With your support I can still fight!!!

To my friends, best friends, strangers, the people I worked with, whom I supported, who in so many numbers always wrote under my posts...

I have never asked anyone for anything. However, today is the day when the cruel reality forces me to ask others for money so that I could live.

I am almost 42 years old and for 3.5 years I have been fighting valiantly against the esophageal squamous cell carcinoma with metastases to the lymph nodes. Those who know me also know the whole history of my illness, which I have not been hiding, and which I have always been honestly describing on FB. I have been telling you about it over the years because, first of all, it has made it easier for me to go through difficult moments, and secondly, everyone has been curious about what has been going on with me. During complicated cancer treatments I was unable to respond to everyone, so I wrote a history of my illness on FB. Because of my own story with cancer, and thanks to my attitude and approach towards this disease, I managed to help many people with cancer. I have always tried to show that it is necessary to fight and that winning is possible. That has been the case until today. Today, the oncology in our country does not give me a chance for normal treatment.

I have completed 4 cycles of chemotherapy: 5 FU and cisplatin, I have had 7 operations (including two life-saving), a radiation therapy at the maximum dose of radiation and stereotactic radiation therapy, Cyber Knife. For a long time I had not eaten like a normal person (I could notswallow saliva because I did not have an esophagus), I walked like a cyborg with tubes in my stomach that I had to push food into, I walked around with a cardboard bedpan in my hand, into which I spat saliva day and night. I had a big hole in my neck from which bodily fluids constantly poured out. I was bald, vomiting and bleeding when I went to the bathroom. I was constantly in the hospital because my body instead of healing itself was rotting and had a number of shunts in it. In all this, with the help of the entire Dr. Zielinski’s team in Zakopane, and together with my loved ones, we have been coping, although each of the doctors looks at me as if I were a walking miracle.

Every doctor whose door I stand at and who reviews the history of my cancer, states it cannot be impossible that I am the person with this history. And yet, yes, I am the one who has endured so much. Unfortunately, today life presents an obstacle and that is the money. The money or its absence for a very expensive immunotherapy that is not covered by the Polish National Fund. The Fund does not cover my type of cancer and yet this immunotherapy is the only hope for me. As recently as late last year it seemed like it would be fine. The only change in the lymph node, unfortunately non-operational, which was treated with a "cyberknife", did not increase in size. However, a month ago, while I was at the hospital for the widening of the esophagus, I had additional tests done. It turned out that the tumor began to grow and spread on the aorta, as well as on the main bronchus on the left side. The PET test confirmed malignant invasion in the middle breast area with the traits of metabolic progression.

Since the cancer is now attacking very aggressively and spreading, I have consulted with a few outstanding specialists, including, above all, Prof. Cezary Szczylik. It turned out that the only saving grace for me is the immunotherapy involving nivolumab and ipilimumab. Otherwise, I have nothing left but to wait for death.

The cost of one dose of nivolumab (240 mg), administered every 2 weeks, costs approximately €3,000. One dose of ipilimumab (200 mg), administered every 3 weeks, costs approximately €15,700. One treatment consists of 4 doses of ipilimumab and 3 months of nivolumab administration, that is about €80,000. After the treatment has been completed, follow-up tests must be completed to verify whether the immunotherapy has been successful.

I don’t know how to write sob stories; I always try to describe things as they are. I've never before been in a similar situation so I have no experience writing stories like this one. What else can I say? I'm an ordinary girl who has always worked and who has always helped others, even during my illness. I have a family: husband Marcin (44 years old) and son Dominik (20 years old), who have been very supportive during every stage of my illness. I love them very much and we really are a cool family. I would like to grow old with them.

Those who know me also know that I have always been brave, I have been going through this disease like a battleship. Today my attitude does not matter as everything is in your hands, people of good will.

Kasia