Folsom Couple Pleading For Cancer Drug To Save Woman's Life
FOLSOM (CBS13) — A Folsom woman is fighting for her life, as she and her husband are on a medical mission to get a drug that could stop her cancer.
The former CBS13 intern has one hope: Putting pressure on a big drug company to let her try the drug that may be able to save her life.
It's shown positive results in the past, and Mikaela Knapp and her husband Keith are getting support from around the country to get it in their hands.
The high-school sweethearts are in for the fight of their lives.
"It's not something we planned to be doing a couple years after we got married," Keith said.
In October, they found out Mikaela had a terminal form of kidney cancer.
"We've been getting treated down in UCSF, maybe four or five FDA-approved treatments," Keith said.
But none of them worked, and the only option they're left with is still in clinical trials.
"It's frustrating, it's frustrating knows there's a potential drug out there that has the ability to heal me," Mikaela said.
Most of the companies making the drug won't include her in the trials.
"Getting people like Mikaela who have a really rare subtype, who have brain metastases, it's a late stage, it's going to skew their results," Keith said.
One drug company, Merck, is left, and he is pleading with them to let his wife try a drug called Anti PD 1, taking to the Internet through a Change.org petition to spread her story.
He says he understands why they don't release the drug before it's approved by the FDA, but since they're running out of options and time, the couple is willing to try anything.
"People die from not being able to access these drugs, and I don't want to be one of them," Mikaela said.