Greg Medlock

In May, Vijeta and I had our wedding in Cambridge Commons with hundreds of you all. In June, her grandfather suddenly passed away. In July, her papa was diagnosed with stage IV cancer and a brain tumor. He is 58. He was at our wedding, already symptomatic, and none of us knew. We thought we'd be planning a honeymoon. Instead life threw a heavy punch. But we’re not ones to take a fight lying down. The honeymoon is on hold. We're cashing in our savings and going all in. And still, we can't help being optimistic. We can't help trying hard. We’re hoping the standard treatment will lead to remission. But if need be, Burhan has said for years that if cancer is ever cured, it'll be cured in Kendall Square and make ourselves a small part of that story. We want to understand this disease as deeply as we can (we’ve been deeply moved by the stories of Sid Sijbrandij and Ben Sasse), and if we have to build a new treatment ourselves, that's what we'll do. Before the clinical details, I want you to know who he is to Vijeta and us. He held Vijeta for hours in the hospital the day she was born, just staring. He stood outside her school for six hours in the summer heat because she sneezed one morning in first grade. He took her to the park every single day for sixteen years. For 28 years he's walked his neighborhood checking on every old uncle, making sure none of them go without a friend. He's a professor whose students and colleagues fight for him in ways I've rarely seen even family manage. Here's where we are. Surgeons removed the tumor from his cerebellum on July 13 and he came through it well. It's metastasis. It's a cancer that started somewhere else in his body and traveled to his brain, and we don't know yet where it started. Treatment depends on knowing. And it's incredibly fast dividing. Every single day matters. Right now we're starting radiation on the brain and hunting for the primary. Vijeta is a researcher. I'm an engineer. We've spent the last four weeks reading everything we can find, and what we found was not despair. Here's where you come in. Five things, and any one of them helps. 1. We have three tissue blocks from the surgery. One has been analyzed. One is at a genomics lab in Hyderabad running a full genomic profile. The third is unspent and we're holding it. If you know a lab that can run something those two won't, tell us. 2. If you've seen this before, a single brain metastasis with an unknown primary, we want your instinct. Assume we haven't heard of the thing you're about to suggest. 3. Introductions. Doctors, researchers, labs, clinical trials, anyone working on cancer of unknown primary. 4. If you have access to a frontier AI model, that’ll be helpful as we’re trying to get an incredible amount of data points and the processing power will be very helpful. 5. Share this on socials or forward this to the one person you know who might have an answer. We're publishing all of it as we go. The scans, the pathology, the decisions, the reasoning behind the decisions, and the ones that turn out to be wrong. The full clinical detail is in the post below, including the immunohistochemistry panel. vijetaandburhan.substack.com… If you have answers, suggestions, introductions or anything else send us an email to: [email protected] PS. I expect my City Council work and State Senate campaign to continue as normal. Vijeta, on the other hand, has taken an extended leave from her job. We expect to pay for most of this treatment out of pocket, and we're restructuring our lives around it as we go. Please have some grace with us while we do. We'd appreciate the kindness.