Cancerwise

Gladys Gakuu was diagnosed with stage 2B breast cancer in 2012. She was 29. She had a mastectomy with breast reconstruction surgery, followed by chemotherapy and five years of hormone therapy.

Things were fine for several years until she began having chest pain on her right side. She saw a local doctor in Kansas City, but imaging didn’t show anything concerning. So, she chalked it up to working too hard and took pain medicine as needed.

A few months later, her oncologist referred her to a plastic surgeon to check on the implant used during her breast reconstruction.

That’s when they discovered that the breast cancer had come back. 

Choosing UT MD Anderson after breast cancer recurrence

The cancer had returned and spread to Gladys’ neck, parts of her chest wall and several lymph nodes. Because of the extent of the spread, it was considered stage 4. Surgery was not an option.

Her oncologist recommended she take the oral targeted therapy palbociclib. It works by blocking specific proteins that help cancer cells grow. She also took hormone therapy to lower the estrogen in her body.

“After a couple months of taking these medications, I thought I should get a second opinion,” recalls Gladys, who was 37 at the time. “I reached out to doctors at a couple of well-known institutions before my friend in Houston suggested I try UT MD Anderson.”

Gladys had thought it would be difficult to get an appointment here. She was pleasantly surprised at how easy the process was.

“I just called to ask for an appointment,” she says. “I didn’t have to contact previous hospitals to get all my medical records. I just gave the patient access representative the hospitals’ names, and they took care of everything.”

Gladys had her first appointment at UT MD Anderson on Aug. 28, 2020. She met breast medical oncologist Sadia Saleem, M.D.

Saleem was able to feel a lump. Because the cancer had spread to the opposite side of Gladys’ body, she recommended they start with chemotherapy.

“I remember Dr. Saleem saying, ‘We will try our best, but we may not be able to cure the disease,’” says Gladys. “I’m a woman of faith, so I leaned into my faith and trusted my care team. I knew UT MD Anderson was where I needed to be.”

An aggressive treatment plan for metastatic breast cancer

The plan was for Gladys to start with three rounds of the chemotherapy drugs carboplatin and docetaxel. Then she’d have scans to see how well the chemo worked before starting radiation therapy. The targeted therapy she was taking was causing low white blood cell counts, so Saleem switched her to another medication called abemaciclib.

Gladys had since moved to Florida, so she flew back and forth to Houston for her chemo treatments. She took anti-nausea medicine that helped during treatment.

“After completing three rounds of chemo, the technologist doing my ultrasound kept looking at my previous scans. She told me she couldn’t see any cancer,” says Gladys. “She said she had never seen anything like it.”

The technologist called Saleem into the room. She was also amazed.

“Dr. Saleem said that I’d had probably more than 50 metastases before starting chemo, and now they were gone,” says Gladys. “I responded so well to treatment that she wanted me to do one more round of chemo, just to be sure. Then I’d start radiation.”

When Gladys met breast radiation oncologist Benjamin Smith, M.D., he told her that she had one of the most complex breast cancer recurrence cases he’d ever seen.

“Given how much it had spread, Dr. Smith said it could’ve been too late if we’d caught it a few months later,” she says. “UT MD Anderson saved my life.”

Because the cancer had responded so well to previous treatments, Smith believed an aggressive radiation therapy regimen could potentially cure Gladys of breast cancer. It would target any remaining microscopic cancer cells.

She underwent seven weeks of radiation therapy, including six treatments with proton therapy.

She stayed with friends in Houston while getting radiation treatment. “They took me to and from my appointments and cooked meals for me,” Gladys recalls. “I’m very thankful for them.”

She completed radiation therapy in June 2021. Her first scans after that showed no evidence of disease.