‘Even Stevens’ star Christy Carlson Romano tests positive for cancer
“Stevens” star Christy Carlson Romano has tested positive for cancer. The actress, who is currently seeking a PET scan, revealed the news on Instagram on February 17th.
Arika Wallace never thought she would still be here. In fact, in 2012 she was told she might have less than a year to live.
The now 49-year-old mother of two, who lives in Kansas, realized something was wrong when she was 33 and noticed she was bleeding during sex. Her gynecologist at the time told her there was likely a problem with her intrauterine device.
Two years later, she learned that was not the case.
Instead, the bleeding was caused by bleeding from a tumor roughly the size of the baby’s head. Her annual Pap smear had missed it. She had stage 3 cervical cancer.
“It was a complete shock,” Wallace says.
Wallace’s prognosis was not good. She underwent a total of 18 chemotherapy treatments and 31 radiation treatments. However, in January 2012, scans revealed that her cancer had spread. A month later, doctors saw the worst. It was no longer possible to cure cancer. She probably had less than a year to live.
“That was hard to take, but as a mother and a wife, I said, ‘I have too much to live for. I can’t accept that,'” Wallace said. “So I started chemotherapy to control the symptoms and buy time.”
In May 2012, Wallace received news that changed everything. A clinical trial in Maryland needed candidates to test a new cervical cancer treatment. This study was conducted through a collaboration with the National Cancer Institute, Rutgers Cancer Institute, and RWJBarnabas Health.
Wallace was a perfect fit and was one of the first participants in the trial.
At that time, no one knew what the treatment would be.
Wallace has been cancer-free for more than 13 years.
Now she is raising awareness about cervical cancer and the current state of the fight against this disease. And she’s doing this treatment with the doctor who treated her during the trial, Dr. Christian Heinrichs, co-director of the Duncan McMillan and Nancy McMillan Cancer Immunology and Metabolism Center of Excellence at Rutgers Cancer Institute.
“You have to be strong mentally. You have to be strong in integrity,” Wallace says. “My mindset was that it’s up to the doctors to decide when my life ends here. That’s not the case. I mean, they can scientifically say there’s nothing they can do to help me and I’ll be dead within a year. But ultimately, that’s not their order.”
“I quickly ran out of options.”
Cervical cancer is notoriously difficult to treat, Heinrichs said.
The disease, most commonly caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), has a five-year relative survival rate of 67% for all people diagnosed, according to the National Cancer Institute. For people who are diagnosed after the disease has spread to nearby tissues, organs, or regional lymph nodes, the rate is 60%. For people diagnosed after the disease has spread to distant parts of the body, the rate is 19%.
When Wallace arrived in Maryland, “I quickly ran out of options,” she says. She became one of the lucky ones.
During Wallace’s trial, Heinrichs surgically removed one of the tumors and then grew immune cells, or T cells, trained to fight large numbers of tumors in the lab. He pumped the most effective one into Wallace’s body to fight off the rest of his cancer.
There are drawbacks to this treatment, Heinrichs says. Not only does it require surgery, but it also takes time to generate cancer-fighting cells. It is not approved as standard treatment and research continues. Currently, Heinrichs said his clinical trials are focused on using genetically modified cells taken from patients’ blood to avoid surgery and fight cancer.
Heinrichs was immediately struck by Wallace’s positive attitude. This was essential in his work.
“I’m trying to eradicate that cancer 100 percent, and I really need people to join me in this effort,” Heinrichs says. “I say that because it can be hard. The treatment can be hard. The other life events that happen while you’re fighting cancer can be hard. And I, I’m committed, and I feel like I want you to be committed, too.”
Wallace recalled days during the trial when he was too weak to get out of bed. Unlike standard chemotherapy, she says, with this new treatment, doctors couldn’t say for sure when she would start feeling well again.
But even if the trial didn’t turn out in her favor, Wallace said it would still have been worth it to let her loved ones know that she tried everything.
“If I was going to endure this, I had to prove to my kids and my family that I threw it in the kitchen sink and I gave it everything I could,” she says. “If it worked, that’s great. We did it. And what if it didn’t work? Then they knew I went down in a big fight.”
“You’re saving grandma.”
The big fight paid off. By September 2012, more than 50 percent of Wallace’s tumor was gone, she says. By December she was cancer-free.
When Wallace was first diagnosed, her children were 8 and 12 years old. They are now 23 and 27 years old. She lives about two hours from Kansas City and enjoys being a grandmother to her grandchildren, who are 2 years old and 1 month old.
“Holding my 2-year-old grandson for the first time two years ago was pretty surreal for me and my husband, because we never expected to be here,” Wallace said. “But we are, and we’re just trying to enjoy life and continue to tell people to advocate for themselves and continue to inspire others.”
When Wallace reached 10 years of being cancer-free, he celebrated with a “beat cancer” party. Heinrichs and his children were present. He and Wallace remain close friends.
Wallace cried as she recalled the day one of her sons, then 10, looked up at the doctors and said, “Thank you for saving my mother.” For her, that alone sums up the importance of what researchers like Heinrichs are working on.
“I told him, ‘That’s what you guys are doing,'” she says. “‘Researchers, you’re saving your mother. You’re saving your wife. You’re saving your grandmother.'”
