Corinne is a Maine teacher whose family was affected by a house fire in 2015. After that, Corinne developed a severe cough and other symptoms that led to more frequent visits to her doctor’s office. By early 2016, Corrine’s condition had only worsened, and she went in for additional testing. It took a few weeks for Corinne to get a diagnosis, and in that lapse of time, she was dying. After diagnostic testing, she was diagnosed with lung cancer.
In the stage IV lung cancer survivor world, I’m an outlier, a research success story. More and more of us are surviving and thriving, with the hope of this being a manageable chronic disease, not a death sentence.
Corinne called Dana-Farber Cancer Institute right away, where she was able to get more detailed information about her cancer cells by undergoing biomarker testing. The results of biomarker testing led to an effective targeted therapy drug that gave Corinne her life back. It was only through research that such testing was possible and such a therapy was developed.
Over a year later, when cancer would return in her brain, Corinne already had valuable information about her biomarkers, which guided her to the medication she has been taking for the last six years, allowing her to live a happy life.