Cyndia Sanchez is back teaching cycling classes after a devastating bout with cancer that filled her lungs with tumors so numerous that if it were a different type of cancer, aggressive treatment wouldn’t be called for.
But Sanchez was fortunate. After she lay intubated for three months, her athletic frame grew skeletal and she breathed blood into her respirator, chemo worked for her.
Doctors say it’s because of the rare form of cancer she had, which started in her uterus and spread to her lungs.
“Her story is unique in that, while her cancer looked bad, it’s a rare type that responds better to chemo than just about any other cancer we see,” said Dr. Meg Palisoul, a gynecological oncologist at Hartford Hospital.
“And so in her case, this aggressive management was ethical. If it had been any other kind of cancer, really this type of care would be overly aggressive and harmful and futile.”
It started when Sanchez began losing weight in October 2022. “I work out a lot. I’m a gym rat. I eat like a trucker, so there was no reason for me to be losing that much weight,” said Sanchez, 46, who lives in Windsor.
“I was a swimmer all my life. I was part of the Puerto Rico national team,” she said. “I went to college with a full ride for swimming. I teach three cycling classes. The fact that I was teaching cycling with cancer in my lungs … speaks to the physical shape that I was in.”
When Sanchez arrived at Hartford Hospital, she already had had a hysterectomy and the cancer, gestational trophoblastic neoplasia, had spread to her lungs, where she was hemorrhaging heavily.
The original cancer was related to placental tissue in Sanchez’s uterus, even though she had not been pregnant for about 15 years, Palisoul said. “So her story is quite atypical but not unheard of,” she said. Sanchez had the two most rare forms of GTN cancers, she said.
“The hormone that my body was producing, the cancer hormone, is the same hormone that pregnant people…
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