IMMUNOTHERAPY TOXIC TRADE-OFFS
Source: Hub, March 2023
CCelina McHugh passed one biannual screening after another following the removal of a melanoma from her leg in 2001, but her luck ran out after 13 years. In a cruel coincidence, she first felt the lump in her groin hours before another scheduled screening.
“I knew deep down before I got there," she says. Still, her heart sank when the news of cancer’s reappearance in her body became official. She underwent a radical lymph node dissection in 2014, followed by a grueling rehab that McHugh compares to starting from scratch in learning to use one of her legs.
Surgeries like that leave some patients cancer-free, but another tumor appeared in her lower back. As a nurse, she had a good grasp on what words like metastatic and stage 4 might mean.