Sometimes Connie Bolle wonders if her husband, Jeff Bolle60 years old, I would still be alive if things had been different last spring.
After being diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, the high school football coach and counselor began chemotherapy in 2023 but had to abruptly stop when the medication he received, cisplatin, became harder to find due to a national shortage. of chemotherapy drugs.
“I keep thinking, ‘What if we had gotten cisplatin? Could this have slowed his cancer? she told TODAY.com. “Would he have been able to train even harder? Would he have been stronger? Would he have felt better? … It’s always a second chance.”
While battling stage 4 cancer, Jeff Bolle continued coaching football last season. What a season it was when your team won the state championship.
In 2022, Jeff Bolle of Milwaukee discovered he had bile duct cancer, which has a dismal long-term survival rate. At the time, doctors hoped that surgery and chemotherapy could prolong his life. He was in good health before his diagnosis, which made everyone optimistic.
He underwent surgery and four rounds of chemotherapy before chemotherapy shortages halted his treatment in May 2023 – with two rounds remaining.
As the months passed and the cancer progressed out of control, Jeff Bolle became sicker. By the end of September 2023, doctors realized that “there was really nothing else they could do, which was hard to hear,” recalls Connie Bolle. There was no immunotherapy. There was no other chemotherapy.”
Jeff Bolle died on December 29, 2023, seven months after losing access to his chemotherapy drugs.
Last summer, Jeff Bolle shared his story with TODAY.com to raise awareness about the chemotherapy shortage. He also shared his desire to coach at least one more football season. He got it – and it was even sweeter than he could have imagined.
“Marquette University High School ended up winning the Division I state football championship title, and there was no prediction that they would be the ones (to win),” says Connie Bolle. “Jeff attended every game.”
Stage 4 Cancer Diagnosis
When Jeff Bolle felt a twinge of back pain in October 2022, he thought he pulled a muscle while exercising. But later that year, he was diagnosed with stage 4 bile duct cancer.
He underwent surgery, where doctors removed most of the tumor, and then began immunotherapy and chemotherapy, even though he knew it would probably never be cured.
“My doctor said it was the kind of cancerous growth that you will never go into remission,” Jeff Bolle told TODAY in 2023. “They thought they could take out most of the tumor and they could use chemotherapy… to hold it off.”
The Bolles understood this. Still, it was devastating when Jeff Bolle stopped treatment due to a shortage of chemotherapy.
“He was never able to take cisplatin (again),” says Connie Bolle. “His cancer continued to grow and his bile ducts were becoming compromised as the cancer put even more pressure on them. He was really getting very sick. He was horrible.”
Jeff Bolle has sometimes been unable to obtain images of his cancer due to a shortage of agents used in such procedures.
Although he felt too weak to work as a counselor, Jeff Bolle continued coaching football. Before he got sick, he would train on his motorcycle, wearing sleeveless shirts to show off his biceps. He used to go to the weight room with the players and challenge them to bench press. Even when he was sick, Jeff Bolle continued to show up for his players at least several times a week and at games.
Eventually, he needed a wheelchair to watch games and sat out, but coached defenders as long as he could. No matter what happened, he always evaluated the game film afterwards. In fact, Connie Bolls remembers that during a stay in the intensive care unit, he brought his laptop to evaluate a football game.
Connie Bolle says she believes he lived to finish this season.
“He knew how important this was for these high school kids,” she says. “Some of the seniors traveled with Jeff for four years.”
The team continued winning, finishing in the state championship in November.
“I don’t know how Jeff did it because he could barely stand up, honestly. At that point, he probably weighed about 140 pounds,” says Connie Bolle. “The cold was intense and he was running up and down the sideline with his walker.”
Chemotherapy shortage
Last year, cancer patients like Jeff Bolle and oncologists faced some grim news: Many drugs and chemotherapy agents used in oncology imaging became increasingly difficult to find.
The most impactful shortages were of the chemotherapy agents carboplatin and cisplatin, often used in cancers that cannot be cured, Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society, told TODAY.com in 2023.
