It has been said that “into each life, a little rain must fall,” but for 52-year-old Judy Perkins, it’s been a monsoon.
“I had a mastectomy. I had all my lymph nodes out. Ten years later, 2013, I felt another lump on the same side, and this time it ended up being stage four,” Perkins said. “So, I entered the world of cancer patient. Serious cancer patient.”
Despite hormonal and chemotherapy, by 2015, the cancer had spread to her chest and liver.
“I came to realize that I was going to die, and that’s where my mind was,” she said. “I felt bad for my family, but I was grateful for the life I had had.”
Then Perkins found Dr. Steven Rosenberg at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Rosenberg is a pioneer in harnessing the immune system to fight cancer. Genetic mutations in cells are cancer’s trigger, causing those cells to grow out of control. Rosenberg’s new approach is to find the few immune cells already in the body that can see those genetic mutations and turn them into an army of cancer killers.
Read about the results of the treatment here.
