My Cancer Journey, LuAnne Sirdiak, GRACE Clinical Trials Storytelling 2026 #1

In this series, the 2025-26 Clinical Trials Experiences Through Storytelling Program, we talk to cancer survivors who have a passion for telling their stories in order to help others who may be navigating the clinical trials experience.In 2017 Luanne Sirdiak was diagnosed with squamous non small cell lung cancer. She had a lung resection and four cancer free years. Then the cancer came back, resistant to radiation, resistant to several lines of systemic therapy, with no actionable biomarkers to point toward what to try next. For nine months, there were no treatment options at all. In 2023, she was given a six month prognosis. In 2024, Luanne qualified for a clinical trial and completed nine cycles of targeted treatment.  She went on to complete eleven cycles on the CCI-001 trial at the Cross Cancer Institute. She's not on a trial right now and that too is part of this experience. The waiting, the qualifying, the starting and the stopping. She's lived the full arc of the clinical trials process and she wants other patients to hear it in her words.Here's the first in the series of my conversations with Luanne.Music: Ester - Here (BenSound) License certificate #2242649