Damascus, Va., woman faces stem cell transplant in new cancer fight

Five years ago, local doctors told Penny Garrett that a miracle was the only way she would survive the aggressive cancer attacking her body.

She found that miracle a thousand miles away in Houstons state-of-the-art University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. After running a gauntlet of chemotherapy and surgeries that spared her from one rare form of the disease, Garrett now faces a stem cell transplant to help her ward off another form of the disease ravaging her bloodstream.

Garrett, of Damascus, Virginia, was just 39 years old when first diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma, a rare, aggressive malignancy of the soft tissue growing inside her uterus.

Doctors here first thought she had a fibroid tumor, but its rapid growth proved otherwise.

We werent even thinking about cancer. I went in to set it [surgery] up in December while my kids were on Christmas break, so I could recover while they didnt have homework. When I went into the office, my doctor said this is growing too fast to be a fibroid tumor; we have to do surgery tomorrow. I had to go to the hospital to check in, get X-rays and lab work. It was pretty devastating to be by yourself and hear that kind of news when you werent expecting it.

In December 2008, a local surgeon removed the tumor and she began a grueling, weeks-long regimen of chemotherapy. A subsequent scan revealed not only had the cancer returned, but spread to her stomach and lungs.

At that time, I thought cancer was cancer. I didnt know about all these different types and theyre all treated differently, Garrett said.

The Sarcoma Foundation of America deems uterine leiomyosarcoma extremely rare since only about six out of a million U.S. women receive that diagnosis annually. The average age of diagnosis is 51 and in about 70 percent of all cases the cancer hasnt spread to other parts of the body.

It tends to be aggressive and the five-year survival rate is only 50 percent for patients whose tumor is confined to the uterus compared to about 90 percent for most other gynecologic cancers. Women with uterine LMS that has spread beyond the uterus and cervix have an extremely poor prognosis, according to the foundation.

That was when it really hit me I might not make it through this. At that point, the doctor here told me I needed a miracle, Garrett said. Thats when my sister got online and found out what we needed to do, which was go to a sarcoma specialist. There were a couple of different options, but we chose MD Anderson in Houston, Texas. I went out there in May of 2009.

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Damascus, Va., woman faces stem cell transplant in new cancer fight