For two years, clinical psychologist Camilla Row Elliott thought she had severe heartburn and was treated by three doctors before being diagnosed with stage 1a gastric adenocarcinoma in 2018. She told City of Hope, “In South Korea, they start testing for gastric cancer at 35. Had I lived in Korea …” Yet, she initially kept the news quiet to protect her husband’s career. “I didn’t want anyone who was considering hiring him to think, well he can’t do it because he’s got a sick wife at home,” Elliott told Orange Coast Magazine. The mother-of-two was optimistic when she was first diagnosed because the cancer was still in its infancy. So, Elliott opted to have her stomach and 47 of her lymph nodes removed, believing it was unlikely she would have a reoccurrence.
Two of Elliott’s lymph nodes came back as having tested positive for cancer, and she was upstaged to stage 1b. At the recommendation of her medical team, Elliott underwent chemotherapy. She told Hope for Stomach Cancer, “I completed eight rounds of FOLFOX6. I was declared NED, cancer-free, in remission! It was during this process I also had genetic testing done and I discovered that I had a germline CDH1 VUS mutation.” City of Hope, a leading cancer research center, reports that CDH-1 is the leading risk factor for stomach cancer and that Asian Americans are three times more likely to develop the condition.
