Benefit set for cancer victim, Swanson trying new treatment

Debbie Swanson of Havre, who was diagnosed with liver cancer in December and has been plagued with endless challenges since, said she hopes a recently approved treatment may be the break she badly needs.

A fundraiser is set for Thursday at Pizza Hut to help her and her husband with the costs of the treatment and other ongoing expenses.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved in September the antibody Opdivo, a type of immunotherapy, to treat liver cancer. Opdivo, according to cancer.org, is for people with hepatocellular cancer who were previously treated with Nexavar. Swanson started on Nexavar in August and stopped after her body began rejecting it, she said. She has already had one treatment of Opdivo and is supposed to have one every two weeks.

Full cost for the new treatment, which is administered by injection in an artery, can be anywhere from $5,400 to $6,148 per treatment, Charles Swanson, Debbie's husband, said. The Swansons said they don't know how much of the costs Medicare will cover. They will find out around the end of the month.

Charles Swanson said Thursday that if he had to estimate how much his wife has accrued in biopsies and chemo and the different drugs, it would probably come to about half a million dollars. Some of the costs have been covered by Medicaid, before she went on Social Security, others they have paid off, but they expect costs down the pike.

To help pay for medical costs as well as traveling and living expenses - they are fortunate to have family to stay with in Billings where Debbie receives treatment - Pizza Hut will donate 20 percent of the purchase cost of any order Thursday to Swanson when customers ask to donate to the Debbie Swanson fund.  

A Debbie Swanson Cancer Fund account at Stockman Bank and a GoFundMe account have been set up by her grandson for people who would like to help through either of those avenues.

Swanson found out she had liver cancer after she fell in her home in December and ended up in the emergency room. Two days before Christmas she found out she had a 9-centimeter tumor in her liver.

Since then, she has gone through several treatments in relatively quick succession - some treatments birthed other tumors which then needed more treatment - and she continues to do so.

Swanson is no stranger to medical issues. Before she had liver cancer, Swanson said in an August interview from her Havre home, she had cirrhosis of the liver. She also had rheumatoid arthritis, due to genetics, she said.

"Both grandmothers had the arthritis. ... We never figured out why I had cirrhosis," she said, adding that it could have been a result of years of taking medication for arthritis.

Doctors had told Swanson the fall that prompted the December E.R. visit was a blessing in disguise. The accident "angered" the tumor, which then ignited the pain that sparked tests that alerted her to cancer, doctors told her.

Since receiving her cancer diagnosis, her life has centered around doctor appointments and treatment, the Swansons said.

In a cruel twist of fate, the chemo that had killed off two-thirds of the tumor, she said, also drove cells from the liver further into the body, where they formed three new tumors, two on the spine and one on the pelvic bone. Five sessions of radiation within a two-week span took care of the more recent tumors, Debbie Swanson said. She is still fighting to kill the big one.