This documentary is educational programming produced with financial support from Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca. The content of this program has been determined independently.
For nurse and cancer patient I’Quasia Russell, the tables are turned.
“Being a nurse I’ve always tried to help people, take care of them, and now, I’m in treatment, and I need someone to take care of me,” she says.
When l’Quasia was diagnosed with cancer at age 33, she couldn’t bear to tell her 7-year-old daughter, Kayla.
“When I was first diagnosed I didn’t tell my daughter at all,” l’Quasia says, noting “I never pictured being in this predicament.”
Now 38, l’Quasia has metastatic breast cancer that has spread to her liver and brain. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy, after trying other treatments.
“If you try a treatment and then it doesn’t take as well as you expected it to take, so now you’re trying another treatment and you’re like, ‘What if this doesn’t work? Am I gonna run out of treatment options where it’s just I’m going to have to deal with what’s next?'”
l’Quasia started ENHERTU at the beginning of 2020 and says “it’s been great so far.”
“The other drugs, I would be on them for a few months and it would stop working and then we’d start a new one and then that would stop working,” she remembers. “So the ENHERTU, I’ve been on it for a year, no new tumors, no new growth, no growth anywhere else.”
ENHERTU (generic name fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki) received federal approval in December 2019 for the treatment of adults with unresectable (unable to be removed with surgery) or metastatic (when cancer cells spread to other parts of the body) HER2-positive breast cancer who were not responding to other treatments. The drug was developed by Daiichi Sankyo which provided financial support to SurvivorNet for the development of this content. ENHERTU is a HER2-directed antibody and topoisomerase inhibitor conjugate, meaning that the drug targets the changes in HER2 that help the cancer grow, divide and spread, and is linked to a topoisomerise inhibitor, which is a chemical compound that is toxic to cancer cells.
l’Quasia says the drug has given her new hope. “ENHERTU has really changed me,” she says. “I’m back in school, and I definitely feel confident that I have more of an option as far as being there with my kids and making memories.”
She’s looking forward to seeing her son JR graduate college and Kayla graduate high school.
“I’m super excited, and I have my fingers crossed that I will be there for my kids in the future,” she says.
This documentary is educational programming produced with financial support from Daiichi Sankyo and AstraZeneca. The content of this program has been determined independently.
For nurse and cancer patient I’Quasia Russell, the tables are turned.
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“Being a nurse I’ve always tried to help people, take care of them, and now, I’m in treatment, and I need someone to take care of me,” she says.
When l’Quasia was diagnosed with cancer at age 33, she couldn’t bear to tell her 7-year-old daughter, Kayla.
“When I was first diagnosed I didn’t tell my daughter at all,” l’Quasia says, noting “I never pictured being in this predicament.”
Now 38, l’Quasia has metastatic breast cancer that has spread to her liver and brain. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy, after trying other treatments.
“If you try a treatment and then it doesn’t take as well as you expected it to take, so now you’re trying another treatment and you’re like, ‘What if this doesn’t work? Am I gonna run out of treatment options where it’s just I’m going to have to deal with what’s next?'”
l’Quasia started ENHERTU at the beginning of 2020 and says “it’s been great so far.”
“The other drugs, I would be on them for a few months and it would stop working and then we’d start a new one and then that would stop working,” she remembers. “So the ENHERTU, I’ve been on it for a year, no new tumors, no new growth, no growth anywhere else.”
ENHERTU (generic name fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki) received federal approval in December 2019 for the treatment of adults with unresectable (unable to be removed with surgery) or metastatic (when cancer cells spread to other parts of the body) HER2-positive breast cancer who were not responding to other treatments. The drug was developed by Daiichi Sankyo which provided financial support to SurvivorNet for the development of this content. ENHERTU is a HER2-directed antibody and topoisomerase inhibitor conjugate, meaning that the drug targets the changes in HER2 that help the cancer grow, divide and spread, and is linked to a topoisomerise inhibitor, which is a chemical compound that is toxic to cancer cells.
l’Quasia says the drug has given her new hope. “ENHERTU has really changed me,” she says. “I’m back in school, and I definitely feel confident that I have more of an option as far as being there with my kids and making memories.”
She’s looking forward to seeing her son JR graduate college and Kayla graduate high school.
“I’m super excited, and I have my fingers crossed that I will be there for my kids in the future,” she says.
