Keytruda QLEX™ (Pembrolizumab) Killed My Dad in 58 DaysI write this for you, friend I’ve never met, to mark the trail through the Dark Woods so that you might discern the way you should go. I wish there had been a blog like this for my dad to read when he sat down at his desk — I can see him now in the early morning with his thick white socks on, opening up his Yahoo webpage to do his Internet search: “Keytruda side effects.” I’m sure he would’ve found this blog, and read it, and changed his mind.
Dad would’ve listened to his wife of 59 years, my mom, and not to his oncologist — and then he would still be alive today. That’s all we want, after all, isn’t it? More days (“just five more minutes,” as the country song says; my dad loved country) with our loved one. Instead, on Sunday, May 17, 2026, my dad died in San Luis Obispo, California, 58 days after taking one shot of Keytruda QLEX™ (Pembrolizumab), an immunotherapy drug manufactured by Merck Pharmaceuticals.
My Dad’s Health Prior to Keytruda QLEX™ (Pembrolizumab)My dad was 78 years old and in very good health for his age — climbing ladders and trimming trees with his chainsaw the month before his injection. Even though he had Type II diabetes he managed it with a healthy diet and exercise and was not on insulin prior to being injected with Keytruda QLEX™ (Pembrolizumab).
Being a California native, and always in the sun (a neighbor nicknamed him Guy With No Shirt On), in late 2025 Dad was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. His doctor took swift and decisive action. On January 15, 2026, a surgeon excised a 5.2 mm melanoma and a squamous cell from Dad’s right shoulder; margins and Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy (SNLB) were clear — Dad’s cancer was stage 2B; the cancer had not spread, and it was removed in its entirety.
Two months later, on March 16, 2026 the oncologist suggested a one-year course of Keytruda QLEX™ as a precaution — as adjuvant therapy — to guard against the possibility of the melanoma recurring.
What is Keytruda and Keytruda QLEX™ (Pembrolizumab)?Keytruda (Pembrolizumab) is a cancer-fighting drug approved in 106 countries and is “used to treat forms of skin, lung, breast and colon cancer, among others” According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), Keytruda (generic name: Pembrolizumab) “is a type of immunotherapy that restores the body’s ability to fight cancer cells. Unlike chemotherapy, which targets rapidly dividing cancer cells, Keytruda disrupts a process that allows some cancers to circumvent the immune system.” This drug is what’s known as an Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor, or ICI. Since 2014 it’s been used to treat advanced stages of cancer (stage 3 and above; and the cancer is metastatic, or it has spread); but in 2025, the FDA broadened its treatment range to include adjuvant, or preventive, use. In other words: Keytruda (Pembrolizumab) can now be used to treat patients who have No Evidence of Disease (NED).
According to TBIJ, Keytruda costs on average $208,000 for a one-year course of treatment in the United States. In 2025, Keytruda (including Keytruda QLEX™) generated $31.68 billion in worldwide sales for Merck Pharmaceuticals. It was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2014 for breast cancer and single cell lung cancer among others. In 2019 it was approved by the FDA for melanoma.
Why Is Keytruda QLEX™ (Pembrolizumab) Recommended for Early-stage Melanoma?By medical standards, my dad’s cancer was not considered advanced. Why did the oncologist recommend Keytruda QLEX™? The drug manufacturer’s website indicates that the drug “may be used when your melanoma has spread or cannot be removed by surgery (advanced melanoma).” This is something that the FDA allows doctors to do: it is called off-label prescribing. In other words: even if the drug manufacturer doesn’t recommend using the drug in a particular scenario, the oncologist can use their judgement to do so.
Dad’s cancer had not spread, and it had been completely removed by surgery. Dad was NED (No Evidence of Disease). He had a choice to take the drug or leave the drug. His life was not in immediate danger from the melanoma. According to OpenEvidence, a clinical support platform for medical professionals, this scenario represents “a critical tension in oncology”:
The melanoma had been fully excised with clear margins ("they got it and it hadn't spread"), meaning the pembrolizumab was given . . . to reduce recurrence risk, not to treat active cancer. While . . . pembrolizumab reduces recurrence by ~38% in stage 2B/2C melanoma, no overall survival benefit has been demonstrated, and observation remains a reasonable alternative.
Additionally, the oncologist’s office did not inform my dad that Keytruda carried the risk of death, they merely said it would likely destroy his thyroid for which he would need to take thyroid medication (you’ll likely need to take a pill for the rest of your life, the doctor said, lots of people do), and that his liver would likely begin to act abnormally, but communicated that scenario was also manageable. The oncologist even went so far as to say: “If it were me, I would take it.”
