Medical Stories
A Leap of Faith
S6 • E3 May 24, 2024
At first, Karen, 56, didn't realize her back pain was anything serious until she suddenly lost all feeling in her legs and became paralyzed below her waist. That's when she discovered she had diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), one of the most common forms of the disease, according to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. But as she tells Medical Stories at her home in Gadsden, Alabama, she decided she had to fight the disease and learn to walk again, using the two loves of her life as motivation: music, and her family. Medical Stories then heads to Montauk, New York, where former court clerk Chuck, 64, shares his experience of battling mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), which the National Library of Medicine identifies as one of the rarest forms of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Chuck's worry grew when his MCL returned a few years after the initial treatment appeared to cure the disease. But thanks to the efforts of his wife, Beth, he pursues an alternative method to fight his MCL that gives him a chance to have a cancer-free future. A Leap of Faith also features in-depth commentary from renowned experts Amitkumar Mehta, MD, Hematology Oncologist at The Kirklin Clinic of UAB Hospital, Principal Investigator of Innovative Clinical Trials, UAB, and Peter Martin, MD, Chief, Lymphoma Program at Weill Cornell Medicine.
