Every month you’ll find Glori Schuneman at the Prairie Center receiving her maintenance treatments. It’s part of her treatment after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma over a year ago.
Early last year, she noticed back pain that wasn’t going away and started seeking answers.
“The PET scan came out clear so nothing had metastasized or spread and the bone marrow biopsy confirmed I had 60% malignancy in my bone marrow, so that’s when I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma,” said Schuneman.
“It’s a type of blood cancer. We are not sure what causes multiple myeloma in the first place, it actually just represents 1% of all the cancers. It’s a relatively rare cancer, but it can be pretty serious,” said Xavier Andrade-Gonzalez, MD with Avera Hematology, Transplant and Cellular Therapy.
“I was scared to death, never ever did I think that I would be associated with having cancer, never. My uncle passed away from multiple myeloma 20 years ago exactly from my diagnosis, so I was petrified,” said Schuneman.
But Dr. Andrade-Gonzalez assured her of her treatment options.
“Treatment is individualized nowadays. We have a lot of modern treatments and we can adapt and tailor our treatments to the person that is in front of us, for the most part if someone is in good health, we recommend a few rounds of chemotherapy and immunotherapy, followed by a stem cell transplant and followed by low doses of maintenance chemotherapy,” said Andrade-Gonzalez.
Part of her treatment included a blood and marrow transplant, also known as a stem cell transplant. Dr. Andrade-Gonzalez describes this as a reset of the immune system.
For this type of cancer, she was able to use her own stem cells.
“What we do is first get the stem cells from the person. We use some shots to mobilize the cells from where they live inside the bones into our blood, then we get them and freeze them and get them ready. After that we get the person in the hospital, we give high doses of chemo, the idea behind that is to get rid of any cancer cell that is remaining,” said Andrade-Gonzalez. “Once we give the stem cells back, they find their way back home and repopulate the person’s immune system and that helps attack the cancer and get a new immune system to attack or fight off infections.”
“It was a little rough but very tolerable, when it’s saving your life it’s nothing in the grand scheme,” said Schuneman.
She’s officially a year post-transplant and recently received good news.
“I had a bone marrow biopsy and a PET scan, everything came back perfect and Dr. Andrade said everything, my counts, are better than they have been since diagnosis, so he said everything is moving forward beautifully,” said Schuneman.
Glori credits her family’s support to help her through her cancer journey. And she now continues with maintenance treatments.
“Wonderful support system, I have two children, their families, and grandchildren, my husband has been wonderful and the kids have, too,” said Schuneman. “Everything could go in such a different direction and it hasn’t. So take your wins where you can get them and feel blessed and go on to tomorrow and hope that it continues.”
Learn more about cancer care at Avera
