Frank Carter wanted a big test after cancer, and he found one on the Missouri River.
The 67-year-old Orange County, Florida, man completed a more than 2,000-mile trip down the river with his dog, Amos, after undergoing immunotherapy treatment, according to reports from Moffitt Cancer Center and FOX 13 News.
Carter spent 64 days on the longest U.S. river in a cedar-strip canoe he built by hand. The trip started in Montana and ended near St. Louis, Missouri. Along the way, Carter and Amos camped on the riverbank and pushed through severe storms, high winds and hail, FOX 13 News reported.
Before his diagnosis, Carter was already a long-distance adventurer. Moffitt Cancer Center said he spent five months hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2019 and completed an eight-week cross-country bicycle ride from San Diego to New Smyrna Beach, Florida, in 2020.
That changed in 2021 after a routine 5K race.
“I was wiped out. I just wasn’t recovering,” Carter told FOX 13 News. “I went to my doctor, had blood tests. Long story short, in two weeks I was getting chemo.”
Doctors diagnosed Carter with mantle cell lymphoma, a rare blood cancer that starts in white blood cells called lymphocytes. According to Moffitt Cancer Center, he underwent 15 rounds of chemotherapy in Orlando.
The treatment significantly reduced the cancer, but follow-up exams found lingering traces of the disease.
Carter then went to Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa for chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR, T-cell therapy. The treatment uses a patient’s own immune cells, which are genetically altered in a lab to identify cancer cells before being put back into the body.
“We take those T-cells and genetically engineer them by putting something called a CAR into them,” Dr. Michael Jain, an oncologist at Moffitt Cancer Center, told FOX 13 News. “Now these T-cells can see the tumor and get rid of it, where before the tumor was able to hide from it.”
Carter has remained cancer-free for four years after the single infusion.
He said Amos was a steady source of support through his recovery. Carter brought the dog home just before starting chemotherapy.
“After my cancer diagnosis, I told myself I was going to beat this, and I really wanted a dog during the process,” Carter told Moffitt’s Endeavor publication. “I got Amos right before my first treatment.”
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