YERVOY® (ipilimumab) is a prescription medicine used in adults to treat melanoma cancer. It is used when the cancer has spread to other parts of the body.

Yesterday, while I was at work, Teresa called to inform me that I was approved to participate in a 12-week Immunotherapy treatment using a newly FDA approved drug called Yervoy (ipilimumab), for cancer patients like me with advanced melanoma.

I will have to undergo four infusions (1 ½ hours each), starting tomorrow, Thursday, July 14th, which will take place every three weeks…a period of nearly three months.

This treatment will be conducted at the Inova Melanoma and Skin Cancer Center in Fairfax, Virginia.

Even though the costs of this treatment will total near $480,000 dollars (the price tag for each infusion is about $120,000), Teresa and I, including our health insurance, will not have to pay a single cent of it!

Bristol-Myers Squibb, the company that developed Yervoy, is providing the medicine to us at no cost, through the Bristol-Myers Squibb Patient Assistance Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization that helps Stage IV cancer patients like myself.

I am very grateful to be eligible for this new breakthrough treatment and feel very fortunate to receive this state-of-the-art treatment by Dr. Sekwon Jang, MD, who is an associate member of the Inova Melanoma and Skin Cancer Center.

This treatment will rev up my own immune system to engage the melanoma cancer at the cellular level.

So essentially…I am taking the fight to them!

With this treatment, combined with PET/MRI scanning, eating healthy and detoxing, I should be able to put this son-of-a-%[email protected]&* against the ropes…and hopefully keep it there for a very long time.

ajh