Linda Campbell likes colorful things.
Owner of a scrap booking shop in Lexington, North Carolina, she's just returned from Disney World where she marked her 60th birthday.
“It's a milestone because last year, doctors weren't sure she'd be able to celebrate.
I had a lot of very small tumors.
Nine years ago, Linda was diagnosed with ocular melanoma.
Last year, it spread to her liver.
Because there were numerous lesions, traditional chemotherapy didn't work.
That's when dr. Richard Alexander of the University of Maryland Medical Center decided to try a new procedure called percutaneous hepatic perfusion. Large amounts of chemotherapy are directed to the liver through catheters.
Then the diseased blood is siphoned out of the body, where the poison is filtered out and the blood is pumped back into the patient.
We infuse the liver with this very high dose of chemotherapy directed right to the region of the body where the cancer is growing.
Since her last treatment, most of Linda's tumors have vanished.
Still in trial stages, interventional radiologists, believe the treatment is helping patients live longer with fewer complications.
If you looked at their scans initially and then looked at them after treatment, it's hard to believe it's the same patient.
Linda Campbell agrees.
I don't think I would be alive today, if I didn't have the treatments.
