Interviewed by: Taylor Scheib Edited by: Chris Sanchez
Steve, a 51-year-old resident of Ontario, Canada, was diagnosed with Stage 4 colorectal cancer 3 years ago.
Steve’s diagnosis frightened and angered him. He had been suffering the symptoms of colorectal cancer for years before diagnosis, but they were shrugged off as food sensitivities. When the tumor in his colon was finally discovered, it was so large that his doctors could not get the scope past it to perform the colonoscopy. Moreover, the doctors also found 23 metastatic tumors on his liver. He was told that based on stage 4 colon cancer survival rates, he would likely live for just 3 more years.
Instead of succumbing to his initial anger and bitterness, Steve chose to fight. He decided that he didn’t want to be remembered as “the angry guy”—and the realization that if he didn’t fight, his cancer would take him away from his family, was all the motivation he needed to do so. He was also determined to model resiliency for his family, especially his sons.
Steve immediately underwent surgery to deal with his blocked bowel, and ended up having a foot of his colon removed along with the primary tumor. He then had to recover for a few weeks before he could start with chemotherapy. He also took antibody therapy medicine along with the chemotherapy. Steve ended up taking 27 rounds of chemotherapy, with some breaks, over the succeeding 3 years.
Steve’s cancer journey was far from easy. For one, he had to endure significant side effects, including unsightly bleeding rashes that covered almost his entire body. Moreover, he also discovered that he could “fight cancer in the streets” and help other cancer patients, too, and so he got involved with fundraising campaigns for his local hospital foundation and regional cancer center. He also started serving as a volunteer cancer coach at CCRAN, the Colorectal Cancer Resource and Action Network.
After 3 years of chemotherapy and a liver transplant, at his last checkup, Steve’s doctors were unable to find any evidence of his cancer.
Steve shares his story with us to grow awareness of the risks of cancer, especially colorectal cancer, and to encourage other cancer patients to remain positive and continue fighting, no matter how severe or hopeless their situations may seem.
Interviewed by: Taylor Scheib Edited by: Chris Sanchez
Holly was only 25 when she was diagnosed with primary myelofibrosis.
Holly’s diagnosis was only one of a series of sad and traumatic occurrences at that particular time in her life. She had earlier lost her unborn daughter at 32 weeks due to a blood clot that passed through her placenta, and had to be placed in intensive care afterwards due to the discovery of more blood clots elsewhere in her body. Two weeks afterwards, she experienced a seizure and thrombosis stroke.
Over the succeeding year, Holly increasingly experienced symptoms that led to her undergoing a bone marrow biopsy, which revealed her cancer. What’s more, she discovered that her cancer might have had something to do with her daughter’s passing.
Holly continues to grieve her loss, but her life has taken a turn for the better. Her treatments have been effective — and she is now expecting another little girl.
Holly’s story is a testament to her resilience, the inner strength she gained, and her ability to glimpse the blessings in her life behind all her negative experiences. She shares her story with us today to help others who may find themselves in similar situations.
In addition to Holly’s narrative, The Patient Story offers a diverse collection of stories about myelofibrosis. These empowering stories provide real-life experiences, valuable insights, and perspectives on symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options for cancer.
Name: Holly S.
Diagnosis:
Primary myelofibrosis
Initial Symptoms:
Severe fatigue
Throbbing pain in left calf
Significant weight loss
Itching and rashes
Bruising
Shortness of breath
Treatment:
Oral chemotherapy: hydroxyurea
Immunotherapy injections: peginterferon
This interview has been edited for clarity. This is not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider to make treatment decisions.
I feel like I can overcome anything as long as I just remain positive.
Introduction
My name is Holly. I’m from Invercargill. It’s a small city at the bottom of New Zealand.
I am a single mum to a boy called Ambrose, who is five, turning six in October.
I was recently diagnosed with primary myelofibrosis in September of 2023.
And, yeah, just been navigating life as a single mum and just dedicating my time to him. Whilst dealing with this.
Pre-diagnosis
Initial symptoms
My first real symptoms of primary myelofibrosis basically start back in 2021 and April.
I was 32 weeks with my daughter and I started getting pain in my calf, just throbbing pain.
