Dave Nitsche’s Cancer treatment extends prognosis by years
Dave Nitsche learned in 2019 that trouble seeing with his left eye was cancer, and doctors later told the 57-year-old former Ironman triathlete that he had stage 4 lung cancer. He was initially given 12 to 24 months to live.
An experimental treatment later helped him live several years beyond that prognosis. After a year on amivantamab, Nitsche said his scans were looking “very, very good.”
Nitsche’s left eye
Nitsche said he first noticed the problem in 2019. “In 2019, I noticed that I was having trouble seeing with my left eye,” he said. An optometrist first thought it was probably a detached retina.
Scans found fluid buildup and rising pressure in the eye. Doctors determined that he had lost vision in the eye and removed it. A biopsy of the fluid from the eye showed cancer, and specialists later extracted fluid from his lungs for more testing.
“The next day, the oncologist told me that I had stage 4 lung cancer,” Nitsche said. He had never been a smoker, and he said, “I was running quite a bit at the time,” with “a little bit of back pain here and there.”
From afatinib to osimertinib
Nitsche’s first treatment was the targeted therapy afatinib, which lasted about three months. When doctors found that the cancer had spread to his brain, he began taking osimertinib, also called Tegrisso in the article. Osimertinib crosses the blood-brain barrier.
Azam J. Farooqui, a hematology and oncology physician at Ironwood Cancer & Research Centers, said the eye is a very rare place for cancer to appear first. “Cancer can find its way to some very odd locations, but the eye is a very, very rare one,” he said. “Usually cancer will get there via a nerve channel or blood vessel, but it’s very uncommon.”
Amivantamab at Ironwood
After six years, Nitsche started taking amivantamab, also called Rybrevant in the article. He receives the drug by IV infusion every three weeks in a supervised medical setting.
The case shows how a diagnosis that began with a vision problem moved through eye surgery, lung testing and then multiple drug changes before reaching amivantamab. For patients who recognize unusual symptoms early, the practical step is to push for testing rather than assuming a vision issue is only an eye problem.
