't mince words with me and she said 'I'll check you for
recurrence, every three months, you'll have some blood work and you'll
have a chest x-ray and go home and try to put your life back
together.' I asked about clinical trials and all I got was a shrug,
like there really isn't anything to do. I don't know, I've always sort
of felt that there was always a plan B, there's always something out
there that a person can try. So I immersed myself with the Internet
and I really felt that this was the direction that I wanted to go.
Then my oncologist quit her practice, so I really knew I was on my own.
So I was able to find out about twelve months ago, saw a news release
where there was a little biotech company in Canada that had been fast
track approved for a cancer vaccine for metastatic breast cancer. I
thought this sounds like something that might work for me and I
remember clicking onto the NCI clinical trials site and reading the
eligibility requirements about being in the trial. And it was like, I
can remember it to this day, it was like winning the lottery, that
each eligibility requirement was like a winning number. I kept saying
'Yep, I've got that one! I've got that one.' At the end I realized
that it was perhaps better than winning the lottery. There was, at the
bottom of this clinical trials site, there was a toll free number to
call. I called Biomira and got a recorded message and I left my name
and number and I was called within the hour. I was all set to go to
the Hutchinson cancer center in Seattle, I just assumed that there was
only one place where we had a clinical trial and as a matter of fact I
had my choice, at that time, of two places in Texas; one being MD
Anderson, in Houston and the other being Health Science Center in San
Antonio.
So I decided that San Antonio was where I needed to be, I have a
daughter who lives there and I would always have transportation and a
place to stay and could visit her at the same time. So I got on the
telephone, called the study nurse, couldn't figure out why she didn't
call me back, well she'd been on vacation, so I kept trying and that's
something that I tell everybody who's ill that you do have to be your
own advocate, you have to be the one that makes the initiative, takes
the initiative and makes the calls because if you don't care about you
nobody else will care about you. So we got together and nine months
ago I met two very wonderful people. Helen Parker was the study nurse
and Dr. Peter Ravdin, a brilliant research oncologist and principal
investigator for this trial at the University of Texas Health Science
Center in San Antonio. She was, Helen was the person that I called and
I told her that I thought that I was eligible and we made an
appointment and I went down to San Antonio and met with Dr. Ravdin.
He's not only a brilliant and unbelievably kind man, he's extremely
compassionate and his patients are so lucky to have him. And I knew I
was in the right place, it just sort of felt good about being there
and I really felt like I had been, the whole thing had changed, the
whole picture of my health. This is a man who should probably never
play poker because he kept looking at me like I was some alien, I was
some foreign kind of entity and I finally said 'what is it?' and he
said 'I just can't believe that you could find this trial and find
your way here.' It had never happened, I didn't think that that was an
unusual occurrence but apparently it is, it's not something that happens.
Along those lines, when we talk about clinical trials, I have no idea
if I'm getting the actual drug, vaccine or not. I have no idea
whatsoever but the idea of being able to participate in a trial like
this and you know I've got a 50% chance of being on it and it
certainly was better than doing nothing. The idea of helping maybe my
daughter's generation, she's 31 and this disease is finding its way to
more and more young women and it needs to be, something needs to be
done. We need a kinder, gentler treatment and hopefully that's what
we'll find in Theratope.
In the United States primary breast cancer, about 250,000 women a year
are diagnosed with primary breast cancer and 50,000 are diagnosed with
metastatic breast cancer but yet only 2-3%, well actually it's like
under 5% of women who are eligible actually participate in clinical
trials. I just find that reprehensible. We will never, ever beat back
this disease unless more people participate and certainly more private
practice doctors need to get their patients in clinical trials. I'd be
remiss if I didn't mention that, something I'm very proud of, that I
personally recruited six other women for this trial. This was done
over the Internet and these were women who were also looking for hope
and needed to have their attention called to the fact that this might
be the kind of treatment that they could get. There are two women out
there, Tina and Rebecca, who are on the trial, doing very well,
healthy and everything seems to be fine and if I had a drink I'd toast
to them right now. And then there are, I have to mention Pat from
Chicago who's just barely hanging on but yet she started the trial and
immediately recurred. I don't even think that she would be evaluable.
And then there was another woman, Doris, who had the same thing happen
and immediately went on to disease progression and she died. And then
there's Milette and then there's Cheri who wanted on this trial so
desperately but whose disease had gone too far and who are dead now
and couldn't get on the trial.
Eight months ago I decided to put my money where my mouth was and I
became a stockholder and so I got a great thrill voting here with the
rest of you. I just want you to know that I have no insider
information because I bought high. I bought at $11 and then a couple
weeks ago at $9.23. It makes me feel good to do that, to purchase the
stock and be part of this company.
Six months ago I attended the largest breast cancer conference in the
United States, it's called the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium and
it's like any other kind of, I guess you would call it a trade show,
there are any number of booths around and you walk up and down and see
the exhibits and everybody's got their gimme bags and their pencils
and mouse pads. I looked up and I see in the distance a booth with the
sign Biomira and I, of course, rushed over there and Bill Wickson was
there, I think everybody knows Bill or if they don't, they should. Are
you around Bill? There he is, in the back of the room. I went up to
him and said 'Hi! I'm one of your lab rats.' And he thought I was a
physician. He invited me to dinner that next night and I thought 'Wow!
This is really nice to be in a clinical trial. They treat you well,
they take you to dinner.' And this kind of thing and so it was, he
told me that some other people from the company would be down and it
was just absolutely delightful for me to meet them and it made me feel
so good to know that, put faces with a company that probably had my
life in their hands. I'm thrilled to have had that kind of contact
with them. But it's such a pleasure to be here and to be able to say
something nice about a company that is making a huge difference in my
life, whether or not I'm getting the real vaccine or not, it's what
it's done to me up here, the thought that I can hopefully do
something. And I also want to say that one month ago I got clean scans
and I am presently without evidence of disease. Thank you very much.
Dr. McPherson: Thank you very much Pat and if the chemotherapy's had a
bit of an effect on your short term memory because of the notes you
have to, I wonder what it's done to me. Not so good. I don't even know
where to start.
End of second section