CLINICAL CARE

Marsha Gardenswartz wanted to make you paranoid. The next time you sit in the sun, the next time you hear about skin cancer and think, “no big deal,” she wanted you to think about her and get smarter.

Marsha, 54, was wife to Ian and mother to 20-somethings Hillary, Shana and Noah. She was a community leader, a traveler and a go-getter. She was a lifelong sun-worshiper who thought the sun might give her a few wrinkles, but nothing more. She was wrong.

On June 20, Marsha lost a three-and-a-half-year battle with melanoma—a type of skin cancer that has neither a cure nor an effective treatment once it has spread.

“Nobody dies from skin cancer, right? But I am,” she said in an interview three weeks before her death. “I’m your next door neighbor.

I’m the one you see in the grocery store. If I can get melanoma, so can you.”

A blister on her jaw was the only indication something was wrong. She had none of the classic “ABCDEs” of melanoma. Her dermatologist sent her to Karl Lewis, MD, at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, one of the largest melanoma programs in the United States. By then, melanoma had spread to her lungs.

“People saw me get really sick, and it made them get really paranoid,” Marsha said. “It really opened people’s eyes in my community

about how serious melanoma is.”

If you detect melanoma early, surgery usually cures it. But once it spreads, clinical trials of new drugs or new combinations of drugs are patients’ only course of action. No treatment protocol is proven to work better than doing nothing at all. Still, most patients—including Marsha—choose to fight.

Marsha first entered a clinical trial of biochemotherapy. She described the 20-week protocol as “a living hell”—she was sedated the entire time to handle the pain and side effects. About 65 percent of people respond to biochemotherapy. Marsha was among the 35 percent who don’t.

“With melanoma, everything is a shot in the dark,” she said. “It was a big disappointment to go through all that and have it do nothing. Still, I decided to try another clinical trial, but one that wouldn’t make me so sick.”

That protocol made Marsha cancer-free for almost a year. She participated in a trial to improve her immune response to melanoma, had several surgeries to remove tumors and innumerable scans to scout for new tumors. She had setbacks and successes, and she lived well past the typical six months most people with metastatic melanoma have.

She also helped raise nearly $90,000 for Lewis’s research. A Day of Beauty is an event run by her hairstylist, Jason Linkow of Denver’s Metafolics Salon. People make a donation in exchange for salon services. The third-annual event, held May 4, raised $65,000. Free skin checks performed at the event have also turned up melanoma lesions on several people, causing one person to credit Marsha with saving her life.

About a year ago, an MRI showed a small shadow on Marsha’s brain. By fall the scans showed several brain lesions. Gamma Knife treatments—a precise form of radiation therapy—slowed the lesions’ growth, but new ones quickly formed.

“At that point, Dr. Lewis told us, ‘It’s not good.’ He didn’t frighten us. He didn’t give us a timeline. But we knew that once melanoma goes to the brain it spreads quickly,” she said.

During her last months, Marsha spent her time doing her favorite things, like hanging out with her family, traveling to Israel and Las Vegas, driving her convertible and helping to plan her daughter’s wedding. She said she came to accept that her life would be short, but good.

“My mother was extremely strong and independent, and I got that from her. My father taught me not to be afraid. And that is how I get through this, every day,” Marsha said. “I’ve had a good life. I’ve been lucky. I’ve been happy. My life is good now. Don’t worry about me—I’ll be fine.”

Please support Karl Lewis's clinical research so we can find effective treatment for this devasting disease.