So I was getting constant massages to try get rid of it. Initially thought it was pre-eclampsia. I was also experiencing extreme fatigue a lot throughout the pregnancy.
And then one day I was in the supermarket and I started getting a lot of pressure in my abdomen. I didn’t really think much of it and went home.
And then I started having contractions around 9 p.m. and they lasted until 3 a.m. I started experiencing fevers and sweats and because I had had such a horrible experience with my previous midwife, with my son, I left it and I didn’t want to bother my current midwife.
And so then I’d contacted her in the morning about it, and we went down to the hospital.
She did an ultrasound and found that there was no heartbeat.
Loss of her daughter
So then I had to give birth to my daughter. And it was just a horrific, horrific delivery.
Yeah, it lasted for a few days, and I was put on these inducing pills. They gave me too many of them. And her head basically went through my uterus; I suffered a uterine rupture during labor.
So then I was rushed into theatre, and I lost 1.5 to 1.7l of blood. After that, I was in an ICU for about a week due to complications, including pneumonia.
I had a really high heart rate. I had heart failure. And they didn’t really understand what was going wrong.
And then they found that I had had a blood clot in my heart, in my lungs, and a DVT (deep vein thrombosis) in that right calf. So I’m guessing all the massaging had possibly broken the blood clot off into different parts of my organs.
So they think they also think that it caused my daughter’s death. A blood clot had passed through my placenta, causing a placental abruption.
Seizure and stroke
So I left hospital, and then two weeks later, I had a seizure and a stroke, and I was rushed back into hospital. They had found that I had had a thrombosis stroke in my brain.
So I was put on warfarin for well over six months max. And then, originally the hematologist thought that I had blood clotting disorder.
So she put me on warfarin, then took me off it for about a year just to see how my blood platelets were going to be. And they weren’t coming down, they were rising.
Discovery and diagnosis
That’s when I started having my other symptoms. And they came on quite, quite quickly because I wasn’t on any sort of medication at that time.
I started just being extremely, extremely fatigued. My arms were really, really weak. I lost 20kg without even trying, within 3 months.
I started bruising, like all over my body and the weirdest places. Itching. Crashing randomly. Constant shortness of breath.
It was it was horrible and I just I couldn’t function at all. Throughout the day.
So then the doctor sent me to have a bone marrow biopsy. I was officially diagnosed with primary myelofibrosis in September 2023.
Reaction to the diagnosis
I guess that unknown feeling I felt within those two years of not knowing. It’s sort of hard to really know. I guess I was just going through day by day.
I initially thought because I had two blood transfusions, I thought that it was all the blood transfusions that were actually causing all these symptoms, and I just thought that was normal. And I also thought because of all the physical complications I went through, my body was taking a longer time to try and heal from all of that.
And then, straight after all of that, I was thrown straight back into being a parent, single parent. Yeah, it was pretty crazy.
So when I went in for the bone marrow biopsy, I felt really numb to it all, I think because so much had happened previously, I was just on autopilot, like, okay. Yep. We’ll do this.
After I got the diagnosis, I was absolutely distraught because I didn’t know much about the disease at the time.
And I didn’t know anything. If I was going to lose all my hair, or if I was going to have to take more time being away from my son. So many thoughts running through my head.
But there’s more. As it turns out, my cancer might have had something to do with my daughter’s passing.
When my cancer was diagnosed, they didn’t really say that they thought that I had it when my daughter had passed. It wasn’t until a few months ago that they had sort of written it in doctor’s notes, speculating that it had caused my daughter’s passing and that I’d had it while I was pregnant with her.
But yeah, the feelings around it. I was more so angry at the hospital and my midwife for not monitoring me closely enough, but I guess they couldn’t really do anything about it.
But yeah, it was a terrible, terrible time. I really lost myself and my relationship fell apart; I just wasn’t coping.
I had turned to drinking a lot, so that was like my medication while trying to be a single mum and trying to just push, push forward.
And yeah, so when they had told me that they thought that I might have had it when I was pregnant with my daughter, I’d already had a huge feeling that it had caused it before they even said anything.
Treatment
Oral chemotherapy: hydroxyurea
My treatment plan was to go on an oral chemotherapy called hydroxyurea.
