‘The reason we all went into medicine’: Woman keeps up fight against uterine cancer
Linda Morton, of Chester County, feels blessed to be able to plan her day and work in her garden, but her future wasn’t always certain.
In 2016, Morton’s life changed forever, and she remembers that awful day.
“She told me I had cancer; I cried for a bit in her officer,” Morton told Channel 9′s Damany Lewis.
Morton was diagnosed with an aggressive stage 3 uterine cancer.
She attacked it with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Her doctor, Novant gynecologist Dr. Matt McDonald, told her this cancer would be tough to beat.
“The difficult thing is if it reoccurs, it is universally lethal,” Morton said.
For three years, Linda fought and was winning. Her cancer was in remission.
In 2020, the cancer came back. But giving up wasn’t an option, Linda said.
“Tell me, who do you fight for?” Lewis asked.
“For myself, because I want to be here, and my children and my husband and grandchildren,” Morton said.
‘Walking miracle’
McDonald realized the cancer mutation she was fighting was a good match for a national clinical trial that Novant Health is participating in. It’s a new drug that attacks and eliminates specific mutations in certain cancers.
The catch for Linda, though, was that she wouldn’t know if she was actually getting the new drug or a placebo.
“This clinical trial we’ve seen patients that benefit significantly from the trial, and then there are patients that don’t receive much benefit,” McDonald said.
“I told my boys and husband, we discussed it,” Morton said. “What do I have to lose?”
So she did another round of chemo, and for the past four years, she has received the mystery infusion every six weeks.
She and her doctors still don’t know if she’s getting the actual drug. All they know are her remarkable results.
“With someone with recurrent uterine cancer, I have never seen someone with no cancer for four years,” McDonald said. “It is incredible, exciting, and the reason we all went into medicine, to be honest.”
Morton, now 73, told Lewis that her recent scans show no evidence of disease.
“Do you consider yourself a walking miracle?” Lewis asked.
“Yes I do, every day,” she said.
Now, Morton will continue strolling in her garden, with her new lease on life truly in full bloom.
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