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Emma Houston
During fourteen months of breast cancer treatment, Emma E. Houston worked with many Huntsman Cancer Institute
(HCI) nurses as she received a combination of surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. Her opinion about the care she
received? “HCI should go around the world training people how to take care of cancer patients,” she says.
After her surgery, Emma spent a week at Huntsman Cancer Hospital. “The nurses were on top of everything
my family and I needed,” she says. “They must see a lot of pain and anger in their work, yet through it all they
maintain a great attitude.”
The infusion nurses were “lifesavers” in working through difficulties while always keeping Emma’s comfort
in mind. “They warmed my arms and gave me blankets during treatments,” she says. But the nurses’ warmth
went even deeper.
“I love high-heeled shoes,” Emma says. “Even when I was sick enough that my husband brought me for treatments
in a wheelchair, I wore them because they make me feel beautiful. The infusion nurses always noticed—‘I love
those shoes’—every time.”
“I know people show up in my life for a reason,” says Emma. “The people at HCI helped me get through the
experience of cancer. I could relax and enjoy the benefits of their expertise.”
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Jared Swan
Jared Swan was a freshman at the University of Oregon and looking forward to college life when one day his hands suddenly went numb and he started to stumble. “I had three grand mal seizures,” says Jared. “The next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital and my parents were there.”
Jared’s doctors discovered a brain tumor caused his seizures. After doing what they could to help him, Jared relocated to Utah and went to Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) for treatment.
“We had an open clinical trial we thought was perfect for this type of tumor. It’s an experimental treatment where catheters are placed into the brain and the drug is infused directly into the tumor,” says Randy Jensen, MD, PhD, an HCI neurosurgeon and investigator and associate professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
“All the other doctors had pretty much given up on me,” Jared says. “It was great just having new hope.” Jared was one of the first to undergo this new treatment and doctors were optimistic it would help. “Guys like Jared are the reason you keep doing research because we want everybody to have a good outcome and overcome such tough diseases,” says Jensen.
The treatments worked and Jared has been cancer free for seven years. “Now I have a job, go fishing, and do everything I enjoy. There’s a ton of people that I just couldn’t thank enough. Never give up, that’s all I can say.”
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Donna Le Claire
Donna Le Claire was experiencing shortness of breath and assumed she had pneumonia, but tests revealed a different diagnosis: lung cancer. “I was shocked and terrified,” she says. “I had no idea where to go, or what would happen next.”
Donna was referred went to Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) where she was eligible for a clinical trial using a targeted cancer therapy. Traditional chemotherapies attack anything that grows fast, but can cause numerous side effects. Targeted therapy attacks only the cancer, resulting in fewer complications. These targeted therapies are often used after a round of traditional chemo, but HCI doctors believed using the targeted therapies first might lead to improved outcomes. “We’re basically doing the reverse of the usual treatment. We believe there is a high probability of it working,” says Wallace Akerley, MD, HCI senior director of clinical research and professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
So far, the therapy is working for Donna. “We’ve been able to travel—we took a long-postponed trip to Hawaii. We’ve done things we probably never would have been able to do on other therapies,” she says.
Through participating in a clinical trial, Akerley believes Donna is part of something bigger than herself. “Donna and any of the patients who go into a clinical study are my heroes,” says Akerley. “We need to come up with better answers and the only way we’re going to find that is through clinical research. Our first and foremost mission is to care for people, but if we can learn something along the way that may help in the future, that’s really what we’re all about.”
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Dan Hedlund
Just three weeks after their wedding, newlyweds Dan and Melanie Hedlund were in for some startling news—Dan had osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer.
“It was pretty shocking,” says Dan. “We were still in the honeymoon phase of life and excited about starting our lives together. We didn’t know what to expect.”
A second opinion brought Dan to Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI). “I feel comfortable putting my life in the hands of these doctors any day of the week,” he says. “They’re not just good at what they do, they’re passionate about what they do.”
Because of his age and strong overall health, Dan’s physician, Lor Randall, MD, director of Sarcoma Services at HCI and an associate professor in the Department of Orthopaedics at the University of Utah, chose an aggressive treatment regimen. Dan says it’s been rough, but he’s up to the challenge. “He’s not trying to extend my life by a couple of years, he’s trying to cure me. Because I was so young, we didn’t have to be conservative.”
Dan has undergone surgery and chemotherapy, and has responded well to treatment. He and his medical team are optimistic about his prognosis.
“I haven’t been that worried cancer would take my life. I’ve tried to get busy living. Even if I only had a one-percent chance, somebody has to be that one percent. Why not me?”
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