University News

Law Student Battles 3-Generation Cancer Gene

When Tricia McSorley opened her acceptance letter from Creighton's School of Law, she felt ready to take on the world.

"I had always dreamed of being an attorney," she says.

The young mother of three had mapped out the journey: law school, clerking, the bar exam, practice.

Life would no doubt unfold as it should.

McSorley had earned a degree in business from Bellevue University in May 2005. She and her husband, Mike, had started their family, with Kailey, 11, and Kelsey, 8, filling their young household, and London, now almost 2, just having joined them.

Gradually, it began to look as if the time were right for taking that long-considered step toward her career. So McSorley began preparing for the LSAT, with plenty of encouragement from Mike. And her test scores showed she did well. She was accepted at Creighton, with classes set to start in August 2006.

But there was one test of quite a different nature that nagged at the soon-to-be law student, and it was impossible to ignore her score: the genetic test for BRCA-1, the breast cancer gene that had ravaged her family on her mother's side, showed up in her own genetic profile when she was screened for it in 2003.

A total of 16 women on her mother's side of the family had had breast or ovarian cancer, McSorley recalls. Only four of these women had survived: her mother, Cheryl Collins, a three-time cancer survivor; her sister, Toni, 45, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in Tricia's second year of law school, and two other relatives across three generations of record.

And, although the damaged gene largely plagued females, even McSorley's little brother hadn't been spared. At 18 months, Chris Collins was diagnosed with Wilms' Tumor, a cancer that may have a genetic connection to breast cancer. Now 27, he survived this form of kidney cancer but needed a heart transplant as an adult because the cancer bout and treatment had so damaged his heart.

Her family was not alone in the struggle, though. They had a cancer-fighting ally at Creighton in Henry Lynch, M.D., director of Creighton's Hereditary Cancer Institute. Lynch, who holds the Charles F. and Mary C. Heider Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at Creighton, had developed a registry of cancer-prone families over his 30-plus years of research in the field.

"Dr. Lynch saw the record of what cancer had done to us," McSorley says, "and he told us it was out of control."

As family members had started to register with Dr. Lynch, it made sense for McSorley to find out if she, too, carried the BRCA-1 mutation. From there, if she tested positive for the damaged gene, she'd enter the registry, and her case would be followed.

McSorley's family knew that Dr. Lynch and the registry were life-savers: They could warn them early before the disease was symptomatic; thwart cancer in its earliest possible stages; and even guide them in preventive measures before the disease could take hold.

"I remember the day I went in for the results. I felt so good, so healthy, and I told Dr. Lynch, 'I know I've come out negative' for the mutation."

The Creighton center counsels patients well ahead of the testing. "They want you to think about what you'll do, what your options are, before you even test," McSorley says.

Still, Dr. Lynch's answer was devastating: "Your results say you're positive," he said. "Now let's talk about what you want to do."

McSorley knew early on that she probably would opt for the preventive treatment: radical mastectomy with reconstructive surgery. With such a procedure, her chances of contracting breast cancer would plummet to about 9 percent, from around 80 percent without.

But it seemed her surgery could wait. After all, she was still young, even in terms of hereditary breast cancer.

But, by 2006, with law school soon to begin, McSorley knew she had to set a date. But how would that work with school? Was it possible to take time out? Or could she devise a special schedule?

What's more, could she afford the multiple tests, the blood screenings and ultrasounds, the MRIs, all needed before the surgeries even got under way? With her medical needs, the family's meager health insurance would be taxed to the extreme.

"I had to talk to someone," McSorley recalls, and that "someone" proved to be School of Law Associate Dean Tricia Brundo Sharrar, BA'93, JD'96.

"Tricia came to me and wanted to learn how she could still stay in school yet have her surgery," Sharrar says. "She was so motivated! We talked about options, and Tricia decided she could have her surgeries during school vacations. What an inspiration she was to me."

With part of McSorley's quandary solved, it was on to see the oncological surgeons.

With her surgical team, Drs. Janet Grange and Robert Langdon Jr., she encountered not only a highly competent — but a highly compassionate — pair.

"They were so insistent that I stay in law school," she says. "And they insisted on helping me financially.

"There was another thing," said McSorley, of the consultation with the surgeons. "And this was so moving. Dr. Grange told me that she had lost a sister to breast cancer when she (her sister) was in her second year of law school." McSorley's physician then told her, "I feel as if you were sent to me to help."

McSorley finished her first semester law finals on Dec. 15, 2006, and had her mastectomy on Dec. 18.

By the second semester, she was back in class, with her second surgery, the reconstructive phase, set for spring break 2007.

"I had great family support," McSorley says. "And Creighton was wonderful. I couldn't have done it without them."

Today, McSorley's schedule could exhaust even the most ardent among us, but she seems to fly through her day, without a feather ruffled.

"Dr. Lynch has given us an opportunity to control this gene. We need more people like him to find a cure. But, until then, we need someone like him to push on with research.

"Every day it is something new, a new discovery. Back 25 years ago, when my mother had breast cancer, there wasn't too much you could do. But look at it now.

"I tell my girls, 'We can take care of this.'" And, indeed, the bright side is that the gene cannot skip generations. If it stops with McSorley in her family, it's gone.