A Grovedale father-of-six, who has been told he has three months to live, is hopeful he can make a “miracle” recovery from an aggressive form of cancer.
Bruce Corrin, who was been a popular drum teacher for 25 years across Geelong schools, was first diagnosed with lymphoma in March 2021, three days before his 44th birthday, after his legs began to swell and he was constantly exhausted.
Lymphoma is when white blood cells abnormally grow.
Mr Corrin went to see his doctor to get his test results, who then told him to “go home, pack a bag and go to the hospital.”
“At 3am, they told me ‘you’ve got cancer’,” Mr Corrin said.
“My jaw just hit the floor.”
Mr Corrin received three chemotherapy treatment cycles before he went into remission in June 2021.
“I put my phone on speaker and called my family screaming and crying on the way home from the hospital … the kids were going nuts in the background,” he said.
Bruce Corrin (far left) and his family. Picture: Supplied
Sadly, in November last year, Mr Corrin found a lump under his arm.
“I went that night to emergency … I got told I had relapsed,” he said.
He said receiving the second diagnosis was “harder” to deal with.
“It was like someone violently hitting you in the face with a brick for no good reason,” he said.
The now 46-year-old was initially going to have a stem cell transplant.
He was given a “super” high dosage of chemotherapy to help reduce the size of the cancer, but a scan showed the cancer had not responded to the chemo, meaning the transplant could not be performed.
He was then referred to the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne for CAR T therapy, where he spent seven hours in a chair while blood was taken out of his arm.
The blood was run through a machine to separate specific cells and plasma which were then sent to a lab in the US.
“They engineered every single cell to attack the kind of cancer that I have,” Mr Corrin said.
Doctors then infused the cells back into him and his body responded well to the treatment.
“I was feeling quite good then we did another scan … there was minimal response and (the cancer) had grown in other places,” he said.
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Mr Corrin was not a candidate for any clinical treatment trials as his cancer cells had mutated.
Three weeks ago, doctors told him he had three months to live but “it could be as short as six weeks”.
“We all broke down and cried,” he said.
“I’ve said to my family that I’m not giving up and I’m not done fighting.”
Family and friends have rallied around Mr Corrin, his wife, Lisa, and their six children, with a crowd-funding page raising more than $28,000.
He was he was grateful for the generosity and love the “amazing” community supporting him and his family.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” he said.
To support Mr Corrin and his family, visit gofundme.com/please-help-bruce-corrin.
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