CLEVELAND — Gaynell Wade is proud of her age — she's now 76.
Nineteen years ago, she thought the chance of her seeing her next birthday was out of the question.
Gaynell knew she was at high risk for cancer; nearly every family member died from some form or another. As an educator and school principal, she took her risk seriously and learned all she could. She never missed a mammogram, and was even checked twice a year by a breast specialist.
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But even diligence couldn't keep cancer out of her cards. After a checkup at age 57, Gaynell was told she had Stage 4 terminal breast cancer. The disease had already spread to other organs in her body. and her chance of survival was slim.
She decided to switch her care to University Hospitals, where the first doctor she met with came at her with a different approach.
"He said, 'You're going to have to go through aggressive treatment first: the chemo,'" Gaynell recalls. "But I fully expect a change and for things to be better, and I'm thinking this is the first time that I was even given a little hope."
She may have understood her diagnosis, but she wasn't aware of the scientific advances in breast cancer treatment. Six years earlier, Herceptin hit the market as a treatment for those with HER2-positive breast cancer.
"Her story is a testament that with the benefit of research and science, we can develop treatments that could potentially cure metastatic Stage 4 cancer," says Dr. Alberto Montero, clinical director of the Breast Cancer Medical Oncology Program at University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center and an associate professor of medicine at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
Montero adds there are even more advanced treatments than Herceptin, and while Gaynell's story is a beacon of light for many, there's still much work left to be done.
"Gaynell and other patients inspired me to investigate," he told us, "and we found about 40 patients like Gaynell out of the thousands with Stage 4 breast cancer that we cared for at University Hospitals."
Just 40 with stories like Gaynell's, who even now returns every three weeks for chemotherapy treatment with Herceptin. Her nurse, Trish, who's been with her since the beginning, still gives her the drug that gifted a terminal cancer patient with 19 years and four more grandchildren.
"I'm heading south to see my daughter, and I'll be watching the 5, the 8, the 13, and the 16-year-old," Gaynell said, proud of the fact she still has the energy.
Montero hopes other cancer patients realize that intensive research is ongoing, and there's no reason that there couldn't be another new treatment available that could give similar hope to them.
While Gaynell credits the doctors and the science, she'll tell you nothing is possible without God, who she says left her little nuggets of positive things all along her journey.
"Journaling really helped me because I can see where I've been and how far I've come," she detailed. "I truly do have hope because of all the research going on, and I believe if you keep the hope, that keeps you going, and then new things come along. So hope is key, but so is faith."
Montero's been treating Gaynell for the last three years, and says she no longer has any evidence of cancer in her body. He believes she could probably stop the chemo treatments, but Gaynell isn't ready to try that yet, although she's praying God will give her some guidance to help her make that decision.
