Euvon Jones:
I am Euvon B. Jones. I am a prostate cancer patient survivor, metastatic prostate cancer, stage 4, patient survivor, former HVAC entrepreneur and quasi musician.
How did you meet Dr. Dawson?
Euvon Jones:
I ended up finding out about Dr. Dawson because my wife and I, Janet, were not happy with the care we were getting from this suburban, wonderful, great clinic, but too many patients, not enough healthcare providers. And also with the way they took care of me.
So when I went to question some of the people at this very formidable hospital that she works at and I started looking for someone that could help us in our journey with me being diagnosed with prostate cancer, from the administrators to all of the people that I know at Georgetown, MedStar Georgetown Lombardi Cancer Center told me, "You need to talk with her."
And by the grace of God, this formidable scientist, researcher, icon, OG, allowed me and Janet to stumble up into her office.
What were your initial thoughts when you saw his scans and PSA?
Dr. Nancy Dawson:
He had advanced prostate cancer that had spread to many bones. And obviously, he had a pretty high PSA level, so I knew that he was going to need to have hormonal therapy. I knew he would need to have it started relatively soon. I also knew he wouldn't like any of the side effects I was going to talk about, but I thought, "All right, here we are. Let's just get going."
What was the 1st course of treatment?
Dr. Nancy Dawson:
When you got treated, this was before we were doing doublet therapy and triplet therapy. So he got just hormonal therapy to lower his testosterone level. We started him on an injection. We now have oral pills to do the same thing, but we didn't have that then either. But we started him on an injection and we gave him a short course of a pill to prevent his male testosterone level from actually going up. We had to block that.
How was the 1st round of your treatment?
Euvon Jones:
It was interesting because first off, I was in the space. I never knew what the space was. I didn't know what a prostate was, as we said before, but also I didn't even understand treatment. And I was so out of touch that when Dr. Dawson gave me the prognosis and the diagnosis, she said, "You have stage 4." She was the first person to tell me I was stage 4. And we were in, Janet and I, her office, and I said, "How many more stages were there?" And my wife almost fell out of the chair as we all looked at the floor.
That understanding of what this was, I was in fear, I was scared. Fear, scared. I guess all those words in me. And I just couldn't wrap my brain around how and why did I get in this space? Because you always go through the why. You deal with the why because you want to beat yourself up and you're trying to find something in your member that can say, "Okay, I did this wrong. I did that wrong. I did the other wrong."
How long did the 1st line of defense treatment last, until Euvon's numbers started to rise again?
Dr. Nancy Dawson:
He had a really aggressive cancer, and that's why the fact that we're sitting here together seems so amazing. His cancer progressed after a year. You normally think metastatic prostate cancer, year and a half, two, sometimes even longer, certainly with some of the new treatments, but he was on the short end. He progressed after a year, and that is not usually a very good thing that the shorter the initial response to hormonal therapy, traditionally the shorter the response to subsequent therapy. So this was not... As I said, it didn't look good. It did not look good.
Euvon Jones:
The laughter... You kidding? I'm alive. I'm alive. I get it. I was in the bye-bye factor.
What was the conversation like when you had to tell Euvon that his PSA was rising again?
Dr. Nancy Dawson:
I tend to like to be optimistic.
One of my common phrases is anybody can be a “Debbie Downer.” Anybody. But to have somebody have a bad scenario where their cancer's progressing, I guess you could be saying, "Oh, this is terrible." But I don't know that that helps anybody. So it's like, "Okay, we got to make a change." I don't usually say... I don't dwell on, "This didn't work." I say, "Okay, well, we've got to do something else now."
That's actually where it happens that Provenge was just going through its trials. And so I said, "All right, well, here's this new treatment. It's an immune therapy.” I can't imagine what you were thinking when I said that, but he said, "Okay."
So tell me, do you remember what you were thinking when I told you about how they were going to take your blood off and then keep the white blood cells and give back the other cells? Do you remember any of that?
Euvon Jones:
I remember that so well. I remember like it was just yesterday. The thing that grabbed me was the fact that you thought enough of me to allow me to be introduced to something I could understand.
