Founder of GitLab battles cancer by founding companies

https://sytse.com/cancer/

Cancer

I’ve taken agency in the treatment of my bone cancer (osteosarcoma in the T5 vertebrae of the upper spine). After I’ve ran out of standard of care treatment options and there were no trials available…

Sytse.com

This is the most supremely motivating post I've seen in a long time. I know what it is to be diagnosed with cancer, being rushed to surgery - it's amazing how quickly the medical-industrial complex can move once you've got a diagnosis (at least in Australia). I had a short period of contemplating terminally, because cancer claimed the life of most of my family. Thankfully, after surgery it was gone.

To see Sid use his motivation and resources to solve his own problem is the core message (IMHO) of the hacker community.

It makes me look at my own problem (Peyronies) in a different light; a disease which has affected my life in ways which cannot be overstated. Yet, all the money in the world right now can't fix Peyronies - yet in reading his journey my mind has been changed about this.

His slide title: "I'll talk to anyone, I'll go anywhere, and I can be there anytime" is certainly the mindset!

Thanks for posting this - I'm inspired to take similar action for Peyronie's. Anything is possible.

Given your personal experience, I expect you know significantly more than I do, but I just wanted to note: about 20 years ago, I was part of a small company that filmed and edited educational, medical videos for various clients. One of the main things we filmed for a while were Peyronies repair surgeries. They were using a product called Surgisis from Cook Medical as a tissue scaffold to straighten things out. It looks like, sometime in the past 20 years, Cook may have moved on to a new product called Biodesign: https://www.cookmedical.com/surgery/the-path-from-surgisis-t..., but I don't know anything about that.

You may know all of this already, and it may not be relevant to your situation at all, but in the slim hope that my experience of editing scores of Peyronies surgery videos may help nudge you in a new or helpful direction: there you have it!

The path from Surgisis to Biodesign | Surgery

In 2008, we created a new process for producing our small intestinal submucosa technology.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment! You're right - Biodesign can be used in Plaque Incision and Grafting (PIG) for Peyronies. Unfortunately PIG IMHO has (in some studies I have read) a 50/50 chance of erectile dysfunction, nerve injury, instability and so on. In essence, PIG might be rolling the dice to make a bad situation completely untenable. But again, I do thank you for your comment!
Thanks for the kind response, and for teaching me more about the possible risks and downsides. I was just involved in the editing of the surgical footage, so I never got the "here's the potential drawbacks" speech. I wish you all the best in finding improvement for your situation!
Let me tell you, I've seen more than my fair share of surgery videos involving "de-sheathing" in my research: I don't envy your editing work - but I envy your stomach ;-) But thanks for your reply, the community here can be great at times!