Frank Carter, a 67-year-old cancer survivor from Orange County, Florida, recently completed a more than 2,000-mile canoe trip down the Missouri River with his golden retriever, Amos. The journey took 64 days, with the pair navigating the river in a cedar-strip canoe Carter built himself.
Their expedition began in Montana and concluded near St. Louis, Missouri. Along the way, they camped on the riverbank and encountered severe weather, including storms, high winds, and hail.
Before his cancer diagnosis, Carter was an experienced long-distance adventurer. In 2019, he spent five months hiking the Appalachian Trail, and in 2020, he completed an eight-week cross-country bicycle ride. However, his physical endurance was tested differently in 2021 following 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 form of blood cancer. He underwent 15 rounds of chemotherapy, which significantly reduced the cancer but left lingering traces of the disease. Carter then sought treatment at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa.
There, he underwent CAR T-cell therapy, an immunotherapy treatment where a patient's own immune cells are extracted, genetically altered in a laboratory to target cancer cells, and then reintroduced into the body. Dr. Michael Jain, an oncologist at Moffitt Cancer Center, explained that CAR T-cell therapy engineers T-cells to "see the tumor and get rid of it."
Carter has remained cancer-free for four years following a single CAR T-cell infusion. His dog, Amos, whom he brought home just before beginning chemotherapy, provided constant support throughout his recovery. "After my cancer diagnosis, I told myself I was going to beat this, and I really wanted a dog during the process," Carter said. "I got Amos right before my first treatment."
