Receiving the news of a cancer diagnosis is never easy to hear, especially when it’s something you’ve experienced more than once.
Shawn Carlson is a wife, mom of four, and high school teacher.
While staying busy with family functions and school events, she has also been on a long journey battling cancer.
“Late in 2013, in December, is when I felt the lump, I went to the doctor and they ordered the mammogram,” said Carlson, an Avera patient. “Two days after Christmas in 2013 is when we found out that it was positive.”
Positive for breast cancer. She did all the necessary treatments and eventually moved into survivorship clinic.
“Then in 2021 was when we found out it had come back, and it had come back with a vengeance,” said Carlson. “My oldest daughter had recently gotten engaged and I have four daughters and I wanted to be there for them.”
“We started treatment in 2021 and everything seemed to be responding well and Dr. Jones kept his promise, I made it to my daughter’s wedding with hair on my head,” said Carlson.
But in November of 2022, she started having some symptoms that were out of the ordinary.
“She had had some odd sensations on her scalp, so it prompted a brain MRI and it was the first time they found disease in her brain,” said radiation oncologist, Kyle Arneson, MD, PhD. “On the MRI we probably saw more than 30 lesions and they were scattered throughout the brain.”
“We were scared because you hear you’ve got cancer in your brain and then that’s over, that’s end game in my mind,” said Carlson.
“We wanted to come up with a way how you can treat the lesions that you can see on the MRI, but how can you ensure there’s brain-directed treatment throughout the entire brain to keep any new lesions from emerging,” said Arneson.
Dr. Arneson decided to use Gamma Knife to treat the lesions.
“We needed a stereotactic frame that actually was held to her head, so we work with the neurosurgery team for that,” said Arneson. “When they put that frame on the head with the neurosurgery team patients are given conscious sedation, they do have some relaxation medications in them.”
“They treated 20 spots which that meant for each spot I think he said was like 12 or 15 minutes that the radiation would be on each spot and so that meant I would be in the procedure for 3 hours,” said Carlson.
While Gamma Knife was used to treat the larger lesions, another treatment is being used to bridge the blood brain barrier.
“Our bodies are set up to have this barrier that keeps our blood and our central nervous system separate, it helps to keep it so we don’t have infections and other bad, toxic things that cross over into our brains and gives us a bit of protection,” said Avera breast medical oncologist, Jason Jones, MD. “Now we have new HER2 medicines that, for a specific type of breast cancer that is HER2 positive, actually crosses the blood brain barrier very well and can even treat the disease at times even without radiation therapies, so it allows the Gamma Knife to work and then we actually prevent disease from coming back over time and hopefully for a long time.”
“The lesions we targeted with Gamma Knife either resolved fully or scarred down and Dr. Jones’ therapies are being effective, other lesions that we didn’t target are essentially gone and we haven’t seen any new lesions since,” said Arneson.
And that’s some good news in a journey filled with lots of ups and downs.
“Everyone always told me when I was going through this that whenever they see me that I always have a smile on my face, and I’ve always gone into it thinking you can be bitter or you can be better and I guess I always try to focus on living,” said Carlson.
