When Melanie Morrill turned 50 in August of 2014, she was excited to celebrate the milestone birthday and was looking forward to what the next decade would bring. Unfortunately, things changed quickly later that month after a visit to the Emergency Department. Melanie had been experiencing chest pain and shortness of breath and was treated for pneumonia and told to follow-up with her primary care doctor, which she did in September. From there she was referred to a pulmonologist for further testing and in November she received a diagnosis: ALK+ Metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
At the time, the fact that her cancer was ALK (anaplastic lymphoma kinase) positive meant little to Melanie; she only heard the words ‘lung cancer.’ In December, she met with Anne Chiang, MD, PhD, an Associate Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology), who explained that ALK is a gene that produces a protein that controls cell growth and, when mutated, can cause cancer cells to grow faster.
“Dr. Chiang also explained that there was currently a lot of research being done into ALK+ cancers and that the hope was for cancers like mine to become a chronic disease and treated as such,” said Melanie. “Looking back to when I was first diagnosed just 10 years ago, the life expectancy was 3-6 years if you Googled it, which I don’t recommend. It is amazing how quickly things have advanced in that time.”
Melanie approached her diagnosis in business mode, including when she, along with her husband, told their two college-aged children while they were home over the holidays. “Looking back, it may not have been the best way to approach telling them, but it was the only way I knew how to stay in control. My mind automatically went to, ‘will I see them graduate? get married? have kids of their own?’ All of the things parents want to see their kids do. I was not going to let the cancer take over,” said Melanie.
In 2014 Melanie started on a medicine called Crizotinib that is the first medication specifically for patients that have ALK+ NSCLC that has spread to other parts of the body. However, once the cancer spread to her brain and Melanie was now considered to be stage 4, it was recommended that she receive radiation therapy.
Veronica Chiang, MD, FAANS, Professor of Neurosurgery and Director of Stereotactic Radiosurgery and the Gamma Knife Center at Yale, was able to target the tumors within the brain, while leaving the healthy tissue relatively untouched. Gamma Knife surgery is a noninvasive form of radiation to treat conditions, tumors, and lesions that mostly affect the brain.
“For the first five to six years of my diagnosis it was constant monitoring and trying to get the cancer under control,” said Melanie. “Now, ten years out, my cancer is deemed to be ‘stable’ with no signs of significant growth. There have still been bumps along the way, including a craniotomy in 2019 to assess whether spots that were found were new growth, or from the radiation, but I have found that a positive attitude goes a long way.”
Melanie is involved in several advocacy groups including LUNG FORCE, LUNGevity, and groups specifically for patients with ALK+ cancers such as ALK Positive. She takes every opportunity to advocate for more research into lung cancer and ALK+ cancers in general. And even though her cancer is currently ‘stable’ and she’s taking a targeted therapy drug called Alecensa that blocks ALK, she is still looking for opportunities to stay one step ahead of it.
“As I approach ten years since my diagnosis, I can look back at how far recent advances have taken us, and we need to keep going. There are trials on the horizon that want to look at curing this cancer, not just follow it as a chronic disease, and I want to be a part of that,” said Melanie. “I have goals and a future in mind, I am not going to stop now. I realize that someone ten years ago volunteered for a trial, and it saved my life; I want to be that person for someone else.”
Dr. Anne Chiang commented, “It is so gratifying to be able to witness how progress in lung cancer research is changing the lives of our patients directly and to see how the natural history of ALK positive lung cancer has transformed from a terminal diagnosis to a chronic disease that be controlled with an oral medication for over 10 years!"