Cancer and Clinical Services Patient Stories

In 2019, Shelley Payne was closing in on her 50s and started having night sweats and weight gain in her belly. Although her Ob-Gyn first suspected menopause, and Shelley tried hormone replacement therapy, her symptoms didn’t change much – until one day at work after her regular morning workout.

As the pain worsened, Shelley wondered if she was passing a kidney stone. “As a physical therapist and athletic trainer by trade, I’ve spent my life in medicine. If anyone’s gonna know their body, it’s a physical therapist,” she says. Eventually, she asked a co-worker to take her to the nearest emergency department. An eventual CT scan revealed bleeding in her abdomen, and Shelley was admitted to a local hospital. After tests the next day, she was told there was a mass on her adrenal gland that required a biopsy.

More testing and surgery followed. The eventual diagnosis was a rare stage 3 adrenal cancer.

“I may be in health care, but when you put on a hospital gown, all of a sudden you kind of lose sense of who you are,” Shelley says. Although her greatest wish at that point was to change into her regular clothes and attend her son’s golf banquet, her husband asked her to stay right where she was. So instead of attending the banquet, Shelley called her best friend, who happens to be an Ob-Gyn in Indianapolis. “I told her I needed information. We talked a bit, and then I got on my laptop, and she got on hers.”

The first name that came up when Shelley googled “adrenal cancer” was Barbra Miller, MD, Ohio State surgeon and co-director of the Comprehensive Adrenal Program. At the same time, Shelley’s physician friend was messaging a “women in medicine” group that she belonged to on Facebook. A reply soon came from a doctor from Johns Hopkins who knows Dr. Miller: “Tell your friend that one of the best people to treat her is just 10 minutes down the road.”

Shelley emailed Dr. Miller directly and got a personal reply that evening. “She let me know that they wanted to see me as a team because that’s how they work,” Shelley says. “Their scheduling team was great, so when my husband and I walked into that first visit, we saw three doctors.” Those physicians included Dr. Miller, as well as medical oncologist Vineeth Sukrithan, MD, and endocrinologist Lawrence Kirschner, MD, PhD.

“Having any cancer diagnosis is kind of life changing – and having one that less than 200 people a year are diagnosed with really stops your world,” Shelley says. “The academic in me felt like I really needed to be doing a lot of digging to kind of be my own advocate – but that stopped once I met with them.

“They really got to know me personally and understood that I was probably reading too much. They just reminded me that while my diagnosis was rare, they knew how to treat me.”

Dr. Miller shared every detail of her plan with Shelley, including the reality that her surgery was complex. “But she’s the expert; she knows what she’s doing, and the confidence that she conveyed to my husband and me was just amazing,” Shelley says.

In addition to surgery, Shelley’s treatment plan also included six weeks of radiation five days a week, chemotherapy and a therapeutic course of mitotane, a medication that’s specific to adrenal cancer.

“My experience was five-star. I mean, there is just no other way to describe it,” Shelley says. “Every nurse that I had was just amazing – they advocated for me and really listened to me. It was never robotic; they were truly engaging with me and making sure that that my physical and emotional needs were being met.

“From my in-patient stay to radiation to chemo and all of my appointments with my Neuroendocrine team, they have all made me feel like I am the most important person that they are going to see that day. They have been quick to address concerns or reactions that I have had to a treatment, and I know they are so busy, but they make me feel like they have all of the time in the world to me and my family.

“When you have a rare cancer, I'm thankful that The James is in my backyard. When you have a rare cancer, you should see a surgeon who’s writing the guidelines being read by other physicians treating this type of cancer. Dr. Miller is doing just that. She is doing the studies and trials that are looking to inform others about how to make better outcomes for patients with adrenal cancer.

“I’m just very blessed that I landed in their lap.”