BRENTWOOD, Calif. (KRON) – Staying home is tough, not seeing family and friends, but it could be just what helps save the lives of our neighbors, especially those living with cancer.
Jessica Buscho is an East Bay mom of three, just 36-years-old, battling stage four colon cancer.
Six weeks ago, her doctor called to tell her to pull her kids out of school and stay home.
“One of my doctors contacted me on March 9 and said, ‘this is much bigger than what we thought it was. You need to stay home,'” Buscho said.
Buscho was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer three years ago.
Her youngest child was in kindergarten and Buscho was 33-years-old.
She’s had 49 treatments and has done 44 rounds of chemotherapy and a major double surgery.
She’s tough, she’s a fighter, and she’s now going through a clinical trial at UCSF hospital.
“I am super excited to be here. I’m one of the early patients on the trial and I am feeling very blessed to be a part of it,” Buscho said.
Each round of her clinical trial once lasted six hours because of coronavirus, they’ve been cut in half.
“Because of all the labs being prioritized to coronavirus testing, they are doing minimal lab testing so all the studying they’d do where they study how the new drug is interacting with your body, that completely halted,” Buscho said.
Aside from her treatments, Buscho is staying home. Her kids and her husband have not left the house since mid-March.
Groceries are delivered. They even stopped going for walks.
“For me, the biggest concern is that I have dozens of tumors in my lungs since my colon cancer metastasized to my lungs so if I were to get coronavirus because it attacks the lungs it would not be very good,” Buscho said.
Buscho remains positive. She’s feeling good today.
She returns to UCSF for her next round of her clinical trial in a few weeks, on her 37th birthday.
“My heart is breaking for the world because I feel like the whole world is experiencing what someone goes through when they get diagnosed with cancer, you have a loss of control, you can’t go to the places you once loved, you worry about getting sick all the time,” Buscho said.
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