Leticia Traveled 3000 miles for immunotherapy called CAR T cell therapy

Leticia moved to the Las Vegas area after she thought she was "clean of the disease" she had been fighting for years.

"My primary doctor diagnosed me in 2006, and he sent me to Memorial," Leticia said. She had been in remission, but she went to see a Las Vegas oncologist because of a throat issue. "And sure enough, there's the lymphoma," said Leticia.

So she packed up her camper trailer and drove the 3,000 miles to Memorial.

"We had just opened our CAR T program here with a FDA-approved drug that very few centers in the state have," said Hugo Fernandez, MD, chair and medical director of Moffitt Malignant Hematology and Cellular Therapy at Memorial Healthcare System. "The beauty of it is you're developing an immune response against the disease that is strictly targeted to destroy cancer cells."

"I have tremendous faith for the doctors at Memorial. I'm just amazed on how wonderful they are," Leticia said. "So now I feel terrific. I really do."