Patient Testimonials

Research is very important in oncology care. It is the way that we advance our treatments and develop new treatments in cancer care. As you may have seen in recent years, the number of treatments and the quality of treatments has increased significantly from many different forms of cancer.

I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, which means that there are no hormones involved. When they explained it to me, they said it was a more aggressive type. They said that I was going to need a course of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation. In one of my visits with Doctor Huber, he said that I would be eligible for a clinical trial that was going on. He said that I would get less harsh drugs if I participated. So I told him I want to do that.

Dana's progress through her clinical trial will be reported out in the aggregate of patients through the clinical trial. And then hopefully that will lead to some improvement in our treatment for breast cancer. And that is the goal of all clinical trials is to eventually improve the quality of our care.

Today, I'm cancer free. It's gone. I'm hoping that that particular clinical trial becomes standard care for people in the future. I'm very passionate about research and very passionate about treatment for people in the future. Clinical trials take a long time and a ton of people. I'm just happy to be one of those people.

Clinical trials are really ways of improving care going forward. So what we know are things that don't work as well and to find things that work better, the way to do it are clinical trials. So standard of care is what we usually do in a situation that the patient is in. But a clinical trial is something that we can look at if that standard of care is not as effective or if there's no good options going forward.

There's criteria to be met to be in a clinical trial. You have to have the right set of circumstances that allows you to be in that trial, and the patient has to be fairly fit. The patient's safety is the utmost thing we have to be cognizant of. When patients ask me why I should be in a trial, I always say, Well, this is probably a very good option for you, number one.

But cancer care doesn't move forward unless we have patients who volunteer for this care. The reason we have the drugs available today is because we've had so many participants in clinical trials over the years, and those things are coming to fruition now. And now we're seeing the benefits of all those bench research that have gone on for all those years back in the day.

In today's world, cancer care has come a long way and we are helping be part of that solution for patients.