A retired St. Louis schoolteacher was given four months to live. Then a clinical trial saved her life.
At age 69, Pam Sander had lived a wonderful life: A former teacher and lifelong St. Louis resident, Pam had been married to her soulmate, Roy, for almost 50 years. “We finish each other’s sentences,” Pam laughs. “We’ve gotten to be the typical old married couple.”
But after going to the doctor with stomach pain more than six years ago, Pam learned something that threatened to derail everything: She had pancreatic cancer. “I asked the doctor how long somebody usually lives with this,” Pam recalls. “She said about four months.”
After realizing his wife wouldn’t make it to 70, Roy was overcome with sadness. But Pam took the opportunity to reflect on how wonderful her life had been: “How lucky I had been to live my whole life with someone I loved. With children that I loved. With friends that I love… So we didn’t cry anymore. We just got on with gettin’ on.”
As Pam tried to come to terms with her diagnosis, her doctor presented her with some potentially exciting news: She was eligible for a clinical trial of a new form of targeted radiation therapy, known as MRIdian, developed by ViewRay.
Shortly after treatment, Pam learned that her tumor had not grown. “I felt like I could exhale,” she says. “Like we could live our lives again.”
Now, six years after treatment, Pam is one of an incredibly small number of pancreatic cancer survivors who has lived more than five years after diagnosis. She attributes that milestone to her clinical trial using MRIdian. “I [feel] proud to be part of history,” says Pam. “If this can help other people, wouldn’t that be wonderful? It made [me] feel like [I was] doing something worthwhile. I thank the doctors and that machine for being my saviors.”
