Greensburg man taking his battle against rare cancer to Australia
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Back in 2011, while Matt Burnsworth was undergoing what he calls the “mother of all surgeries,” a doctor left the operating room to tell his mother that the cancer was worse than anyone had thought.
Each time the doctor came out, he said another organ would have to be removed.
“I went into shock,” Lee Gavlak, 60, of Greensburg recalled. “I was like, ‘How’s my child going to live?’ ”
In the end, doctors removed Burnsworth’s appendix, spleen, gall bladder, 90% of his stomach and 80% of his large intestine in a grueling 14-hour procedure known as a peritonectomy.
With all the cancerous growth removed, doctors then applied a heated chemotherapy treatment to his abdominal cavity to prevent the return of the cancer cells.
Burnsworth, 41, of Greensburg was in the hospital for 22 days. “It was brutal,” he said.
Eight years later, Burnsworth is facing cancer for the fourth time. He is preparing to go to Australia for a clinical trial that he hopes will save his life. Friends have started a GoFundMe account to raise $50,000 for the trip — about half of which has been raised.
“I’ve beaten death so many times,” he said. “I’ve had so many people reach out to me.”
A 1996 graduate of Hempfield Area High School, Burnsworth first realized something was wrong around 2003, when he went to Excela Health Westmoreland Hospital with what he thought was an infected appendix.
Seven years later, while pursuing a successful career in sales and marketing in Las Vegas, he was diagnosed with pseudomyxoma peritonei, or PMP, a rare type of cancer that usually starts in the appendix and spreads to other internal organs in the abdomen and pelvic area.
While at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, Burnsworth learned about surgical oncologist Dr. Paul Sugarbaker, who is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on the treatment of gastrointestinal cancers. It was at MedStar Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., that Burnsworth underwent the 14-hour surgery in February 2011.
A year later, Burnsworth learned that the cancer had spread to one of his lungs. That surgery led to a third procedure in 2014, undertaken by Sugarbaker’s brother, Dr. David Sugarbaker, then one of the nation’s foremost authorities on mesothelioma, a cancer of the lung caused by exposure to asbestos.
“He took me in and gave me a 50-50 chance to live. He did a surgery that he invented that had actually never really been done before for what I had — cleaned (the cancer) off of my lung with lasers and hot chemotherapy,” Burnsworth said.
The surgery at the Lung Institute at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston required the removal of two ribs and the installation of a chest tube to re-inflate the lung. For a time, Burnsworth had a large hole in the right side of his chest that Gavlak had to pack daily with gauze.
“She could reach her hand inside my chest,” he said. “God bless her, she had to go in there. Can you imagine doing that to your son?”
Dr. David Sugarbaker, who died in 2018 of liver cancer, said of Burnsworth in 2015: “Matt radiates a sense of hope. He is a fulfillment of something I’ve said over and over, which is, ‘When hope’s part of the equation, anything’s possible.’ ”
The three bouts of cancer from 2010-14 were accompanied by staph infections and periods of intense pain that had to be treated with opioid painkillers, he said.
“I’ve had to come off of long-term high doses of (opioid) pain pills three times. I paid $30,000 out-of-pocket to go to a rapid detox center. They invented this procedure where they put you under anesthesia and have you go through withdrawals,” he said. “They put you under for 12 hours and then send you home and have a guy watch you. It’s pure hell.”
Burnsworth moved back to Greensburg from Las Vegas in May and, at that time, decided to get off all his prescriptions, including the painkillers. He grimaced in pain and struggled for breath several times during an interview with the Tribune-Review.
Because so much of his digestive system is gone, his diet consists of small meals, organic foods, fruits and vegetables, and juice mixes. “I’m on an intermittent fast where I don’t eat for 20 hours, then I’ll eat within a four-hour window,” he said. “I’m basically starving myself to ‘starve’ the cancer.”
During an August visit to UPMC, he learned that the cancer had returned, this time in the form of three tumors — two on what’s left of his stomach and one on his lung.
“They told me there’s nothing else they can do for me,” he said.
The doctor at UPMC gave Burnsworth the contact information for Dr. David Morris of St. George Hospital in Sydney, Australia, where a clinical trial is underway for the treatment of certain types of cancer. Burnsworth has since been accepted for the trial.
“It’s really cutting edge, and there’s a 70% success rate,” he said, noting that the trial involves the injection of a solution into the tumor so that it can be dissolved and removed.
Burnsworth is scheduled to start the trial Jan. 4. The costs of the treatment and the MRI are covered by the trial, but he must still raise $50,000 for the hospital stay and travel expenses.
“Honestly, sometimes I wish God would just take me, but then I think of all the people who look up to me — what kind of message would that send?” he said. “I feel I don’t want to let them down — I’ve come so far.”