Elk Grove man climbs Mount Everest after battling cancer
ELK GROVE – Climbing Mount Everest is a feat very few will ever accomplish but imagine trying to do it after battling cancer. An Elk Grove man is taking one big challenger after another.
"It's an amazing feeling of accomplishment. I felt tired but mentally stronger," Elk Grove resident Ruben Munoz said.
But to know just how special this moment was, you have to know what Munoz went through to get here.
"I was very sick," he said. "I was very sick, I lost my hair, I lost a lot of weight and I have pictures before and after the trip. I was a different person."
The diagnosis was stage four bladder cancer, discovered after he noticed blood in his urine.
Dr. Mamta Parikh is an oncologist at UC Davis Health. She knew Munoz was a hiker and one with huge ambitions. Oh, by the way, he's also 68 years old.
"I did think he was serious. I didn't know how realistic it was going to be," Parikh said when asked if she thought Munoz was serious about climbing Everest.
They put Munoz on an immune therapy drug combo with an experimental agent when he was first diagnosed based on a clinical trial UC Davis was a part of.
"We now use immune therapy as a backbone of treatment and immune therapy works by activating the immune system to fight the cancer," Parikh said. "So the side effects are different and milder in some ways from chemotherapy."
He had some side effects from the first immunotherapy combination. So he had to stop. But a second combo brought his bladder cancer under control.
"Personally, the way I take it, for anything in my life, especially for this, I don't think about cancer," Munoz said.
He was thinking about Everest, maybe not the peak, but he knew he could at least get to the basecamp. It took days, but he made it.
"I really thank them for going out of their way to get me as ready as I could," Munoz said.
"It's why we go into this kind of work. To be able to help patients fulfill their goals and dreams," Parikh said.
Its a message Munoz wants to share with others battling cancer: Don't give up.
"You have changing events in your life that we all have to live with," Munoz said. "Don't stop believing, don't stop doing what you do because the best medicine is to keep doing what you're doing."
Munoz isn't slowing down. In addition to hiking, the retired Cal ISO worker also plays and coaches soccer.