Grant Ellsworth Fights Hodgkin's Lymphoma
Thirteen months is a long time to go without a good night's sleep. The torture of sleeping only three hours at a time was making Grant Ellsworth fear that this ordeal would last forever. He blamed the insomnia on night sweats and the itching he felt everywhere on his body. Ceaseless, day-and-night itching that would only relent if he took a cold shower.
Grant was 24, and a junior at Brigham Young University, in Utah. The question of how to stop the itching, which had started in 2001, confounded nearly a dozen dermatologists, allergists and ear, nose and throat specialists. One doctor prescribed more exposure to ultra-violet light; Grant remembers that his regular visits to a tanning salon gave him a brown glow in the cold months of a Utah winter.
"I was starting to feel very frustrated when none of the treatments or prescriptions from the doctors made any difference to my condition," says Grant, who was also trying to get through an aggressive load of electrical engineering courses at the time. "After over a year of these ineffective treatments, I think even the doctors were feeling pretty frustrated that I wasn't getting any better."
Finally, a Diagnosis
A dermatologist at the University of Utah Hospital, in Salt Lake City, Utah, finally struck upon the idea to refer Grant to an oncologist. The results of a regular X-ray examination revealed that he had Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a type of cancer that happens to often cause an insatiable feeling of itching.
"It may sound unusual, but more than anything I felt relief. Doctors had finally identified what was going wrong inside me and could recommend a treatment that would help," remembers Grant. "Coping with the idea that I was only 24-years old and had cancer was rattling, of course, but I think I was basically upbeat about my chances for recovery."
Though a committed, "A", student, Grant had no other choice but to withdraw indefinitely from BYU for medical reasons. He started an intense regimen of chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments, which provided almost immediate palliative relief from the itching. Freed from the burden of scratchy skin, he nonetheless felt intense nausea and other grueling side effects that commonly affect cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.
He managed to fight through the experience and come out with a clean bill of health. After four months of treatment, his doctors believed the cancer was beaten.
Grant completed his college degree and took an engineering job in Salt Lake City, but realized, before long, that this life-changing experience with cancer had also changed what he wanted from his life, especially in a professional sense. His frequent visits to the hospital and his interactions with doctors had inspired him to become a physician and tend to the sick as, in his words, "my heroic doctors had cared for me."
Enthusiastic, Grant enrolled in biochemistry, anatomy, physiology, and the full battery of science courses that are prerequisites for applying to medical school. He was aiming to start his four year degree by the time he was 29.
The Cancer Recurs
Again, in the midst of his coursework, doctors revealed that his health problems—which included less intense itching—were due to a recurring case of lymphatic cancer. Grant's treatments would include chemo and radiation therapy in addition to a bone marrow transplant.
By this time, the Huntsman Cancer Center in Salt Lake City had upgraded its technology for treating cancer with radiotherapy. They had installed technology from Varian Medical Systems that could deliver intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), a new approach for delivering radiation beams more accurately than had been possible before. With IMRT, doctors can shape the beams to match the three-dimensional shape and size of the targeted tissues, and spare the delicate surrounding tissues.
"My doctor told me that I couldn't have been treated with radiotherapy if it weren't for IMRT," says Grant, who, even in the hospital, was still making plans for his career. "My doctor was very encouraging and told me I wouldn't have a problem being admitted into a good medical school."
The same week that doctors completed Grant's five week course of radiotherapy, he took the MCAT, a standardized admission test required to enter American medical schools. His prognosis looked good, and about a year later in the fall of 2008, he entered as a first year medical student at the University of Utah.
Grant is now considering a career in radiation oncology.