I imagine this is a common scenario in oncologists’ offices across the country: recommending a drug for cancer prevention while not adequately explaining the risks and the possibility of death and/or debilitating side effects. After giving it some thought, and arguing with Mom who did not want him to take it, Dad signed up to take his doctor’s recommended one-year course of Keytruda QLEX™, his first treatment was scheduled for late March 2026.
The Timeline: From First Symptoms to DeathOn March 20, 2026, my dad was administered his one-and-only dose of Keytruda QLEX™, a 375 mg. dose through direct injection into his stomach (subcutaneous). “Painless,” Dad told me, he and Mom went to the San Luis Obispo nursery immediately afterward to buy some plants: a South African Sweet Pea Bush, and two Colorado Daisies. My dad was a master gardener. The plants would outlive him. Ten days later, on April 1, the pain arrived.
“Pain started in neck, shoulders, hips, thighs — low”, Dad wrote in the stack of copious notes he left for us. “April 5 - 6 to 24: pain ramped up to absolutely intolerable levels 24/7. Always 9+ to 12.” Here, he drew a sad face in his notes. Dad, who never took any pills, not even vitamins and especially not pain meds, finally broke down and tried Advil, Aleve, Tylenol. Nothing worked. “Can’t hardly move without excruciating pain everywhere,” Dad wrote. Mom wheeled Dad into the oncologist’s office because he could no longer walk more than ten feet. The oncologist put Dad on 60 mg of Prednisone per day which was the recommended course of action for what was now being called “side effects” from a severe Immune-mediated Adverse Reaction (IMAR). By April 20, my 50th birthday, Dad wrote:
Some improvement in respiration, rapidity slowing down; hard heartbeats in chest/head stopping 90% of time, 10-15% better mobility in mornings past 3 days. Continuing problems: whole body pain with much difficulty to be mobile. Balance/equilibrium bad often. Voice/larynx impaired — sounding muffled, drunk-like. Vision impaired all day mostly right side. Was 20/20 with glasses. Eyelids want to pull down. Jaws hurt to chew always.
He could not, after some time, use his hands. The hands he used to make so many beautiful things: woodwork, stonework, masonry. “Why don’t you get a smaller glass?” I asked. We drink out of ball jars in my family. “Hadn’t thought of that,” Dad laughed.
At this point Dad’s speech was slurred and indiscernible (dysphagia). My mom, alarmed, couldn’t understand him; “Where has my husband gone? You don’t sound like Mike.” He had trouble swallowing, eating, and drinking. The weight began to fall off of him. He would go from 152 pounds to 121 pounds in fifty-eight days.
“Can’t eat or won’t eat?” I asked Dad who loved, more than anything, to eat Mom’s homemade meals.
He shook his head, “Can’t.”
By April 29 — just 40 days after the Keytruda QLEX™ (Pembrolizumab) injection — Dad needed serious medical care and was admitted to San Luis Obispo Hospital. Mom wheeled him into the front doors, Dad slumped in the chair, unable to hold his body and his head upright. After only a few hours in the hospital, Dad’s heart failed (myocarditis) and he was transferred to French Hospital for the implantation of a pacemaker.
We thought, “Oh, it was his heart! Maybe his heart was bad and it wasn’t the drug after all!” We thought we were out of the woods.
After eight days in the hospital, the continued inability to speak, swallow, eat, and drink, the hospital prematurely discharged my dad (that’s another story in its entirety). After being unable to care for him in their home, Dad was admitted into a skilled nursing facility for what we hoped would be short-term rehabilitation as the oncologist reported that all of Dad’s blood tests were “turning” in the right direction. His liver was recovering, but his thyroid was destroyed, but this was manageable, the doctor said.
We were managing Dad’s spiking insulin levels caused by the high doses of prednisone; we were following the medical advice; we were encouraging dad to do the recommended physical therapy exercises, but Dad could hardly stand or walk or lift up the toilet seat. In addition, he was so severely dehydrated and malnourished that his blood draws were nearly impossible so the oncologist recommended a PIC line for easier access for Dad’s weekly blood draws.
