A father of one who only had to live for a few months after the diagnosis of the most common cancer of America is healed thanks to an experimental treatment he received in Mexico.
In May 2023, all Rapert, now 62, was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma – a kind of skin cancer – that affects around 1 million people in the US every year.
Doctors said the cancer was stage four, with a tumor the size of a tennis ball under his eye that had eaten through his skull bone and grew quickly in his brain.
She ordered an operation to cut out most of the tissue on the right side of his face, his nose and his right eye ball, so that he would be permanently deformed.
He should also have undergone a chemotherapy course.
Even then doctors said they were not sure that the cancer would be healed – with studies that suggested that only six percent of patients live for four years or more.
For fear of his life and appearance, Mr. Rapert – after an online search – decided to skip the operation and instead opt for experimental treatment.
He went for five rounds of the treatment in Mexico and was declared cancer -free only seven months after his diagnosis.
Above is all Rapert, which suffered from a stage four skin cancer that formed a tumor the size of a tennis ball under his right eye. It was treated with the help of a new cancer treatment and deleted within seven months
The above also shows Mr. Rapert's tumor after the first treatment. It was said that the swelling was a sign that the immune system attacked the tumor
“I feel that I am on the ground floor of changing cancer treatments forever,” the resident of Missouri told DailyMail.com.
“If someone is right on the door of death, and you go from that to” you are healed, “it just doesn't seem medically possible.”
MR Rapert was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer that influences the cells on the outer layer of the skin.
It is the second most common form of skin cancer behind basal cell carcinoma die in the deepest layer of the skin and usually influences people with fair skin, which often appears in often exposed areas such as the face, ears, neck and hands.
Only five percent of the cases are diagnosed in stage four.
Mr. Rapert said that he had symptoms of the cancer for about a year before he was diagnosed, after his right eye started to struggle to close properly and had regular infections.
But it was only when he woke up one morning and discovered that the eye had the view that he was going to doctors.
His symptoms, along with a lump under his eye, led to testing, which revealed the diagnosis.
The cancer was about the size of a ping -pong ball when it was first diagnosed, but after it was biopsy, it started to grow quickly and reached the size of a tennis ball.
After hearing the original recommendations of the doctor and wanting to get a second opinion, Mr. Rapert sought treatment at the Williams Cancer Institute in California, which uses an experimental two -step method to treat cancer.
In the first phase, the pulsed electric field blocking – where short, intense electricity pulses are fired in cancer cells, which makes the cells start to die.
Subsequently, weakened, the tumor is injected with a maximum of 12 immunotherapy medicines, which help the immune system to recognize cancer cells and launch an attack on them.
Although it is established in the US, the Institute manages its treatments in Mexico, because it uses some immunotherapy drugs that are not approved in the US.
Mr. Rapert was accepted as a patient by the institute and flown to their center in Cabo in June 2023.
He had three rounds of the treatment for five weeks, with his tumor shrinking by half.
After his first round of the treatment in the center, his face ran out considerably, which, according to the doctors, was a sign that his body reacted to the medication and fighting the cancer.
About a month after his third round of treatment, he was flown to the center of the Institute in Mexico city, where he still had two rounds of the treatment.
Mr. Rapert was shown above after his treatment of cancer and after having declared cancer,
In December 2023, only seven months after his first diagnosis, scans showed that his cancer had completely disappeared.
Since then he has had four scans per year to check for cancer, and not one has detected a cancer cell.
Mr. Rapert was excited and surprised about the results and organized a cruise trip to the Caribbean to celebrate with his girlfriend.
Dr. Jason Williams, who pioneered in the new treatment, told Dailymail.com: 'We know that injecting these medicines into tumors works really well. That is my experience and that is how we used them in studies with mice.
'So why is it the case that we test it intravenously with people? Why do we treat human patients differently? '
In humans, immunotherapy drugs are usually administered in blood flow and circulated around the body instead of directly in the tumor.
Dr. Williams says that injecting them into the tumor would make them more effective, because it probably shows the immune system where the cancer is.
The Institute told DailyMail.com that it has had a more than 85 percent success rate when treating advanced phase four cancers using the method.
It is the third case of an advanced cancer that is cleaned up by the institute that DailyMail.com has reported, after a doctor reversed his stage four pancreatic cancer in six months after he was treated at the Institute and a professor reversed her stage four breast cancer.
MR Rapert is shown above while receiving treatment. This was managed in Cabo San Lucas and Mexico City, Mexico
MR Rapert is shown above at Dr. Jason Williams and holds a copy of the doctor's book
Mr Rapert Blake's son is depicted above with his daughter -in -law Lindsay and his two grandchildren Burke and Cecelia
The treatment cost a total of $ 130,000, of which Mr. Rapert said he paid by getting money out of his pension savings – saying that it made no sense to leave it untouched because he would probably die before he used it.
Dr. Williams told DailyMail.com that he hopes to be able to treat more patients like Mr. Rapert: 'I see a few patients with this type of cancer, but I don't see much of it.
'We should see much more, really because it would be a great cancer for us to treat, more people should come.
'I think we are in the north of 85 percent success rate in many or all fixed cancer types, such as chest, pancreas, colorectally, all your most important cancers.
“This is a real, very high success rate, and for most of our patients the cancers are already advanced to stage four.”
