Edson’s Story

Site created on September 16, 2022

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep Edson’s family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your prayers, support and words of hope and encouragement.

Edson is an incredible husband, dad, new grandpa and pharmacist with malignant melanoma, first diagnosed in 2020.
He has had a wide excision of the primary tumor on his forearm.
The next step was surgery to remove several lymph nodes from his arm. This is when we sought out a melanoma specialist, Dr Milhelm and his team at the University of Iowa Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center.
After the surgeries Edson was followed closely with PET scans, dermatology exams, and appointments with the oncology team. These appointments and test all showed “No evidence of disease”!

After 2 years Edson had his last 6 month PET scan before moving to annual scans and it showed the melanoma had metastasized farther down in his arm.

Edson started on a newer kind of chemotherapy (Immunotherapy) that actually hyper-boosts his immune system to fight and destroy cancer cells.
Edson took 4 rounds of the combination of 2 drugs in infusions lasting 12 weeks at the U of I.
On week 15 he received a PET scan to see how well it worked before moving to monotherapy (one of those drugs) to keep the melanoma at bay.

That PET scan (9/11/22) report was not at all the good news we were hoping for. It showed “progression of disease.” The melanoma has now metastasized to Edson’s lungs, more lymph nodes, a couple of bone sites and the top of his head.
He received an MRI of his brain on Thursday and got the awesome news that there are no metastasis on his brain! This allows him to take the next step in his fight.
He is applying for a level 2 trial to fight the metastasis.
We will update this page with each step.


Edson and our kids and I know there are so many people praying for us. We can not thank you enough, we know God hears each one.

Liz

Newest Update

November 10, 2022

Journal entry by Liz Hoffman —

Impression: 

New extensive metastatic disease including cutaneous, osseous, 

pulmonary and lymphatic metastatic disease.

⬆️

This was the report from the scans 6 weeks ago, following 2 months of immunotherapy for melanoma that had metastisized to Edson’s lymph nodes in his arm.


I posted a PET scan above from 6 months ago which only showed uptake in his brain (totally normal) and his thyroid (thyroiditis).

Then the scan 6 weeks ago that shows the multiple spots.


Since then there have been multiple biopsies taken  including from his scalp and pulmonary lymph nodes. 

Results show:

Edson has a strong reaction or toxicity to the treatment that hyper boosted his immune system to fight the melanoma already confirmed  in his body.
But the awesome unbelievable good news is ;

Today the oncologist confirmed that Edson is kicked out of the trial because these new biopsies showed that the widespread metastasis that had us panicked (doctors too) is sarcoid like granulomas instead of melanoma!!!!!!!

🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌


For now we’re celebrating a much better prognosis!  #Teamhoffman


We will update soon on his treatment plans and try to explain more about this miracle!




Read More of the journal titled "November 10, 2022"
  • This is a PET scan from 9/2022 after receiving 4 rounds of Ipi/Nivo immunotherapy
    This is a PET scan from 9/2022 after receiving 4 rounds of ...
  • This is December 2021 No evidence of disease
    This is December 2021 No evidence of disease
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