M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
Date: October 2008
Duration: 0 / 04:28
M. D. Anderson is Making Cancer History. I'm Roseann Rogers. Over 16,000 Americans will be diagnosed with esophageal cancer this year. In 2000, Sue Firth was diagnosed and today, thanks to M. D. Anderson, she's feeling better than ever.
I've never smoked, a lot of outdoor stuff, and never drove a car until I moved to the U.S.
Having lived a healthy lifestyle, Sue recognized something was not right when she started experiencing symptoms.
I noticed that when I was swallowing -- if you can imagine swallowing a large tablet without a glass of water. It's a bit like that in to which you feel a slight amount of restriction as it goes down.
Trouble swallowing is an advanced symptom of esophageal cancer. However there are early risks and signs to be aware of.
Those people who have heartburn and who have smoked throughout their lives, those are people who are at the highest risk of going to get esophageal cancer. People who have had a reflux disease, who have had heartburn for longer than 10 years should consider getting an endoscopy. I think anybody who has heartburn that is not relieved by their medications should consider getting an endoscopy. I think anybody who has had reflux disease for a long period time and had heartburn for a long period of time and suddenly it seems like that heartburn is gone away for no particular reason, they should go and get an
endoscopy.
After her diagnosis, Sue turned to M. D. Anderson for treatment.
I had no idea where to go looking expect that this is obviously a famous hospital. It's right on your doorstep.
M. D. Anderson’s Esophageal Program is one of the largest in the country.
It's like we've all decided that we were gonna agree to meet in Houston and take care of esophageal cancer. We have an entire team of people who are really taking care of these people and everybody together puts something into the pot to really create an overall cure, overall increase chance for cure for these patients.
M. D. Anderson has multiple treatment options including innovative new technologies for treating esophageal cancer.
We're using proton therapy to treat patients with esophageal cancer. That's something that's not been done anywhere in the country or anywhere in the world prior to doing it now. We think that with proton therapy we can decrease the amount of side effects that you get from treatment. Another way we're dealing with that is we have a minimally invasive program. So for patients who we think are appropriate, have appropriate stage of disease, or who have had an appropriate response to the chemotherapy and radiation, we'll do a minimally invasive surgery where we don't have to cut ribs or spread the ribs or anything like that. We make small incisions, the recovery is very fast, and that's pleasing to patients. That’s going very well. We also have multiple protocols with chemotherapy, so there's the surgery aspect, there's a radiation aspect, and then from the chemotherapy aspect, there's multiple different protocols that we're running.
Sue chose to participate in a clinical trial.
The protocol was -- it was a combination of chemotherapy and radiation with an additional chemotherapy drug. So I had the standard chemotherapy drug, plus the new one and the radiation at the same time.
She was carefully monitored by her physicians during her treatment.
They were very good, very caring and you felt like you had their time and attention. They were very particular about saying that I should give them feedback as to how I feel. They are very particular at saying, everybody is different. We can say how a lot of people react to this, but we can't say how you’ll react to it and it's very important for you to communicate back.
I would say above many things we consider quality of life one of the most important things. We know for a fact that cancer as an illness is something that we're going to be able to beat frequently and we're very honored to be a part of that process at any point of the game. And so we make a point of asking, How do you feel, what's going on, what's going on with your life, what's going on with your quality life? And so I give a survey to my patients before surgery, after chemotherapy and radiation, after surgery etcetera to find out where they are in terms of their quality of life at. It's very important to us.
Sue says her life after cancer is even better than before.
I think I appreciate a lot more. I've got much more control of my stress levels and I’ve got a much better grasp of what's important.
Now, she's back to work and to the stables to keep her life after cancer in balance.
To me riding a horse and to anybody who has got a horse will know exactly what I mean and that's a number one therapy. There's no beating it.
© 2008 The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
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