Susan Torres' Melanoma

There is a new story in the Washington Post about the Torres family and their fight to keep Susan Torres alive long enough to give birth in a couple weeks from now. This is probably the most in depth article yet and it goes into detail about how melanoma has played a tragic part in this. I have some excerpts below but please go read the entire story for yourself.

Excerpts:

Then there is the cancer: melanoma, which is particularly insidious in that it is one of the most aggressive forms and one of the few that can penetrate the placenta.

Susan Torres' melanoma had been diagnosed when she was 17, when she had a malformed freckle on her arm, but after it was removed, doctors thought she had no reason to worry.

Apparently, however, the cancer cells remained dormant in her body all these years, and, for reasons scientists spend their entire lives trying to figure out, they became active, eventually, with only the faintest of symptoms, headaches and nausea, forming a tumor at the back of her neck. Now the melanoma has metastasized, the cancerous cells traveling through Susan Torres' bloodstream, searching for a place to grow. So far, they have found the lymph nodes under her arms and, last week, her lungs.