Thanksgiving 2025 is upon us. This marks a roughly 1.5 year since my diagnosis of metastatic colon cancer back in April of 2024. The cancer is growing slowly and ambiguously. Biomarkers are going up but CT scans shows that Sebastian, the primary colon mass, and his metastatic siblings in the liver and lung are stumbling along, sometimes growing, sometimes napping, and sometimes shrinking slightly only to arbitrary change their minds again. Par for the course really.

My course of treatment now is just oral anti-VEGF receptor Fruzaqla (fruquintinib). 21 day on drug with a subsequent 7 day break from drug. Side effects include your typical GI related downsides, liver issues, and bleeding problems (VEGF receptor after all). Once again, i am quite lucky, but for infrequent feelings of slight nausea in the mornings, no major side effects has presented itself. Currently i am on my third cycle of Fruzaqla, going to have another CT scan before Christmas and close out 2025 with an eye forward towards 2026 and continued striving for funding PTM so that we can advance PTM-001-ADC/PTM-001 towards an IND filing.

However, as we stand now, i can honestly say that i am ever thankful indeed.

i am thankful for the fact that, between my wife and i, we had put away enough savings (along with wife’s legal consulting jobs) so that we can focus on PTM directly while dealing with Sebastian and friends.

i am thankful for the friends and family that i have around me who support me in way more ways than i think they appreciate.

i am thankful to my mentor, who, despite his busy schedule and dealing with the current attacks on academic institutions and academic research, still calls me regularly to just talk about fishing and everyday interactions with mutual friends and acquaintances.

i am thankful to the high school mentees i have met over the years who still keep in touch with me as they travel through their collegiate journey. Their enthusiasm and eagerness to excel gives me hope and vigor as i tackle my days and tasks.

i am thankful to all our friends who are in the SF restaurant scene, they forever give me such joy with our shared experiences, their new personal endeavors in life, and, of course, the wonderful culinary production they provide. This year, i was lucky enough to have been able to cheer on a chef friend’s first Ironman race (she is now an Ironman!). This year i was also honored to share another chef friend’s discovery of kayaking the SF bay waters and camping on his own for the first time. All these experiences and more are so wonderful to me and meaningful indeed!

i am thankful to our cats, who comforts me daily despite our orange cat being prone to expressing his displeasure of our travels by inappropriately defecating and urinating… it is hard to get angry at an orange tabby though, after all, the entire population of orange tabbies shares a single brain cell.

Finally, i am thankful to my wife, who has been a rock and has recently turned into quite a green thumb after forever proclaiming herself to have the blackest of thumbs. Her potatoes, lettuces, kale, and sungold cherry tomatoes has sustained me and given me such joy over the course of the year.

All and all, yes, i am a cancer patient, a cancer patient with a poor outlook and a cancer patient who has a good insight into his cancer, working on what he thinks is a very promising drug to combat the cancer but unable to drum up funding to support the push towards clinic with this drug. Through all of this, i am in a good place surrounded by wonderful people and remain curious about the science that i do and the advances in these sciences daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.

i am, all in all, thankful and a lucky man indeed.

p.s. i am also thankful that Aonishiki Arata (born Danylo Yavhusishyn from Vinnytsia, Ukraine) won the November Grand Sumo Basho, and what a Basho it was with such a dramatic finish indeed!