FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- In 2017, Katrena Rockeymore-Selig rushed to Broward Health Imperial Point convinced she was having a heart attack.
“I felt so much heaviness in my chest, so much pressure, it was like an elephant was sitting on me,” she recalls.
When the emergency room doctor at the Fort Lauderdale hospital took a chest X-ray, he saw fluid in her lungs. A test of the fluid revealed she had late-stage lung cancer.
“They told me I didn’t have long to live,” she says.
“I could see the fear in her eyes and I was scared, too,” says then-boyfriend, now-husband Bart Selig.
Flash forward
Five years later, Rockeymore-Selig sits on a recliner in her Fort Lauderdale apartment petting Violet, her gray-striped cat, showing a visitor her Shutterfly wedding album and announcing she is grateful to be alive.
Timing, luck and medical innovation contributed to the 48-year-old’s survival.
Doctors first drained the fluid from her lungs and started her on chemotherapy pills. As she struggled with finding a drug therapy that worked without affecting her liver, the Fort Lauderdale woman learned that not only had the cancer settled in the lining of the lungs, but it also had spread to three tumors in her brain.
Fortunately, Broward Health North had a CyberKnife, a robotic therapy device. “It delivers a high dose of radiation to a small target and avoids healthier parts of the brain,” said Dr. Evan Landau, a radiation oncologist.
Landau said he used the CyberKnife on Rockeymore-Selig three times in one week, targeting a different spot for each use.
Moments before the surgery in February 2019, Rockeymore and Selig joined hands and prayed.
“I’m a very spiritual person,” she says.
Landau said most patients tolerate radiation therapy well, but he warns them of side effects. Rockeymore-Selig says she suffered a burnt scalp, swollen stomach, headache, vomiting, nerve pain in her legs, and extreme lethargy.
Slowly, most of the side effects have gone away. On her own, she has chosen to drink beet juice daily and adopt a vegan diet, which she says give her more energy.
Now, she sees Landau every six months and there is no sign of a tumor. “This was not an easy diagnosis but she has such a positive attitude, such a great attitude,” he says.
Targeted lung cancer treatment
Had Rockeymore-Selig’s diagnosis come a year or two earlier, she likely would not be alive.
Dr. Mehmet F. Hepgur, a hematologist-oncologist with the Broward Health Physician Group took Rockeymore-Selig on as a patient in 2019, just as drugs for certain kinds of lung cancer were coming on the market. Hepgur tried a newly approved oral drug for people with a specific genetic mutation. “She had a mutation called ALK that made her a candidate,” Hepgur says.
A targeted drug therapy differs from chemotherapy in the way it works. Targeted therapy attacks specific proteins that help tumors grow, whereas chemotherapy can also kill the normal cells when eliminating the cancer cells. About 25% of lung cancer patients have a mutation that can be treated with a targeted drug.
Over the last five years, Rockeymore-Selig has been on lorlatinib, which treats adult patients with advanced, non-small cell lung cancer whose tumors are ALK-positive. The drug was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for lung cancer in late 2018, and Rockeymore-Selig became one of Hepgur’s first patients to take it.
“It basically blocks the tumor growth, targets the mutation that drives cancer growth, essentially lets the tumor die, and puts the patient in remission,” Hepgur says.
Lorlatinib, sold under the brand name Lorbrena, also has small molecules that can penetrate into the brain and target the cancer there, too, he said.
“These new agents only target the mutation ... it’s very focused,” Hepgur says. “Although they have some side effects, you do not see the side effects you traditionally see in the more toxic chemotherapy.”
Hepgur says he is inspired by Rockeymore-Selig’s response: “She’s been cancer-free for a long time, and she hasn’t relapsed, and she had brain metastasis. If this agent wasn’t available and she wasn’t responding, probably she would have been dead after a year or so.”
Lung cancer is one of the most common and most deadly types of cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. The organization’s yearly estimates for lung cancer are 236,740 new cases and 130,180 deaths. It is one of the types of cancer where oral medications now work as a treatment, but only for some people who have specific mutations.
For candidates like Rockeymore-Selig, drug therapies allow for longer survival. She will need to stay on medications for the rest of her life.
“The CyberKnife and the target therapy complement each other,” Landau said. “It could be why she is doing so well.”
The patient’s tumultuous journey
Rockeymore-Selig talks to a guest in her sparsely furnished one-bedroom rental apartment and sighs as she details how the last five years have been filled with highs and lows. Her weight, which started at 137 pounds, climbed to 270 pounds when she became weak and inactive, but has since dropped to 160 pounds after she began walking three to five miles a day.
She married Selig a year ago. He takes her to appointments, manages her medicines, and earns the small income that helps pay for the apartment and various needs not covered by Medicaid. Rockeymore-Selig says she can’t hold a job because her health is unpredictable.
“My quality of life is not where I want it to be, but I am grateful to be alive,” she said. “I have days with depression. It’s a lot that comes along with having cancer that people don’t know. Sometimes you just have to have a little faith. If you are here, that means it’s not your time.”
Rockeymore-Selig says she is self-conscious about several missing teeth, yet her smile grows wide when she talks about her cancer status. “I just went to get a CT scan and brain scan and I am cancer-free. They can’t even see where I had cancer in my brain.”
Every four months, when Rockeymore-Selig gets scanned or gets her port flushed, she takes it upon herself to boost other’s spirits. “I do a lot when I go to the cancer center,” she says. “I see people sitting there with no support system. I sit and talk with them and encourage them.”
Rockeymore-Selig, whose family is in Wisconsin, said her husband has been her rock.
“I am glad that the results are what they are. I am blessed,” Selig says, as he places Violet the cat next to his wife for comfort. “She is an inspiration to so many people. She’s an inspiration to me.”
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