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<\/p>\nTAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Heather Curley wrote a stack of letters a few years ago.<\/p>\n
They were all addressed to her daughter for the milestones, birthdays and special moments Heather knew she would miss.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wrote her 21 birthday cards,\u201d she said, looking down at the stack in her hands.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her daughter, Palmer, was three years old at the time of writing the letters. Heather hoped with every cell in her body that she would live to see Palmer\u2019s fifth birthday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Heather Curley with her husband and her daughter. (Photo Courtesy: Heather Curley)<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to make it past that birthday because I don\u2019t really have any memories of my dad. And so I wanted to get her to that age where she will have memories of me,\u201d said Heather.<\/p>\n
Her dad died unexpectedly just before her fifth birthday.<\/p>\n
Then, at 32, Heather was diagnosed with stage four metastatic breast cancer. The cancer had spread all over her body.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe (Palmer) is the reason I fight. She is the reason I wake up every morning. She brings me so much joy and strength, and honestly, I don\u2019t think that I would be this way if it wasn\u2019t for her,\u201d said Heather.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The breast cancer diagnosis would be bad enough, but to add to it the breast cancer led to leptomeningeal disease (LMD)<\/a>.<\/p>\n LMD is a complication of advanced-stage cancer that lives in the spinal cord and around the brain.<\/p>\n It is almost always fatal.<\/p>\n But as luck would have it, one of the few doctors working to cure this poorly understood disease just happens to work at\u00a0Moffitt Cancer Center.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just like, perfect place at the perfect time,\u201d said Heather. \u201cI\u2019m at Moffitt getting breast treatment and Dr. Forsyth is on the team there. And he\u2019s going to be my doctor. He is like the leading expert in leptomeningeal disease.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody got beaten down by this disease. Doctors say, \u2018Look, there\u2019s nothing we can do,\u2019 but we had a different attitude,\u201d said Dr. Peter Forsyth, the Neuro-Oncology Chair at Moffitt Cancer Center. \u201cWe can understand it. We need to get together as a group and as a team and do something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Forsyth and a team of others at Moffitt launched a trial involving\u00a0dendritic cells<\/a>.\u00a0There are a handful of other hospitals around the country working on these trials too, and Forsyth says they communicate any new finding amongst each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n Simply put, these are cells that alert the immune system to attack the LMD.<\/p>\n Heather Curley undergoing treatment. (Photo Courtesy: Heather Curley)<\/p>\n \u201cSo we\u2019re educating those dendritic cells. So, they learn, and they can turn on all their other friends that actually kill stuff. So, we put it back through a brain port called an Ommaya once a week for three months and see how it goes,\u201d said Forsyth.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/cell_trial_3.jpeg\")
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