Each time the metastatic breast cancer spreads too deeply into Sayde Patel’s lungs, she changes clinical trials. And after six switches in 10 years, she maintains a glass-half-full attitude about the process.
The way Patel sees it, she’s lucky to be living at a time when so many clinical trials are available to help women and men with metastatic (stage IV) cancers – individuals who, until recently, had little chance of long-term survival. Besides, Patel adds, if not for one seemingly ordinary chemotherapy infusion at the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers at Dana-Farber a few years back, she would never have met the baby of her family.
“I became friendly with a volunteer who gave me wonderful hand massages, and one day I told her how much I’ve always wanted a shih tzu puppy,” explains Patel, 54. It was fate: Hilda Santos, the volunteer, immediately connected Patel with her neighbor, who had three shih tzus and helped Patel find a puppy.
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