Gresh & Keefe - Mike Forbes (54) talks about his fight with lung cancer

After swimming one day, Mike felt strange so went to see his nurse practitioner. She could not hear any breath sounds from his left lung and X-Ray showed a totally collapsed lung and enlarged right lung compensating. Mike was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer in 2018. He chose Dana-Farber for his treatment because it is world-renowned and just hours away by car, Mike has completed multiple treatments during his time at Dana-Farber, including combination therapies, oral chemotherapy, and surgery. In his spare time, Mike enjoys skiing (snow/water), boating, reading, bowling, and golf. He is married to his wife, Alice. Mike is a pharmacist and hopes to continue to work (have purpose) as long as possible and enjoy friends and family who provide him love and support. When Mike was training as a pharmacist in the 90’s, the expected survival (with chemotherapy) was 6-8 months. Thanks to the research at Dana Farber, he was matched up with a targeted therapy giving him 36 months before resistance. Fortunately, Mike was at Dana Farber where the drug was being studied and he had a genotype match with. The FDA allowed this targeted therapy to be used before phase 2 trials completed.