08/04/2024
Sam describes herself as a "walking, talking, testifying miracle." Her health care experience over a six-month period can explain why.
After taking a trip to Florida with her husband and encountering long flight delays on the way home, Sam developed a bad cough.
A month later, the cough still hadn't gone away. Sam called her primary care physician, Charles Gerlach, MD. Dr. Gerlach looked at her scans and told her that in addition to her pneumonia, she had a mass in her lung. He referred her to Troy Allen Moritz, DO.
"A few days later, he gave me a call and asked me how I was doing after the biopsy," Sam says. "I told him I felt good. I'd been coughing up a lot of phlegm since the biopsy. My chest wasn't as tight.
“He said, 'I'm glad to hear that. But you have fourth-stage lung cancer that's spreading.'
"Right away, I asked him, 'Are you talking to the right person?' And he said, 'Yes, it's you, Sam.'"
Sam, a faith-based woman, says she prayed for guidance about what to do. She decided to keep her care at UPMC West Shore instead of going somewhere else.
“From the very beginning, I told all of my doctors, 'Just so you know, I'm going to be obedient, and I know God put the right people in my pathway,'" she says.
More scans showed that Sam had a mass in her brain. Worried that meant the cancer had spread to her brain, doctors scheduled her for emergency brain surgery. Scans also revealed she had problems with her spine and would need spinal surgery a week after her brain surgery.
Both the brain surgery and spinal surgery were successful. Sam went home the day after each procedure with no major complications. The tumor in her brain wasn't cancerous, confirming that her lung cancer was stage III — not stage IV.
After recovering from her two surgeries, Sam began chemotherapy for her lung cancer. She had a port placed in her chest and went through three months of extensive chemo.
The chemotherapy was effective, shrinking the tumor enough that doctors could perform a lobectomy. They removed the lobe of her left lung where the cancer was.
Today, Sam is cancer-free. She's thankful for the care she received across the board at UPMC in Central Pa.
