By Kevin Myatt
For four close family members who died of cancer, for her three furry “babies” at home, MaLora Bush has found more than just a job she loves, but a life’s mission.
Bush, whose prior training and experience have been in human medicine, is the radiation therapist and medical dosimetrist at the Animal Cancer Care and Research Center in Roanoke, a compassionate care hospital and groundbreaking research arm of the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.
The center’s research is translational, in that findings may lead to improved treatments and possible cures for human cancer as well as for animals.
Cancer is a personal matter for Bush. She lost her father to lung cancer and her grandmother to colon cancer, then nursed her first husband for two years as he succumbed to brain cancer and later her mother as she died from pancreatic cancer.
The possibility that her work now may contribute to finding treatments and cures for human cancer is a driving passion for Bush.
Bush is a certifiable dog lover. She calls labradoodle Molly, golden retriever Ruby Mae and toy poodle Stinky her “babies,” even with three grown children, but her background was in human medicine before she was hired at the animal cancer center soon after it opened in 2020.
“We have our linear accelerator that is top of the line,” Bush said. “In my opinion, and I’ve been to all the cancer centers within a two-hour radius of here, the nicest one that I have had the privilege to treat with is the one that I have here. The commitment Virginia Tech has made is phenomenal because this is an extremely advanced linear accelerator. It’s what a lot of human facilities are moving toward, and we’re very, very privileged to have that here.”
Bush’s own unique path was a circuitous one from her early childhood in the Southwest Virginia town of Pound and her high school graduation from Salem High School in the Roanoke Valley.
She has worked as a certified nursing assistant, a behavioral health case manager, and then a cashier and ultimately an operations trainer for 15 years with a large grocery store chain as she also raised three children.
But then, her first husband, David, was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at age 42, and amid her caring for him, the grocery chain restructured, and she was out of a job she might have kept to retirement otherwise.
A friend’s suggestion led her to Roanoke neurology specialist Timothy Hormel, seeking a new job as a medical records compliance officer and, at times, a medical assistant.
Unknowingly at the time, it was the start of a new career focus.
She was brutally honest about her time needs with her new potential employer.
When David died at 44, Bush was determined that she “hadn’t gone through that for nothing.” Inspired by Robert Heath, David’s radiation oncologist, she enrolled in the radiation oncology therapy program at Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke.
But a month before her graduation from the two-year program, while she was working a clinical rotation at LewisGale Medical Center in Salem, her mother was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. Bush would do her dosimetry rotation on one floor of the hospital, then go to another floor to spend time with her mother, catching what sleep she could in a couple of chairs. Her mother died seven months after the diagnosis.
“From the minute she was diagnosed, she completely changed her whole personality, her voice, everything changed,” Bush said. “I think just the word ‘cancer’ impacts you. Our patients [pets at the cancer center] don’t know what that means. And I think that’s a blessing. In my opinion, and there’s nothing scientific other than what I have observed, they do better with the treatment because they don’t know what that word means. They’re living in the present, they don’t know they have cancer.”
Working in the clinical realm at a facility devoted to research has sparked new horizons for Bush she is beginning to explore, seeking a doctorate in health science through the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
