Treating Stage IV Colon Cancer with HAI Pump [Video]

North Port Firefighter Victor Cleveland could tell something wasn’t right. “I was feeling drained. I was feeling no energy, wanted to sit down, just felt like I needed to exercise more to keep up with the younger guys in the department.”

He was blindsided by a stage IV colon cancer diagnosis at 46 and started with chemotherapy. “Not painful, but you just, you can’t move. It’s sickening. It’s like you have a flu and it just won’t go away.”

The cancer spread to his liver and lung. He found out about a liver directed therapy involving an HAI pump implanted under the skin by independent surgical oncologist Dr. Mark Bloomston. “So now we can fill the reservoir inside this pump with the chemotherapy that’ll then drip out very slowly over the course of two weeks to go directly into the liver. And the type of chemotherapy we put in here is turned on and turned off by the liver. So now really the chemo only resides in the liver. So now we can give doses up to 400 times the dose that you would get through a port can go directly in the liver with virtually no side effects.”

Cleveland said it’s had a tremendous impact on his quality of life. “I don’t know when I have it. They can fill it up full of the chemo drugs, and it doesn’t affect me. I’m moving. I’m going places. I’m doing whatever I need to do…The tumor markers are coming down and they’re doing fantastic. So we’re…we’re going in the right direction. I believe it has a lot to do with getting to do that targeted treatment on it.”

Cleveland continues to fight and is looking forward to getting back to the firehouse one day.

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