Maria Morales Reaches 5-Year Remission After Stage 4 Wilms Tumor Misdiagnosis at 26
Updated
Updated · The Washington Post · Sep 5
Maria Morales Reaches 5-Year Remission After Stage 4 Wilms Tumor Misdiagnosis at 26
1 articles · Updated · The Washington Post · Sep 5
Summary
Five years after finishing chemotherapy in October 2020, Maria Morales remains in remission from Stage 4 Wilms tumor, a rare adult kidney cancer that had spread to her liver.
At 26, Morales first went to the ER with back and abdominal pain, where scans found a bleeding right-kidney mass that doctors repeatedly treated and monitored as a benign angiomyolipoma.
By July 2019, the mass was still enlarging and liver lesions had appeared; biopsies then identified Wilms tumor, and surgeons removed her kidney and tumor the next month after the growth had doubled in size.
More than a year of five-drug chemotherapy and radiation put the cancer into remission but caused severe complications, including 10 days in intensive care, chronic low platelets, early menopause and infertility.
Wilms tumor is diagnosed about 600 times a year in the U.S., with only about 3% of cases in adults, helping explain why Morales said she still wonders whether an earlier biopsy could have limited the damage.