Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost exclusively caused by exposure to asbestos. Due to the long latency period associated with this disease, symptoms of mesothelioma often arise several decades after initial exposure to asbestos. As a result, patients with mesothelioma rarely live longer than two years after diagnosis.

Mesothelioma treatments have little effect on the disease when it is detected late, and most are palliative rather than curative. However, Heather Von St. James has done exactly that—two and a half years after surgery to remove mesothelioma tumors, she remains miraculously cancer-free.

Having been diagnosed with the deadly cancer just three months after the birth of her daughter Lily, Von St. James says that dying just wasn’t an option.

She was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma when doctors discovered a large lump in her left lung. Shortly after diagnosis, she underwent radical surgery which removed her entire left lung, the lining of her heart, half of her diaphragm, her sixth rib, and several lymph nodes.

Two and a half years later, the radical surgery has paid off: Von St. James remains free of the debilitating cancer and believes she’s been completely cured.

According to the National Cancer Institute, around 2,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma in America every year. With an average latency period of two to five decades, most people who develop mesothelioma in the twenty-first century were actually exposed to asbestos between the 1960s and 1980s.

Another trend is found in an increasing number of people who are developing mesothelioma even though they never experienced occupational exposure to asbestos. Von St. James is likely one of those who experienced what is known as secondary asbestos exposure.

She remembers her father, who worked as a construction laborer for Ainsworth-Benning, coming home with his work clothing covered in white dust. Von St. James’s father worked with and around asbestos-containing construction products, but at the time they were unaware that asbestos exposure is harmful and should be avoided at all costs.

Von St. James has attempted to sue Ainsworth-Benning and other companies that manufacture asbestos-containing products, but she has thus far experienced no success, as the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled the construction company has too little connection to Minnesota to be sued in that state.

This October marks the two-year anniversary of the end of her mesothelioma treatment. After her radical surgery on February 2, 2006, she completed a twelve-week course of chemotherapy. She receives a CT scan every four months, and so far, the cancer has not returned. Von St. James plans to be the first mesothelioma patient to live a long, full life—she wants to live another fifty years.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 11:46 am and is filed under Mesothelioma Treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. Responses are currently closed, but you trackback from your own site.