Even in March, when she learned she had Covid-19, she thought she would soon go home.

On the day of her release from Roswell, Melissa Fuller is greeted by her son Jacob.

Normally, said Dr. Philip McCarthy, director of Roswells transplant and cellular therapy program, shed have cleared the virus in two to three weeks, but because her immune system wasn't strong enough, it took what seemed like forever.

She was at the cancer center from late winter into summer. The staff, intensely aware of that journey, speaks of Melissa with affection and a touch of awe. In 2016, she was working in payroll at the Madison-Oneida BOCES when she went to the doctor for shoulder pain she thought was triggered by a torn rotator cuff.

The ache was radiating from a tumor. McCarthy said she had an especially aggressive form of multiple myeloma, acancer of the bone. Melissa would eventually go through a stem cell transplant at the SUNY Upstate University Medical Center in Syracuse that she hoped would roll back the disease.

The transplant didnt work. Her doctor at Upstate, an oncologist who became a friend, told her quietly that she was running out of options. She suggested Melissa look to Roswell and its CAR T-cell therapy, leading her to McCarthy, who moved quickly based on the dire nature of the risk.

His team injected Melissa with her own healthy T-cells to recognize and kill her cancer, treatments that continued throughout her stay in February. The process was a success, McCarthy said. Most of her cancer disappeared, offering the greatest hope her family had felt for years.

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From cancer through Covid, how one mother retained hope - Buffalo News