The retired medical assistant from Carl Junction, MO first noticed a lump on a date she still remembers, November 12, 2008.
“One morning I was taking a shower and found a lump on my inner thigh,” says Peasley. “I waited a couple of days for it to go away and it didn’t.”
A visit to her physician brought the possibility of the lump being an infected lymph node. However antibiotics did not make the lump go away. A biopsy soon after determined news she did not anticipate: a cancer diagnosis in the form of Burkitt-like lymphoma.
Burkitt-like lymphomas are fast-growing lymphomas that often are first noticed as a swelling of the lymph nodes. Often they have bone marrow and central nervous system involvement; fortunately this was not the case for Sarah.
“I was scared to death not knowing what was going to happen,” she says. “But my husband and I did some checking and we decided to go to SLU.”
Peasley and her husband traveled to SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital and began chemotherapy January 19, 2009. Several rounds of therapies were continued over the span of almost six months, as they went back and forth between southeast Missouri and St. Louis.
“It was worth it because the nursing staff was excellent and the doctor was always there when I needed him,” she says. “I still know them by name and feel comfortable with them.”
That doctor, Mark J. Fesler, MD, oncologist at Saint Louis University Cancer Center, says Peasley’s treatment is not uncommon for patients with her type of lymphoma.
“We had some initial difficulty but collected a sufficient number of stem cells to allow Sarah to undergo autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, a procedure that can be curative in certain subtypes of lymphoma,” says Dr. Fesler. The stem cells are collected from the blood after patient’s undergo a series of injections under the skin that bring the stem cells from bone marrow into the blood.
Dr. Fesler and his colleagues collected Peasley’s own stem cells for an autologous transplant of her own cells to rebuild her system after the significant chemotherapy treatments. Dr. Fesler and his colleagues at Saint Louis University Hospital have performed hundreds of such transplants and recently announced a new outpatient center for such therapies, allowing patients to go home every day after treatment rather than experience a lengthy hospital stay.
For Peasley, that stay began March 23, 2010. She was transplanted and spent several weeks at the hospital.
“Everything went well,” she says. “The doctors watched me closely to make sure I was OK.
“I feel like I owe my life to Dr. Fesler getting me through it and getting me in remission.”
Overall, Peasley has advice for those in the fight against cancer.
“Stay strong, always check for lumps and don’t be afraid to ask for a second opinion,” she says.
