Nikki

Nikki became interested in clinical trials after learning her Stage 2 breast cancer had metastasized to her bones. Read more about Nikki’s experiences with breast cancer here. When she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, she immediately asked “what kind of clinical trials? What can we do?” Nikki read all about trials and was interested but “never actually found one that would work.” She fit a handful of “easy” eligibility criteria, like gender, age, and being a nonsmoker. However, she found there were a lot of ways “to be eliminated.” Between being “not sick enough,” “not close enough to death,” or her cancer “not shutting down enough organs” she didn’t “fit in.” Though Nikki thought “it was crazy” she was so easily disqualified, she trusted it was “for a reason” and just “wasn’t meant to be.”

Nikki would have to “think pretty hard” about participating in a clinical trial in the future if one came along that fit. Getting treatment for her metastatic disease “feels a little different” because she has “limited options.” Nikki feels she needs to be “calculated” with her decisions at this point, because she only has “two options left right now” and if she “goes off of one, you don’t go back to it.” Nikki wants to do everything she can, but things are “working for now” so she plans to “ride the wave at this point.”