A livestock-poison-turned-drug might save her from endless cancer surgeries. But if she helps test it, could she afford to keep taking it?
PHILADELPHIA — What propelled Kaylene Sheran up to the microphone was an overwhelming exhaustion of surgery. At 19, she’d had so much of her surface excised that she was sometimes surprised to have any skin left. It was true of many others in the room. They grew tumors the way some people grew freckles — not in great constellation-like splashes, but in a creeping multitude. The more frequently they checked, the more basal cell carcinomas they’d find.
Sheran didn’t count how many skin cancers she’d had. It would’ve taken too long, and the number would’ve been too scary. In a sense, she’d grown up as much in the dermatologist’s chair as she had at her parents’ house in East Boston. When she was little, the doctor would put her to sleep for the surgeries. She had nightmares of the anesthesiologist’s mask, of going under and never waking up. When she got older, the clinician would inject the area with a numbing agent that didn’t actually make her numb; she’d stay painfully alert as they sliced away tumors with a scalpel.
