She fought melanoma and won

Melanoma/Skin Cancer Detection and Prevention Month

She fought melanoma and won

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- It all started with a mole Jane Caddell found on her inner right knee.

Caddell did nothing about it for a few months. But then it started to itch and, after a time, started to bleed. So, in July 2004, she went to the doctor to see if there might be a problem.

"I had a feeling something wasn't quite right with it," said Caddell, now 45 and living in Fayetteville , N.C. And she was right. The mole was biopsied and diagnosed as melanoma.

She went in a couple of weeks later and had the mole removed by a wide-excision surgery, which removes some surrounding skin along with the cancerous area. The surrounding skin came back clear of cancer, and Caddell went on with her life.

"At the time, you think, 'It's just cancer; it's just something you get taken off,' " Caddell said. "I just didn't get alarmed."

But about a year later, Caddell came down with a terrible bronchial infection that she struggled with for more than a month. "I had this rattle in my chest and this bad, croupy cough," she said.

She went to an urgent-care facility one weekend, when things had gotten particularly bad, and had a chest X-ray taken to see what was what. "I did have pneumonia, but they also saw some shadows on the X-ray," Caddell said.

They sent her for a CT scan of her lungs, which raised their suspicions that her earlier melanoma might have spread. "I kind of had a feeling what that was," she said. "I was starting to panic. I was in a state of disbelief."

She said that a lung specialist performed a lung biopsy via a tube through her nose. The test came back positive for melanoma.

And then things got worse. Caddell immediately went to an oncologist, who ordered a full-body PET scan to see if the cancer had spread any further.

Caddell had a tumor wrapped around her esophagus. She had cancer in both lungs. Cancer had spread all through the lymph nodes in her chest. There was cancer on her liver, and two cancerous "hot spots" on her hip bone and shoulder bone.

"The doctor looked at the floor, and he told me where it was located," she said. It was everywhere. She had stage 4 cancer.

"I said, 'What do I do?' He said, 'Most likely you have six months to a year. I have nothing here to offer you.' "

But the oncologist did refer her to a melanoma expert at Duke University , and that expert recommended a round of high-dose immunotherapy. It was a long shot: 12 percent of patients partially respond to it, and just 7 percent have a complete and successful response.

Caddell spent nine months in and out of intensive care at Duke. "It brings all your vitals and all your organs to the brink of toxicity, where everything shuts down," she said.

But Caddell ended up being part of the 7 percent.

"After I finished all treatments in June 2006, I was declared cancer-free," she said. "It's nothing short of a miracle."

She still suffers some side effects from the treatment, including fatigue and short-term memory loss. But she just shrugs it off.

"There are no words to explain the gratitude," she said. "I almost have to pinch myself that I'm still here. Ninety-five percent of stage 4 melanoma patients are dead within two years -- and here I am."