Seven years ago, Stacy Martin made the decision to have her entire stomach removed before cancer could take hold — only to learn afterward that it already had. Pathologists examining her resected stomach found 17 separate spots of cancer, discovered only after the organ was gone. Today the Canton resident is celebrating seven years cancer-free, and she has spent that time turning her diagnosis into advocacy work for others facing the same rare genetic threat.
Martin's ordeal began with a positive test for a mutation in the CDH1 gene, according to WMAR 2 News Baltimore. The mutation, which Martin's mother also carries, gave her an 80% chance of developing stomach cancer and a 60% chance of developing breast cancer, the station reported. Martin's siblings were tested for the same mutation and came back negative. The CDH1 mutation impairs production of a tumor suppressor protein called E-cadherin, and carriers face up to a 70% lifetime risk of stomach cancer and a 40% to 50% risk of lobular breast cancer in women, according to MedlinePlus.
Faced with those odds, Martin chose preventive surgery to remove her stomach entirely, undergoing a gastrectomy on September 12, 2019, at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, per the station's report. She has since also undergone a double mastectomy. The decision reflects international clinical consensus, which recommends that people with pathogenic or likely pathogenic CDH1 variants and detected intramucosal signet-ring-cell lesions consider prophylactic total gastrectomy between ages 20 and 30, since routine endoscopic surveillance frequently fails to catch the microscopic signet ring cell carcinoma associated with the mutation, according to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Those cancerous cells typically spread beneath intact gastric tissue, making them nearly impossible to detect during routine biopsies. According to ClinicalTrials.gov, study NCT03030404 examines hereditary gastric cancer, including hereditary diffuse gastric cancer linked to germline mutations in the CDH1 gene. A ClinicalTrials.gov protocol document dated 12 Mar 2024 reports that 110 patients with the CDH1 mutation were evaluated at the NIH Clinical Center and discusses prophylactic total gastrectomy for hereditary diffuse gastric cancer.
A Preventive Surgery That Turned Out to Be Lifesaving
What Martin experienced — surgery intended to head off a disease that turns out to already be present — is common among CDH1 carriers. In 60% to 80% of asymptomatic mutation carriers who undergo prophylactic total gastrectomy, microscopic foci of early diffuse gastric cancer are discovered during post-operative pathology, according to Stanford Profiles. For Martin, that number was 17 distinct spots, found only after her stomach had already been removed.
Living without a stomach has required permanent adjustments. Martin now needs to eat every two hours and must chew her food to a puree before swallowing, the station reported. Her esophagus is connected directly to her small intestine, a reconstruction technique known as a Roux-en-Y esophagojejunostomy that restores digestive continuity while protecting esophageal tissue from bile reflux, according to the Center for Cancer Research. Without a stomach reservoir to slow digestion, many post-gastrectomy patients also experience dumping syndrome, a condition marked by rapid heart rate, dizziness, and severe blood sugar drops after eating, per Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Life After the Stomach
Despite the daily demands of her condition, Martin has kept living — including buying tickets to see Jay-Z in Paris, per the station's account. She moved from Chattanooga to Baltimore this year and now calls Canton home. Total gastrectomy also removes the parietal cells responsible for producing intrinsic factor, which the body needs to absorb vitamin B12, meaning patients like Martin require lifelong B12 injections or high-dose supplementation to prevent severe anemia and irreversible nerve damage, according to research published in PMC.
Turning Diagnosis Into Advocacy
Martin now serves as a patient advocate for Hope for Stomach Cancer, a nonprofit focused on education, support, and research. The organization was founded in 2016 by patient advocate Aki Smith after her father's stomach cancer diagnosis, according to the American Association for Cancer Research. Twice a year, Martin travels to Washington, D.C., to advocate for greater funding and awareness of the disease, the station reported.
That advocacy responds to a real gap. Stomach cancer symptoms can be explained away as many other, less serious conditions, which contributes to the disease typically being diagnosed in late stages. Nationally, only about one-third of stomach cancer cases are caught at an early, localized stage, according to the National Cancer Institute's SEER program — a distinction that matters enormously, since five-year survival falls from 78.1% for localized disease to just 8.1% once cancer has spread to distant organs.
Stomach cancer is also one of the most underfunded cancers relative to how many people it kills, Martin and other advocates say. An analysis of federal research allocations found the disease ranks 19th in National Cancer Institute funding relative to its lethality score, receiving far less funding per death than cancers like breast and prostate, according to a study published in PMC. The American Cancer Society projects roughly 31,510 new U.S. stomach cancer diagnoses in 2026, leading to an estimated 10,740 deaths.
Martin encourages people to learn more about genetic testing and stomach cancer screenings, hoping others with a family history of the disease can catch it — or prevent it — before it reaches the late stages that make it so deadly. Seven years removed from her own surgery, she continues to use her story to push for the awareness and funding she believes the disease still lacks.
