How Cancer Research Changed—and Saved—a Nurse’s Life
In spring 2007, after ignoring a lump on her collarbone for several weeks, Michelle Hancock decided to see a doctor. She felt fine, but something told her she needed to get it checked out.
Her husband, Tom, was a fighter pilot in the Air Force. They had lived at bases all over the country, welcoming two children along the way. At 32, Michelle had a full life as a military spouse and mother.
She had no idea her path would soon take some unexpected turns.
The doctor at Mountain Home Air Force Base—about 45 minutes from Boise, Idaho, and where Tom had been stationed the year prior, though he was deployed to Afghanistan—ordered a fine-needle biopsy, which she endured alone, crying in the car afterward. Two days later, she got the call.
“The military doesn’t sugarcoat anything,” Michelle said. “The doctor just said, ‘Hey, we got your results back, and you have some kind of blood cell cancer, so we’re going to refer you to MSTI’ [St. Luke’s Cancer Institute was previously named Mountain States Tumor Institute].”
Doctors performed a full lymph node biopsy so they could more accurately diagnosis her cancer. Though Michelle didn’t know it at the time, this was the first step toward getting her the right treatment. Thankfully, just afterward, Tom came home. Michelle hadn’t seen him in four months and remembers her relief and the kids’ joy.
“And then the phone rang, and they told me I had Hodgkin lymphoma,” Michelle recalled.
She didn’t know what that meant, but she soon learned that decades of research into Hodgkin lymphoma and the results of many clinical trials would guide her oncologist’s decisions about her care.
Michelle underwent six cycles of what has become the standard first-line chemotherapy regimen for Hodgkin lymphoma, ABVD, which is short for the four drugs used: Adriamycin (doxorubicin hydrochloride), bleomycin sulfate, vinblastine sulfate and dacarbazine. This treatment replaced older protocols after research and clinical trials demonstrated it was extremely effective at killing the cancer cells while reducing toxicities and lessening possible long-term side effects.
Prior to the knowledge gained from clinical trials, most Hodgkin lymphoma patients also received radiation after chemotherapy, which can lead to the occurrence of secondary cancers. Clinical trials demonstrated that many patients don’t need it.
Michelle was one of those patients—and she knows well she benefited from the extensive research into Hodgkin lymphoma treatment as well as around managing side effects, both short- and long-term. She never even got sick from the drugs.
Of course, her cancer diagnosis changed her life. But it was what she realized during treatment that set her on the path to her life’s calling: working as a nurse in pediatric oncology.
“The nurses who took care of me were just so great,” Michelle said, “and I was sitting in the chair during treatment and asked, ‘How do you become a nurse?’”
In 2008, after Michelle had successfully finished treatment, Tom’s orders brought the family to North Carolina. Michelle enrolled in the community college. Two years later, she was a registered nurse. They returned to Idaho in 2014, and Michelle accepted a job at St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital. In 2016, she moved to MSTI, working alongside many of the same doctors and nurses who took care of her.
Today, Michelle remains cancer free, with no ill-effects to her heart or lungs, which used to be common occurrences after earlier treatment regimens. Until recently, she was a nursing supervisor for St. Luke’s Children’s Cancer Institute, but her passion for nursing and appreciation for research inspired her to shift roles. Primarily, Michelle has returned to the bedside to care for pediatric cancer patients, but she has also joined the clinical research team to provide education and oversight as well as support the program’s development.
When Michelle was diagnosed, she didn’t know anything about cancer or cancer treatment. Now, as both a survivor and a nurse, she has witnessed the many ways research saves lives.
“It’s all because of clinical trials,” Michelle said. “It’s all because of research that we can give the minimum required treatment to cure the cancer and have the least amount of side effects.”
She is thankful every day.