Brittanny is a stage 3A melanoma survivor. She was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2021 at age 27, after spending her youth in tanning beds and not wearing sunscreen. After her diagnosis, she had multiple surgeries to remove the cancer, including a wide local excision that required a skin graft and a sentinel lymph node biopsy.
Research is so much bigger than we realize. Behind every breakthrough is a long line of people: from researchers to clinicians to patients to survivors. Research affects all of us.
Additionally, Brittanny completed 18 rounds of immunotherapy with the drug Keytruda. During the treatment she endured various side effects such as colitis, gastritis, pancreatitis, loss of sense of smell and taste, DRESS syndrome, and minor body rashes.
While her treatment wasn’t easy, she is thankful that she had immunotherapy as an option. The immunotherapy she received was a newer treatment option and had only been approved around two years prior to her diagnosis. “If not for those recent advances in research, my treatment options would have been far more limited and my risk of the cancer returning would have been much higher.”
Her specific treatment has greatly decreased her chances of having a recurrence. She has already been four years without a recurrence. She credits cancer research with saving her life, fully aware that without it, her second chance might never have come. Throughout her cancer journey she has used her voice to spread awareness about skin cancer and the adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer experience.