Two years ago, a doctor told Durham native Alfonzo Grafton that he had stage 4 lung cancer, with a prognosis of two years to live.
"It hit me like a ton of bricks," Grafton said about the diagnosis. "I blocked out everything. I heard nothing else [the doctor] said. All I heard was 'stage 4.' My life is all done."
But thanks to a clinical trial at Duke funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), he had a lifeline. Now Grafton, a six-foot-10-inch retired detention officer and avid Duke men's basketball fan, spends his days enjoying his family, tooling around in his customized cars and trucks, dancing, and deejaying under the moniker "Dr. Stick."
Surrounded by family and a middle-school age granddaughter he dotes on, Grafton is thankful to be alive.
Prior to his diagnosis, Grafton would be fatigued to the point where climbing the stairs of his two-story home in North Durham left him exhausted. At night he could not sleep and had difficulty breathing.
A CAT scan revealed the cancer. What followed was a couple of rounds of chemotherapy; but after the second round, his doctor told him the treatment was not working.
"You know, I'm about to lose it," Grafton said. "I'm like, 'this can't be happening.'"
Then Grafton's physician offered him a trial medication funded by an NIH grant to the Duke Cancer Institute. The medication targets a protein called PCSK9 that has been found to inhibit the immune's system ability to attack the tumor.
The results, Grafton said, were "amazing." The tumor shrank. "I can dance again," he said.
