Man who beat "unicorn" case of Merkel cell carcinoma to ride in Pittsburgh's Rush to Crush Cancer

A western Pennsylvania dad went from wondering what a spot on his leg was to learning he has an extremely rare skin cancer. And then, things get even weirder. But now, he's tackling this weekend's Rush to Crush Cancer. 

There's never a good place to get cancer. But you really don't want to get cancer somewhere that makes world-leading researchers and oncologists like Dr. Ravi Patel describe your case as "a unicorn." 

Cam Cerro was just 32 when he was first diagnosed with Merkel cell carcinoma five years ago. 

"Merkel cell carcinoma is an aggressive skin cancer," explained Cerro's oncologist, Dr. Melissa Burgess. "Some estimate about 3,000 cases a year. So it's an extremely rare condition that affects patients mostly ages 65 and older."

What he thought was just a cyst on his leg turned out to be the rare cancer. Doctors at Hillman treated him with two dozen radiation sessions, immunotherapy and surgery. Cerro got the all clear, but doctors warned him they'd need to keep an eye on him for life.

"These tumors, even when they do a good surgery, it tends to come back," Patel said. 

And come back it did. And that's when things got weird.

"He had a PET scan that showed something weird in the heart, which is a very unusual location," Patel said. 

"It's not typical to metastasize or spread to the heart," Burgess added. 

Burgess called in Patel, a researcher and radiation oncologist at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. 

"The heart is a difficult place to treat, to do a big surgery in a very young patient, and so we had to come up with something different," Patel said.  

"We don't typically irradiate the heart, and there's no standard protocols," he added.

Patel knew that Merkel cell carcinoma responds very well to radiation. He talked to national experts and his fellow Hillman researchers to come up with a game plan to treat Cerro's heart cancer with radiation.

"To Dr. Patel's point, he's never radiated anybody in their heart, but looking at that piece and finding other people that have and getting the expertise to help him was essential," Cerro said. 

"In certain cases, certain times, cancer behaves in weird ways where it's unpredictable and does things that you don't expect, and you have to think of something on the fly that's safe, that's reasonable and effective, and fortunately, we were able to get that," Patel said. 

And that's when Cerro went from weird to one of a kind. He was the first patient ever to receive radiation treatment for heart cancer at UPMC Hillman, getting 15 treatments over a period of three weeks.

"It was a difficult thing to go through, and he had to make a lot of tough decisions," Patel said. 

Those tough decisions paid off and paid off fast.

"The cool thing was, once the next set of scans came around, everything was gone, which was insane," Cerro said. 

Now, three years later, Cerro is a healthy father of two kids who will be cheering him on this weekend at the Rush to Crush Cancer cycling event in Pittsburgh. The event raises money for cancer research at UPMC Hillman.

"The research piece is obviously vital for us, for our younger generation, to make sure that they're taken care of," Cerro said. 

It's all to help the next person who becomes the "most interesting" case in Pittsburgh.

"Without the research, we wouldn't be here today, and we can't advance the medicine without it," Cerro said.