New technology gives Roper cancer patient hope

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) - Cutting-edge technology to treat brain cancer is now being used at Roper St. Francis. It's a new mobile electronic device that's being used to treat brain tumors.

Karl Morris held his wife's hand tightly on Tuesday as they sat in Roper Hospital. Linda Morris became the hospital's first patient to receive cutting edge technology for brain cancer.

"I mean if I've gone this far, I might as well," said Linda as she chuckled.

In 2012, Linda Morris was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most common but deadliest form of brain tumors.

"I found her having a seizure one Saturday morning when I went to wake her up," said Karl Morris. "We got her to the hospital and she was doing pretty good. A few minutes later the doctor came back in and said she has a brain tumor and I said, 'Oh my goodness.' He said we're calling in a specialist to take a look and see what we got really."

Linda Morris had a portion of her brain removed a few days later and went through several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. But, a year later doctors said the cancer was beginning to grow back. Linda Morris was put on a different type of chemotherapy but doctors still wanted to try something new.

"She said this would be a good time to start the Novocure on her because we have a back-up plan and a lot of people have good results from it. No side effects to it," said Karl Morris.

Doctors say NovoTTF was FDA approved in 2010.

"It's actually very personalized medicine," said Dr. Ashley Sumrall, an oncologist. "You take the patient's MRI of the brain and you translate that into a map and you use that map to apply stickers and ceramic disks to the scalp and that delivers fields at a rate of 200 per second."

Karl Morris applied the device to his wife's scalp for the first time as a way to learn how to administer the technology at home.

"We did a survey of about 450 patients across the country and we found that their social skills improved, their cognitive skills improved," said Dr. Sumrall. "So, any time you can have patients that can live longer than two years or longer than five years, we consider that to be a success."

The two-pound device is held in a four-pound bag that Linda Morris can carry either like a purse or book bag.

"I thought with the backpack they would think I'm in college again," said Linda Morris jokingly.

Linda Morris has already out-lived the average one-and-a-half year life expectancy of patients with a similar diagnosis.