Harriett Thornton

Welcome to Harriett's CaringBridge site. Harriett's husband Al, son Matt and daughter Ginny are using this site to help keep Harriett's family and friends informed. 

Harriett’s health journey started in June 2020 when she had a fall in her living room. After having pain for about a week, she saw her doctor, who ordered a chest x-ray, thinking it was some kind of musculoskeletal pain in her ribs. She did have two broken ribs, but something unusual was seen on the x-ray and, after many other tests, in August 2020, Harriett was diagnosed with metastatic Stage 4 Lung Cancer that had spread to several other areas of her body, including her brain, ribs, adrenals, and spine. This was totally shocking to her, as she had not felt bad or different. Harriett says that if she had not fallen, she doesn’t know when she would have been diagnosed, so she counts the fall as a blessing.

After diagnosis in August 2020, Harriett immediately underwent a series of five radiation therapy treatments for lesions in her brain. She then began Keytruda immunotherapy treatments, which as of January 2021 are still ongoing and scheduled for every three weeks.

MRIs of Harriett’s brain in October 2020 and January 2021, as well as a follow-up PET Scan in December 2020, showed significant lesion shrinkage and no new growth. This is great news and we give all the praise and glory to God!  After receiving the results of the October MRI, Harriett was able to resume driving within the local Columbia area, which she had not been able to do since diagnosis in August.  

Please pray that treatment will continue to be effective for Harriett and that she will not experience any side effects that would make it necessary to discontinue the Keytruda treatment. 

Harriett loves to hear from family and friends, and would love to receive your phone calls, texts or emails! She would prefer not to discuss her health situation on Facebook or Instagram because then those sites would no longer be the fun escape that they currently (usually) are.