'An extension on life:' Madison survivor shares clinical trial experience during Uterine Cancer Awareness Month

 

MADISON, Wis. (CBS 58) -- It's a beautiful, sunny day in Madison and Judi Trampf and her wife are out gardening.

"Can you get to one behind there?" Trampf asks, as she hands over a watering can.

Both are smiling and enjoying their quality time -- and it's moments like these the couple doesn't take for granted. 

"When a doctor tells you to plan your life's funeral, and to get your life in order, it really hits home," Trampf told CBS 58's Ellie Nakamoto-White.

It was in 2016 when she discovered "the lightest bit of pink on toilet paper."

"I thought, it's nothing," Trampf recalled. "And then I had it a second time."

A friend of hers who had stage three uterine cancer had previously said bleeding of any kind could be a symptom. 

That conversation prompted Trampf to go see a doctor.

Initial tests concluded the bleeding was a sign, leading doctors to do a complete hysterectomy and remove lymph nodes.

"They came back and said we have great news!" Trampf said. "You caught it so early, there's a 98% chance that this is never going to come back but check with us yearly."

The couple ended up moving to New York for work.

But it was nearly five years later, in 2021, when Trampf's right hip began bothering her.

"I thought it was because I was doing a new workout regime online. You know, you make excuses for your body," Trampf said. 

When the pain continued worsening and she began losing function of her right leg, the two moved back to Madison. 

Trampf decided to head to the emergency room, where a CT scan found a large tumor in her hip.

"In the opening of your hip, wrapped around your muscles, it's at least the size of a softball," she remembered staff telling her. "Your cervical cancer, it's returned."

With a low survival rate, Trampf began exploring all of her options -- one of which was a clinical trial at the UW Health Carbone Cancer Center in Madison.

"I thought, what do I have to lose?" Trampf said. 

Thus began months of different therapies and IV infusions.

"We're always looking for that thing that might be better, to give a larger number of people even more hope and more opportunity to live longer, and to live well longer," said Dr. Ryan Spencer, a gynecologic oncologist at UW Health. 

Dr. Spencer, who is also Trampf's doctor, said she handled the trials with grace.

"There's a certain gratitude that goes along with being able to see someone, even in the face of a really challenging situation, be a really great human being," Dr. Spencer said. 

Six months passed. Then a year passed.

Now it's been two years of treatment with the trial.

While Trampf said she suffers from some side effects and she still can't walk long distances without help, those are "small prices to pay" to be alive.

June marks Uterine Cancer Awareness Month -- a time to highlight the most common gynecologic cancer in the country,

According to the state's Department of Health Services, it's also the seventh most common cause of cancer death among Wisconsin women. 

Dr. Spencer said uterine cancer is also on the rise over the last decade, largely due to the aging population and obesity epidemic.

This year alone, medical experts are estimating between 70,000 to 80,000 new diagnoses here in the U.S.

'You know, people say to me, well, every day is a blessing," Trampf said. "Well, no, it really is a blessing for me after been told you probably are going to die."

While she doesn't know exactly how long the trial's success will continue, Trampf said it's motivated her to live life to the fullest.

Last summer, she and her wife traveled to Turkey and Greece.

This year, they're planning to visit other friends and family members.

"Carbone Cancer Center is hugely a part of me being alive," Trampf said. "We talk about living with cancer, not having cancer and that being the end. The doctors keep referring to it as being like diabetes, you need to learn to live with your cancer, and that's really what I'm doing."