We visited Dad every day. He didn’t seem to be improving. We visited him on Saturday afternoon and he had a yellow pallor to his face. I said to Mom, “Dad looks yellow. Why is Dad yellow?” He tried to talk with us. His voice was still barely intelligible. We rubbed his feet and his swollen ankles. We rubbed his head. Mom, on this last day, couldn’t bear it and ran out of the room early. She didn’t know that would be Dad’s final day on Earth. Then, on the third day, on a Sunday morning, Mom got a call: “Mrs. Garrick, Mike is not responding.” We rushed to his bedside. Paramedics were there. They had intubated him, but Dad never came back to life. I stayed at his bedside and kissed him more than I’ve ever kissed him in my entire life. I stayed and wept and wailed until his body grew cold.
Weeks later we would receive his death certificate. Michael Adam Garrick. Section 107, the words typed in two small boxes:
Cause of Death:
A) Cardiac Arrest
B) Severe (Grade IV) Autoimmune Syndrome from Monoclonal Antibody (Pembrolizumab) Immunotherapy.
Triple M Overlap Syndrome (TMOS) From Keytruda (Pembrolizumab)Keytruda QLEX™ is an immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) that is increasingly being recommended to cancer patients as a preventive measure with too-often fatal results. What Dad experienced as the result of taking one dose of Keytruda QLEX™ (Pembrolizumab) is referred to as Triple M Overlap Syndrome (TMOS): “a triad of myocarditis (heart inflammation), myositis (muscle inflammation), and myasthenia gravis (neuromuscular junction weakness).” The three M’s. In 2025, BMC Cancer warned:
With the increasing use of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) for the treatment of various malignancies . . . more cases (of Triple M Overlap Syndrome) are likely to be diagnosed in the future.[1]
How many people have died as the direct result of taking Keytruda and Keytruda QLEX™ (Pembrolizumab)? A May 2025 study[2] of adverse reactions in cancer patients treated with Pembrolizumab relies on data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) database. Researchers analyzed adverse events or negative reactions caused by Keytruda (Pembrolizumab) as reported to the FDA by health care professionals and patients between 2013 and June 2024.
Among the 46,883 cancer patients who reported an adverse event or reaction to the drug — everything from diarrhea to headaches to thyroid dysfunction to death — 4.8% of those patients died. Let me say that again: these cancer patients died; not from cancer, but from Keytruda, an immunotherapy shot that was supposed to prevent the recurrence of cancer in the future.
This is not a small death rate for an FDA-approved drug. This statistic accounts for the early deaths of 5,483 people from taking Keytruda (Pembrolizumab; including Keytruda QLEX™). This data set does not account for Keytruda-related deaths in the hundred-plus other countries where Keytruda is approved, nor does it account for deaths that were not voluntarily reported to the FDA.
Weigh the Potentially Fatal Risk of Taking Keytruda (Pembrolizumab)Since Dad’s death, I have joined the Keytruda - (Pembrolizumab) death/adverse reactions/side effects Group on Facebook. There are currently over three thousand members. Many in this group share the same story. I understand now that my family is not alone in suffering such a devastating, painful, and entirely preventable loss of life. If only we had been informed of the true risks of taking this drug.
If you or a loved one is considering taking Keytruda/Keytruda QLEX™ (Pembrolizumab), please take some time to get informed. National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), a nonprofit alliance of 34 leading cancer centers, recommends that cancer patients carefully consider the risks taking Keytruda as this immunotherapy drug carries with it the high probability of “lifelong endocrine dysfunction” as well as the possibility of “catastrophic” and fatal toxicities.
If you are facing a circumstance similar to my dad’s — early-stage melanoma, “margins are clear” — can you imagine living with the risk that the cancer may recur, and if it does, dealing with it when it occurs in the unknown future? That is what the NCCN recommends given the alarming data that marks the beginning of Keytruda’s (Pembrolizumab’s) widespread adoption, the lack of FDA accountability in the United States, and the rising death toll.
Works Cited[1] Schroeder B, Bosak E, Nandu N, Mikhael M. Pembrolizumab-induced Triple M Overlap Syndrome, example of indiscriminate immune activation. BMJ Case Rep. 2025 Jun 26;18(6):e263332. doi: 10.1136/bcr-2024-263332. PMID: 40571422.
[2] Xu H, Huang Y, Zhao N, Hu H, Cao D. Retrospective analysis of pembrolizumab-related adverse reactions and death outcomes based on the FAERS database. BMC Cancer. 2025 May 22;25(1):917. doi: 10.1186/s12885-025-14342-2. PMID: 40405105; PMCID: PMC12096721.