MODEL OF HOPE Powell woman’s case inspires test, research that could help others

Rhonda Ball ran a finger over the four-leaf clover charm on her necklace as she lay in a hospital bed waiting for her IV cancer treatment to begin.

The charm, purchased at an airport on a pre-treatment trip, says “Lucky.”

“You know what? I’m just the luckiest person ever,” the 60-year-old Powell woman said.

Ball is battling her third type of cancer — this time it’s a cancer of unknown primary origin. She is part of a clinical trial for the newly approved drug pembrolizumab, branded as Keytruda.

The immune-system boosting treatment has helped rid her of the cancer, which appeared in 2015 as tumors in her hip, under her breastbone and at the back of her skull. She said the treatment quickly took care of the breastbone tumor.

“It was easy to tell right away it was working,” she said. “We could see it shrinking.”

Ball, through her diagnosis and treatment, has inspired researchers to develop a new diagnostic test, begin a new clinical trial and receive more than $1 million in research funding for the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, said Dr. Sameek Roychowdhury, her oncologist at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s James Cancer Hospital.

It all started when a research scientist performed a genetic test on Ball’s cancer. Nothing was found, and the chemotherapy that doctors tried

[EMMA HOWELLS/DISPATCH] Nurse Navdeep Banks flushes saline solution after administering the drug pembrolizumab, branded as Keytruda, to patient Rhonda Ball. The immunesystem boosting treatment has helped rid Ball of a cancer with an unknown primary origin.