It was said she’d unlikely make it, but Stephanie Limpscomb will soon be celebrating her 23rd birthday and doing it cancer-free.

It was said she’d unlikely make it, but Stephanie Lipscomb will soon be celebrating her 23rd birthday and doing it cancer-free.

At age 20, her doctors found a rare type of tumor in her brain and the prognosis was that she’d only be able to survive for about two more years.

That was before the option of an experimental treatment that utilizes the poliovirus was available.

After surgery, radiation and chemotherapy failed to keep the tumor from returning, Stephanie was presented with the alternative method.

Doctors were clear that she would be injected with a version of the potentially deadly virus, a procedure that had never been tried on humans before and that it was risky.

She didn’t hesitate to say yes to the opportunity.

Clearly, that was the right answer as it successfully killed off the tumor. Brain scans show only a bit of scar tissue where the growth once was.

Doctors at Duke University Medical Center hope to treat more patients using the technique.

They’ve done several already, and have seen them prove to be successful treatments.