Judy Morrill walks four miles every single day with her dog Emma and her husband Jim by her side; even the most deadly form of a brain tumor, called a glioblastoma, couldn't slow her down.
"I just made up my mind that I was going to go forward and not backward and make the best of it," Judy Morrill said. She had one surgery to remove most of the tumor, but with this type of cancer, the cells can spread like fingers throughout the brain.
"We can never get all the tumor cells out," Doctor Michael Vogelbaum, M.D., Ph.D. of The Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio said.
Now surgeons at The Cleveland Clinic are using a drug used to treat skin cancer, called 5-ALA, to literally light up cancer cells in the brain.
"It is converted primary by tumor cells into that substance that glows," Doctor Vogelbaum explained.
Judy had a second surgery using 5-ALA, and doctors removed more of her tumor. Judy is now 70 and looking forward to what this new decade will bring.
"I'm so lucky to be alive, last year, I didn't think I would be here for my birthday and now I'm having one this year," Morrill said.
Although 5-ALA is approved to treat brain tumors in Europe, and bladder cancer in the US, The Cleveland Clinic is one of the few hospitals in the country involved in a clinical trial using it.
If you would like more information, please contact:
Karen E. Warmkessel
Media Relations Manager
University of Maryland Medical Center/University of Maryland Medical System
kwarmkessel@umm.edu
