Forced to choose between going without the medication or swapping it for another with stronger side effects, the North Carolina native is finishing her final three chemotherapy sessions with only two of the recommended drugs.
“You have these two sub-optimal choices,” she said. “I’m worried, because I know the drug I’m not getting is the one my cancer responded to very well [the first time].”
Experts say the US is currently suffering one of the most severe shortages of chemotherapy drugs it’s seen for three decades.
Ms Dezomits is one of as many as 100,000 patients who may have been affected over the past several months, according to Dr Julie Gralow, the chief medical officer at the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
As of this week, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said over 130 drugs were in short supply, 14 of which are cancer treatments.
Experts say a myriad of factors have contributed to the shortages, which this time have heavily affected two front-line therapies – carboplatin and cisplatin – used to treat a host of cancers, including head and neck, gynaecologic and gastrointestinal cancers.
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