Health Watch: Breast Cancer
Spirit of a Survivor Meet the terminal breast cancer patient chairing this year’s Komen Race and the MD trying to research his way to a longer life for her. By LAURIE ALLEN + Photo by JODI MILLER
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n March 2016, Tori Geib was working as a chef at Ohio State University’s James Cancer Hospital and living with undiagnosed Stage 4 breast cancer. Hundreds of miles away, Dr. Daniel Stover was completing his training as a research fellow in cell biology at Harvard Medical School and had recently joined the faculty at DanaFarber Cancer Institute in Boston. Three years later, the two are working together to overcome an ominous, hard-to-treat cancer that claims a disproportionate number of breast cancer patients every year. After their paths led them both back to The James at Ohio State, Stover became Geib’s oncologist. It was the week of her 30th birthday when Geib learned she had metastatic cancer that had spread to her liver, lung and bones. Her back pain, which had been misdiagnosed earlier, turned out to be a vertebra that was 70 percent crushed. Her disease is terminal. When she passed the three-year mark since diagnosis this year, Geib outlived most patients with metastatic cancer, who succumb to the disease about two years after being diagnosed. Geib has triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which accounts for about 15 percent of all breast cancers. It is most common in younger women, African-American women and those with the BrCa1 gene mutation. It’s
88 ColumbusCEO l May 2019
Victoria Geib and Daniel Stover, MD also the most difficult to treat. In TNBC, the three most common receptors that fuel breast cancer, estrogen, progesterone and the HER2 protein, aren’t present. For that reason, hormone therapies and many chemotherapy agents don’t work. Furthermore, triple-negative cancers are more aggressive, recur faster and develop resistance to chemotherapy,
leaving patients and doctors in a race against time. Geib responded to treatment for two years, but her disease began to progress again. When her oncologist at the time decided to leave her practice, Geib was devastated. “As a cancer patient, that relationship is one of the biggest bonds you have,” she says. In searching for a new phy-
Victoria (Tori) Geib
Daniel Stover, MD
AGE: 33
AGE: 38
HONORARY CHAIR: 2019 Komen Columbus Race for the Cure
ACADEMIC TITLE: Assistant professor,
EDUCATION: B.A. in Criminal Justice from Mount Vernon Nazarene University; associate’s degree in baking and pastry arts from Columbus State Community College ADVOCACY: Awareness, support and
research funding for metastatic breast cancer; news and media advocacy, including Good Morning America and Health.com; legislative advocacy
LIVING BEYOND BREAST CANCER:
Hear My Voice outreach program advocate and 2019 program mentor. She lives in Bellefontaine, where she receives love and support from family and friends. WEBSITE: metastaticmillennial.org
medical oncology and biomedical informatics and medical oncologist with Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center-Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute; member of the translational therapeutics program
EDUCATION/BACKGROUND:
M.D., Vanderbilt University, where he also completed his residency. Fellowship, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston. Prior to joining OSU, he was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and saw breast cancer patients at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. PERSONAL: Resides in Upper Arlington
with his wife and two sons