Beth Rull saw some positives in COVID-19, which is quite remarkable considering that the past year has been the most challenging health year of her life – and very little of it had to do with the pandemic.
Rull, a Bunker Hill, Ill., resident and a counselor in the Gillespie, Ill., School District had a double mastectomy performed at Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis on April 2, 2020. The rest of the year was spent with various combinations of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, including radiation therapy at Alton Memorial Hospital’s Cancer Care Center under the watchful eye of Dr. Gregory Vlacich and his team.
“What’s ironic is that I feel it was a good thing that all of this happened during the pandemic,” Rull said. “Most of the world shut down while I was going through the harshest treatment. So I look at it like I didn’t miss as much as I would have otherwise. My kids weren’t in school, so they weren’t bringing home germs, I wasn’t missing their games, things like that.”
A positive attitude like that goes a long way toward getting through such a significant health issue. So is excellent care all along the way. Rull had developed a lump in her left breast a couple years ago, but the mammograms kept coming back clear until the lump was determined to be very aggressive Triple receptor Negative cancer late in 2019. A biopsy also found that Rull had HER2-postive cancer in her right breast, which is a breast cancer that tests positive for a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). This overexpressed protein promotes the growth of cancer cells.
“It was both breasts, two different types of cancer and very aggressive, so we needed to move quickly,” Rull said. “I chose Siteman and got in to see Dr. Julie Margenthaler there on Jan. 10 last year. She reviewed my case along with Dr. Mateusz Opyrchal.”
Rull was started on what is known as the “Red Devil” of chemotherapy drugs, Doxorubicin, so known both for its color and toxicity. She was on that every two weeks until the end of February, but an MRI then showed that the tumor was not responding as hoped.
“Dr. O and my team met, and it was decided that surgery was the best option,” Rull said. “It was scheduled for April 2, right after the pandemic hit. We didn’t know if we would be able to move forward since a lot of surgeries had been shut down just before then, but my case needed to be done.”
Dr. Margenthaler did the six-hour surgery along with Dr. Keith Brandt, a Washington University plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Siteman. Such a procedure normally would have meant one night as an inpatient, but because of the pandemic Rull’s procedure was treated as an outpatient.
“When I woke up I was told I would need round-the-clock care for pain and there would be four to six weeks of recovery time,” Rull said. “Chemo started at Barnes-Jewish Hospital on May 1, then in August we started radiation with Dr. Vlacich in Alton.”
All of Rull’s caregivers got high marks, but she had special words for Dr. Vlacich and Toni Brummett at AMH.
“You always hear people say that they can’t imagine being anywhere else, and that’s how I felt,” she said. “I was so impressed with Dr. Vlacich. He had handwritten notes on my case from day one, and that was powerful to me. He took the time to research where I had been. It’s little things like that that make you feel like you matter.
“And Toni is an amazing nurse. She picked up on my arm being a different size while doing intake and asked if I had been diagnosed with lymphedema, which I had been. She hooked me up with physical therapy at Alton Memorial, particularly with Amy Verbanez and Callie Feldman. I was doing the radiation therapy five days a week and then the physical therapy two or three days each week. All of them were great.”
Rull was released from treatments in late September and is doing well, although she still has some targeted immunotherapy as well as an oral chemotherapy that she can take at home. Dr. Opyrchal is monitoring her heart because of some toxicity issues.
On top of all that, Rull’s husband, Brandon, and 12-year-old son Nick both tested positive for COVID, so the family was under quarantine for a while. They did not have severe symptoms and were out of quarantine before Beth and 14-year-old Sophie were released.
Brandon Rull works at QualSafe Solutions (Murphy Company) in St. Louis. Beth has been working at home since the pandemic started, other than a brief time at her school late last summer until a COVID spike in the area.
“We are grateful to work for wonderful people who put our health first during this pandemic,” Beth said. “The schools in Bunker Hill have gone back and forth with in-person and remote learning, but they have done a great job in my opinion in keeping the kids safe, and me safe at home.
“Since my diagnosis in December 2019, I have never sat idle. I am looking to finish all my therapies in August. It has been quite a journey, but one I am happy to be taking with Siteman, Alton Memorial and my team there.”
Want to join Toni Brummett and be part of the amazing team at Alton Memorial? Search openings here.
Pictured above: Beth Rull in her Bunker Hill, Ill., home along with her husband, Brandon, their son, Nick, and daughter, Sophie.