Lori Alf, of West Palm Beach, Florida, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a treatable but incurable blood cancer, but an experimental trial led to a clean bill of health.
Alf, initially thought she had bronchitis, but she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, Parade reports. "I walked out to my car," she told Parade about the diagnosis. "(I) slumped down onto the hood and stayed there paralyzed, crying."
After trying various treatments, Alf began an experimental treatment at the University of Pennsylvania, where researchers were “organizing clinical trials to reprogram the immune systems of seriously ill myeloma patients.” Alf began immunotherapy, which “avoids graft-versus-host complications by using the patient’s own cells,” and was a process that hadn’t even been tested on animals, Parade added.
“I cry from happiness every time I see her,” Alf’s Florida oncologist Robert J. Green, M.D., told Parade. “When she went to Pennsylvania, I didn’t think I’d see her alive again. Lori is proof that these new immunotherapies do magical things.”
Now two years later, Alf is cancer-free and enjoying life with her husband and their three teenagers.
Read more at Parade.
