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Kimberly McAllister knows the importance of a correct diagnosis. She was told she had non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in January 2001 - three months after the birth of her second son. The accepted therapy for NHL was not doing the job. "Initially I seemed to be responding, but in March, my tumors started growing again," said McAllister. "They weren't sure what the next step would be."
She started doing research on her own and talking to lymphoma experts around the country. McAllister works at the NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C., and she knows the power of research - asking questions and getting as much information as possible.
She and her husband Robert went to Bethesda, Md., and met with NCI's Wyndham Wilson, M.D., Ph.D., to talk about enrolling in a clinical trial. He brought in Elaine Jaffe, M.D., to read the slides from a new biopsy. Rather than NHL, Jaffe determined that the 35-year-old had Hodgkin lymphoma 5. With the new diagnosis, Wilson recommended McAllister switch to a different set of four drugs call ABVD. She returned home and began the new regimen at the end of April. By the third week of June, new scans revealed the cancer was gone.
"It was a good thing I went on my own to NCI," she said. "If the diagnosis hadn't been cleared up, I would've continued to be treated for the wrong thing." In her annual Christmas cards to family and friends, McAllister wrote in 2006 that, for the first time since her diagnosis, she finally believes that she will live to see her sons grow up.
McAllister wanted the NCI team to feel her appreciation. She wrote to Jaffe: "Do you know what you were doing five years ago? You were saving my life."
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