UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center Magazine Spring 2017 | Page 9
It was during that training that Maggie’s life
completely changed – for reasons she would never
expect.
“Maggie and I started training together, and
I noticed she was not progressing in the training
plan. She would walk more than run,” recalls
Maggie’s mother, Melissa Hanberry. “We entered
a race, and we both finished, but several weeks
later, she told me about some symptoms she had
been having.”
Maggie had been experiencing stomach pain
and fatigue, and she had lost a good bit of weight.
Her parents initially thought the problem could
be treated with over-the-counter drugs and a
change in diet, but the symptoms persisted. Upon
seeing their family physician, Maggie confessed
that in addition to her other symptoms, she had
also been passing blood. Her doctor referred her
to a pediatric gastroenterologist in nearby Jackson
for further tests.
“We were thinking it could be Crohn’s or
ulcerative colitis – things that are fairly common
for a teenage girl,” Mrs. Hanberry says. The
doctor initially agreed, but ordered a colonoscopy
to be sure, which delivered some unexpected
news.
“The doctor said she couldn’t even get in to do
the colonoscopy from the bottom, because there
was a mass there,” says Mrs. Hanberry. “That’s
when I knew our lives were changing, when I
heard the word ‘mass.’”
That news was a shock to Maggie as well. “I
was really confused, because that came out of the
blue,” Maggie says. “Colon cancer for a 15-year-
old is a one-in-a-million diagnosis. It wasn’t even
something that was on my radar.”
On April 7, 2014, Maggie was diagnosed with
stage 4-b colon cancer, meaning that the cancer
had already spread to a second organ; in Maggie’s
case, her lungs. She immediately underwent
surgery and began chemotherapy treatments at
a children’s hospital in Jackson the following
month. A few weeks into those treatments, she
began radiation therapy.
After a few months of treatment, Maggie
had another surgery in August 2014, after which
she continued on with her chemotherapy. Scans,
however, revealed that the treatments were not
working. She started a new chemotherapy that
would require a three-day stay in the hospital
every two weeks. She began that regimen in
February 2014, nearly a year after her diagnosis.
“Surprisingly, I started to gain more normalcy in
my life because it was a consistent schedule with
less side effects,” she says.
Maggie initially had a positive response to the
new treatment and was able to stop chemotherapy
altogether nearly a year later, in January 2016.
That May, she returned for a follow-up scan only
to find that her cancer was growing again. She
again began chemotherapy, and over the course
of the summer, doctors discovered more bad news
– the cancer had spread to her liver.
“We thought we were just dealing with micro-
disease in her lungs, which we thought we could
treat and keep stable,” Mrs. Hanberry says. “We
knew her disease was systemic, but we knew
then we didn’t have the control over it that we
thought.”
While many
institutions offer
phase I studies,
UAB is one of the
few academic
medical centers
Treatment Close to Home conducting phase
Seeing that the chemotherapy was not
working, Maggie’s oncologist in Jackson
suggested that participating in a clinical trial
might be the best option for her. The Hanberrys
took their daughter to MD Anderson Cancer
Center in Houston, who agreed with the
recommendation and encouraged them to
find a phase I clinical trial. “The oncologist
recommended finding something close to home.
UAB was the first place that came to mind,” says
Mrs. Hanberry.
Mrs. Hanberry began searching online for
clinical trial options, which led her to UAB’s
Phase I Clinical Trials Unit, which is solely
dedicated to conducting all phase I clinical
studies at UAB. Phase I trials are unique
because they involve drugs never before tested
in humans, and at UAB, are led by a team
specifically dedicated to phase I studies. While I studies through
# K N O W U A B C C C
•
a cohesive
team approach.
This allows
patients access
to novel drugs
and therapies
otherwise not
available, while
benefiting
scientific
research.
U A B . E D U / C A N C E R
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