But the shortage of cancer therapies is not new.
“What we’re experiencing now is really the latest in multiple waves of shortages that have been around for a decade,” said Mark Fleury, Ph.D., who works on policy development and emerging science at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. , says TODAY.com.
“We have many medicines that never came out of shortage and some that go in and out (of shortage).”
Last summer, NBC News reported that 14 drugs used in cancer treatment were difficult to find. In April 2024, the US Food and Drug Administration website indicates that 15 oncology agents are currently in short supply.
Asked about the chemotherapy shortage situation, FDA spokesperson Chanapa Tantibanchachai shared an email statement with TODAY.com that says:
“The FDA recognizes the potential impact that lack of availability of certain products can have on health care providers and patients. Although the agency does not manufacture drugs and cannot require a pharmaceutical company to manufacture a drug, produce more than one drug, or determine to whom a pharmaceutical company chooses to sell its product (among legal buyers), the public should be assured that the FDA is working working closely with various manufacturers and others in the supply chain to understand, mitigate and prevent or reduce the impact of intermittent or reduced availability of certain products.”
FDA Commissioner Dr. told NBC News in May 2023 that the main reason for the shortage of chemotherapy is that there is not enough profit in the production of these medicines, many of which are generic and off patent. “Several companies are closing their doors or facing quality issues due to the difficulty of investing in their technology,” said Califf.
About an hour before Jeff Bolle passed away from stage 4 bile duct cancer, his dog, Kenzie, jumped onto his bed and lay down next to him. Courtesy of Jeff and Connie Bolle
Although carboplatin and cisplatin “are still listed in shortage,” Fleury said last year the FDA allowed imports of cisplatin that helped alleviate that deficit, and medicines are now being produced more widely in the U.S.
“We’re not seeing the kind of shortages that we saw,” says Fleury. “We qualify this as a shortage, but… patients are receiving their medications.”
How Chemotherapy Drug Shortages Affect Cancer Patients
Cancer patients felt the shortage. A survey of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network published in December found that 10% of all cancer patients were impacted, but the “shortage was not felt equally,” says Fleury.
For example, people on Medicaid had a tougher time, with 22% reporting that a shortage of cancer medications affected their treatment. Some have reported difficulties finding pain medications or other therapies not used directly to treat cancer but that are still important, he notes.
“People simply had no idea whether they would take the next treatment or not, whether the dose would be cut in half,” says Fleury. “These are medicines… that really formed the backbone (of cancer treatment) and, in some cases, have quite high efficacy. And if they’re not available, you’re entering uncharted territory.”
While patients faced a high “mental cost,” they also faced “logistical costs,” with some patients driving by car to seek treatment, he says.
“Today there are patients who need help”, adds Fleury. “We need to figure out how to better manage the crisis we find ourselves in, but we also need to address some of the underlying causes that keep us in this constant state of crisis.”
Lawmakers have taken some steps to address this issue. While many bills often provide short-term solutions, the Senate Finance Committee has been “digging deep” to address ongoing shortages, explains Fleury.
“The government has an important role to play in resolving this,” says Fleury. “(But) that doesn’t mean the private sector can’t.”
A lasting impact
On December 14, 2023, Jeff Bolle was hospitalized at home. Connie Bolle knew he was coming to an end on December 28 when she agreed to stay in a hospital bed on the first floor because he was too weak to make it to their room on the second floor. He died the next day.
“He only spent one night there,” she says. “That was the signal of defeat.”
At his funeral, his players shared what Jeff Bolle meant to them.
“They said amazing things about the strength and determination and perseverance (they learned) from Jeff, the kindness and love and compassion,” she says.
Connie Bolle believes her husband would be honored to know the impact he had on his students. She also believes he would be proud if his story raised awareness about the shortage of cancer therapies.
“He really cared that other people weren’t getting these chemotherapy drugs,” she says. “He would still be sad today because people are still dealing with this.”
This article was originally published in NBCNews. with
