Despite all his battles with cancer, Mike Clements sounds upbeat and is now enjoying life for the first time in a long while. 
 
Just recently, Mike and his wife Margo completed a trip to Denver, Colorado where he rode an ATV through Rocky Mountain National Park at 10,000 feet, which he states was the “most fun I’ve had in five years.”

The trip Mike took to get to this point, however, was neither easy nor fun.  After a bout with melanoma in late 1988, which was eventually removed through surgery, in 2005 he developed a persistent cough.  An x-ray showed a spot on his left lung.  A CT and PET scan, needle biopsy, and lung biopsy, all gave inconclusive results, but the U.S. Canadian Mesothelioma Research Panel, believed the results “supported a diagnosis of mesothelioma.”

With the knowledge that average life expectancy for someone with meso is 9 months after diagnosis, Mike felt like he needed to act fast.  Not a stranger to this disease, Mike saw the devastation of mesothelioma first hand, when his dad fell victim to this disease.  So Mike and Margo began to research this cancer on the internet, and that is when they learned about the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, and the Foundation’s Medical Liaison. Mike learned more about this cancer and the EPP (extrapleuralpneumonectmy) procedure, which he discovered just might ultimately save him.  Mike got in touch with Klaus Brauch, one of the first people to have an EPP and Mike was told that he was in “for the fight of his life” and to expect his quality of life after the surgery to be a 2 out of 5.  Mike said that even after speaking with Klaus, he still “didn’t get it,” – he just couldn’t understand the difficulty that awaited him with this surgery.

Initially, he was told he was too old to have the surgery, but Mike, who was 59 at the time, insisted he was physically more than able to do it. However, it took his passing of the Sestamibi Stress Test to get approval to go ahead.  Mike states, without hesitation, that it is “important to sell yourself ” when your survival is on the line.

So, on August 1, 2005, Mike had his EPP procedure done. Three months after Mike had his EPP surgery, he began radiation treatment.  Radiation took its toll. It made his back black and blistered, as if he had been “trapped in a fire.” 

The biggest battle Mike faced was with the pain associated with the surgery, and the various medications he was given to fight it.  Eventually, Mike learned a way to take himself off of pain medications, finally concluding that “living with pain is a way of life.” He now uses Lidoderm patches to soothe the nerves on his back, as well as massage.  Although Mike states he is now able to do daily activities, doing any physical activity at all leaves him very tired.  The disappointing realization for Mike, who used to be very active, is that a lot of his life now involves just sitting around.

Back in 2005, right before his mesothelioma diagnosis, Mike was also diagnosed with prostate cancer. At the time, the cancer seemed stable, so Mike was told not too worry.

Just last year, however, Mike’s Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA), escalated to around 5.6, a very high reading when a typical level is 4.6, with metastases to his bone.  In this state, surgery and other options were off the table, so Mike has been controlling his PSA with hormone therapy.  Reflecting about his experience with all the illness he has had, Mike states with amazement that “my body has a propensity to develop cancer, but it also has the ability to fight it off and keep going.”

This year, Mike traveled to Washington, DC to attend the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation’s International Symposium on Malignant Mesothelioma. Once he and Margo arrived at the symposium, Mike states he was stunned by the level of caring.  Before attending the Symposium, Mike says that he had “never met anyone who had mesothelioma.  It is nice to know you’re not alone.”  In his forum post on the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation website’s bulletin board, Mike stated that after all he has been through – surgery, radiation, the negative effects of all the pain suppression drugs, and yet another cancer – that it “has been absolutely worth it to have had the last five years and the hope of more to come.”  According to Mike, even though he has been handed a new problem in the form of prostate cancer, he emphatically states “it does not mean that my life is over.”  In fact, Mike hopes to be “discussing the fact that my meso and prostate cancers are still under control in 2015.”