So coming from a technical background, I understood my immune system had broken down. I understand that basically my body wasn't doing what it was supposed to do, so I got cancer. Now, did I eat right? Did I live right and all that stuff? No, I didn't, but I thought I was. And so once you explained to me they're going to take your blood, send it to a lab, morph it in a lab, they're going to put in fighting agents, they're going to be put back in you. I said, "Shucks, come on, this makes sense."
Because she also let me know that, and I hope I'm saying this right, but I was not a candidate for chemo, radiation, or surgery. So I still have my prostate. It might not look so good, but I got it.
How many treatments of Provenge, and did you have to add any treatments to the Provenge?
Dr. Nancy Dawson:
Provenge is a standalone and you only can get three treatments. It's every two weeks and after the three treatments, they don't ever give you additional treatments. It's not like that. But he made it through all three, so that's good. And I have always called it a sandwich treatment, meaning I'm not expecting that to be the last thing I do. So we didn't stop the initial hormonal therapy and we didn't just stop at the end of the Provenge.
He asked me this question, and it's an obvious question, which is, "Well, I'm doing so well and I've been doing so well all these years. Can't we just stop it? Let's just stop it and we'll see how we do." Have you ever heard if it's not broken don't fix it? I have no clue what would happen if you stopped, and I have no clue whether it would work again if you restarted it. I only know you are doing miraculously well and feeling well, so why would I change directions?
Euvon Jones:
Amen.
What was the average rate of response to Provenge for Euvon vs other men who have taken it?
Dr. Nancy Dawson:
This is the difference between the top curve... What's shown here is survival. This is being alive and this is time here. So we have time on the bottom, we have survival along this access. And you see the top curve was the African American men and the bottom curve was the non-African-American men.
But what I pointed out to him was how far out this is. This is 72 months, so that's... How long is that? That's six years. Okay? So these are, if you see way down here, this is 20%. So we're looking out about six years. We're looking at maybe 10% of Caucasian men being alive. And if you extrapolated maybe 30% of African American men being alive at six years, but if you follow these curves out...
And how many years ago did you get Provenge?
Euvon Jones:
12, almost 13 years ago.
Dr. Nancy Dawson:
Okay. So now I want you to take this curve out another seven years, and there's Euvon.
How did you feel towards Dr. Dawson & your entire prostate cancer journey?
Euvon Jones:
God allowed an angel into our lives and for no reason did I deserve it. Did I do the things right to have it? But I feel fortunate because God has chosen an angel to be in our life and it's a big deal, but there are some metrics. You got to have some skin in the game.
Dr. Nancy Dawson:
One of the things that you've done that I'm very proud of is that you have gone out and are trying to help other people understand the importance of getting treated, considering a clinical trial, just getting other men to sort of realize that this can be their journey as well.
Euvon Jones:
Yes.
Can you discuss having to repeat your bone scan in 2017?
Dr. Nancy Dawson:
When he got diagnosed, he had cancer in almost all of his bones. He had very extensive bone metastases. We call that a superscan, and it's not super that you have a superscan. He was been on treatment for a while and for whatever reason, we decided we were going to get another bone scan and it came back normal. Lesions were all gone. And you don't see that.
You can see it when someone is metastatic and hormone sensitive. That's when you usually get very good responses. But when a man becomes castrate resistant, by definition, that's not going to happen. So I was just like, "Seriously? This bone scan is normal?" That's where I said... That's why I say it's a miracle.
What is important in shared decision making between the clinician & the patient?
Euvon Jones:
Trust. Acumen. Formidable in that space. Results.
Dr. Nancy Dawson:
That's good. I agree with Euvon.
At least from the doctor's standpoint is I need to know what I'm talking about, I need you to feel confident that I know what I'm talking about, and then I need to have you be uplifted and be able to go, "Okay, let's do it." And I think that's what's important.
Final Thoughts
Euvon Jones:
One important piece is having a wife who is so supportive that she told me, and we never talked about this, we never talk about this, she said, "Dr. Dawson is the only other woman I'm going to allow in your life."
Dr. Nancy Dawson:
And she can trust me too.
Euvon Jones:
Yes, she can. Yes, she can.
This video was produced with the generous support of Dendreon Pharmaceuticals