Suzanne BeHanna initially turned down an experimental but potentially lifesaving cancer treatment.
Three years ago, the newlywed, then 62, was sick with stage 4 lymphoma, sick from two failed rounds of chemotherapy, and sick of living in a trailer park near the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. It was fall 2019, and treatment had forced her to migrate 750 miles east from rural New Mexico, where she’d settled only months before her diagnosis.
Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy might have been appealing to BeHanna if it were available closer to her home. But it is offered only at major transplant hospitals.
