BODY / HEALTH SIDEBAR

Part of the Grand Experiment

BY KATHY LaTOUR

An advocate learns firsthand about heart trouble arising decades after cancer treatment

Ellen Stovall, a longtime leader and activist for the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, underwent full-body radiation for Hodgkin’s disease 37 years ago. In 2006 she went to the emergency room for what she thought was a heart attack.

After a medical odyssey to get to the bottom of her diagnosis, Stovall knew she was in uncharted territory.

“By this time I had talked to enough researchers to know that when they were looking at my heart, they were comparing it to one from an average 60-year-old woman,” Stovall says. “But I’m not.”

Many physicians, she says, haven’t seen people with a cancer history, and are unfamiliar with the various health risks that arrive post-treatment for cancer.

“We are among the first generation of survivors who are part of a grand experiment,” says Stovall. ...

[THIS STORY APPEARS IN FULL IN THE SPRING 2008 ISSUE OF HEAL]