Carrie Stoneburner, a former long-time Phoenix-area resident, now spends her days in’s the northeastern mountain forests in Payson, Ariz., enjoying the cooler temperatures with her husband and two big “sloppy” dogs.
It’s a seemingly idyllic life. But things have not really been that easy for the 67-year-old retired IT systems analyst for the Arizona Supreme Court. She has suffered multiple cancer recurrences, loss of hair, digestive and thyroid problems, nausea and fatigue. It all started seven years ago when Stoneburner started having uncontrollable coughing attacks.
She thought at first it was some kind of lung infection. But when she visited her doctor seeking antibiotics, the congestion in her lungs turned out to be just a symptom of a more concerning medical condition. The fluid that filled 80% of the right lung was a result of cancer, but not lung cancer. After a series of tests and scans, she was diagnosed in March 2016 with late-stage ovarian cancer that had already spread to her lungs.
Initially treated by Dr. Mike Janicek, now a physician at HonorHealth’s Scottsdale Shea Medical Center, Stoneburner received chemotherapy to shrink her tumor before surgery to remove her cancerous ovaries. She also received an additional post-surgical course of chemotherapy treatment.
“I got a clean bill of health and went back to work,” she said. But a subsequent scan in early 2017 showed the cancer had returned and was growing. After subsequent therapies no longer worked, Dr. Janicek suggested Stoneburner consider investigational clinical trials at the HonorHealth Research Institute.
“It sounded like the way to go,” she said, adding that by late 2017 she began receiving a targeted therapy that recruited her own immune system to help fight the cancer.
Since then, her aggressive cancer spread to her liver, lymph nodes and brain.
Stoneburner on 6th clinical trial at institute
She now is on her sixth clinical trial, one that employs a combination of two immunotherapies, which she credits with saving her life.
Before acceptance to this clinical trial sponsored by Agenus, she was required to have a clear MRI scan of her brain, and it was those tests that discovered her brain metastasis. She subsequently completed radiation therapy, which destroyed the tumor. Stoneburner said that if it wasn’t for the requirements of the Agenus clinical trial, she wouldn’t have known she had brain cancer as she was asymptomatic before the MRI.
Under the trial’s protocol, Stoneburner was given a PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor, which interferes with the cancers’ ability to “hijack” natural immune defenses. Cancers can cloak themselves, like a stealth fighter jet, making them invisible by evading the immune system’s checkpoints.
These checkpoints are designed to stimulate or inhibit immune responses, helping ensure the immune cells protect the body against disease, but without attacking healthy cells. Checkpoint inhibitors remove the cancer’s cloaking mechanism and allow the body’s natural immune system to again attack and kill the cancer.
Stoneburner’s liver cancer has cleared, and most of the cancer in her lymph nodes has disappeared.
“It’s fabulous. I’ve had extremely great results. I’m very lucky. It saved my life,” Stoneburner said of the treatment supervised by Dr. Michael Gordon, a Medical Oncologist and the research institute’s Chief Medical Officer.
While no longer suffering any symptoms and leading an active retirement life, Stoneburner knows she’s not out of the woods, yet.
“It’s not a cure. The goal is to keep me alive long enough until a cure is found. Where I’m at — at a research hospital — I will have access to a cure. I could be part of a trial that does find a cure,” she said, citing her trust in Dr. Gordon to guide her. “He’s such a great doctor. I’m so impressed with him. He’s very patient and spends a lot of time answering my questions. I’m very impressed with his knowledge and his dedication to his patients. I trust him and his staff.”
For now, Stoneburner enjoys hikes with her “two big sloppy dogs,” Dresden and Molly, and fishing with her husband, Jim, at nearby Woods Canyon Lake.
“I have a great quality of life. I’m loving being on immunotherapy,” she said. “I’m taking life one day at a time.”
