Mark was diagnosed with stage III testicular cancer two weeks after the birth of his son. He underwent an orchiectomy and 3 cycles of BEP chemotherapy. During his treatment he experienced several rare side effects, including chemotherapy-induced gall stones, pancreatitis and diabetes, tinnitus, high pitch hearing loss, peripheral neuropathy, and Raynaud's Phenomenon. He was hospitalized for severe break-through nausea, vomiting and bone pain the second week of each cycle of chemotherapy. He has been in remission for more than a year.
A year later, his mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer. After compiling a family medical history, he noticed that many of his wife's relatives had had breast or ovarian cancer. His wife subsequently tested positive for a mutation in the BRCA2 breast cancer susceptibility gene, and had an oophorectomy, hysterectomy and bilateral mastectomy, with reconstruction. His father was then diagnosed with prostate cancer after years of gradually rising PSA scores.
During his cancer treatment, Mark noticed the ad hoc nature of post-chemotherapy surveillance schedules and subsequently developed a method for transforming relapse rate statistics into provably optimal surveillance schedules that minimize the expected delay until detection of a relapse. The US Patent and Trademark Office granted US Patent Number 7,523,043, Method for Minimizing the Cost of Post Treatment Follow-up and Diagnostic Tests, on April 21, 2009.
Professionally, Mark Kantrowitz is publisher of the FinAid financial aid web site and Director of Advanced Projects for the FastWeb scholarships web site. He is skilled at making complicated topics easy to understand.
Mark has two bachelor of science degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a master of science degree in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He is ABD on a PhD in computer science from CMU. He is also an alumnus of the Research Science Institute program of the Center for Excellence in Education (formerly, the Admiral H.G. Rickover Foundation).
Mark has also published a guide to testicular cancer, including a very detailed personal cancer diary. Other related sites written by Mark include a guide to Breast Cancer Susceptibility Genes, focusing on mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, and a guide to Cancer Scholarships for cancer patients and their children and for children who lost a parent to cancer.
Copyright © 2005-2018 by Mark Kantrowitz. All rights reserved.
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