So I started on 500mg. My platelets weren’t really doing anything. So they were going to double the dosage.
Discovery of pregnancy, and shift to immunotherapy injections: peginterferon
And then a week later I found out I was pregnant. And I was a mess because I thought, I’m gonna have to terminate this baby.
Then they congratulated me, and put me on peginterferon. It’s immunotherapy that’s administered through an injection. I do this myself, once a week, on Sunday nights.
So I’ve been on peginterferon and aspirin, um, throughout this pregnancy and it’s brought my platelets right down.
I’m also on clexane as well, just to prevent blood clotting.
I’ve been in normal range for the last few months, and I’ve felt the best that I’ve felt in the last few years, and everything’s just looking amazing with this pregnancy.
So I’ve been really privileged, even, I guess, divinely orchestrated.
Side effects
That being said, I’ve been experiencing some side effects for the immunotherapy.
I’ve had a lot of hair thinning, acne, a lot of fatigue. And loss of appetite. I don’t really have much of an appetite. I’ve started bruising again, too.
But I actually had more symptoms with the hydroxyurea than I did with the peginterferon.
So at this point I don’t have any bone marrow scarring. I just have a lot of fibrosis.
Looking forward
New treatment plans haven’t been discussed with me at all because I’m pre fibrotic with the primary myelofibrosis.
So they for now they haven’t discussed anything with me. And I am open to other treatments if need be.
A stem cell transplant has been brought up. But I’m sort of on the fence about it, because I’ve heard such horrific stories of people that have gone through it.
I don’t know if I want to put myself through that.
… over time, this cancer, it’s really taught me how resilient I am. And how much I’ve just trusted that whatever’s meant for me is meant for me.
Even if the cancer does get worse over time, it really has taught me to live in the moment and live in stillness and just be grateful for even the smallest things.
Takeaways and lessons
In the beginning, my mental health was really, really bad. I was thinking the worst of everything.
But then over time, this myelofibrosis, it’s really taught me how resilient I am. And how much I’ve just trusted that whatever’s meant for me is meant for me.
Even if the cancer does get worse over time, it really has taught me to live in the moment and live in stillness and just be grateful for even the smallest things.
Yeah, it’s been a huge challenge, but it’s been one of the best things to happen to me as regards my mindset.
I feel like I can overcome anything as long as I just remain positive.
I guess I also really started to find myself. After I got diagnosed with myelofibrosis, I had an answer as to why my daughter passed away. And then I knew that it wasn’t my fault, because for a long time I blamed myself. And I felt that I could finally move forward. I had that closure.
Then that’s when the healing really started. So when, when they got the diagnosis, the healing really started. So I guess it was a little blessing in disguise, even though it was what caused it all.
Now, I’m pregnant with another little girl. I have obstetricians monitoring me every four weeks, and also multiple scans.
I am 33 weeks at the moment, and they’ve planned all these scans to make sure that everything’s fine. I’ve got phone consults with my hematologist, monthly blood tests.
And my midwife, she’s amazing. She was like, don’t worry. If you know you have an issue, just ring me and I’ll come down in the middle of the night. We can check. She’s very, very onto it.
And she’s always happy to do extra tests and scans and things to make sure that everything’s good. So they’ve really looked after me now, this time round.
I’m due on the 2nd of July, but they’re going to get me an early C-section at 37 weeks due to the uterine rupture that I previously had.
In closing, I guess my message is, you know your body better than anybody else does.
If you have an inkling of whether you’re pregnant or you may have cancer if you have an inkling that there’s something wrong—put yourself first and go and get it checked.
Interviewed by: Taylor Scheib Edited by: Chris Sanchez
Faye is in recovery from surgery for a rare appendix cancer called pseudomyxoma peritonei, and she is eager to share her story to help others who may be struggling with the same or similar health concerns.
Faye’s appendix cancer was discovered entirely by accident, in the course of treatment for an ovarian cyst. Though she has a family history of cancer — her mother having succumbed to bowel cancer just a couple of years ago — she did not expect her diagnosis, much less this particular cancer.
Faye underwent what she refers to as “the mother of all surgeries”, HIPEC, during which 8 of her organs were removed and heated chemotherapy applied directly inside her abdomen, among other procedures performed. She was declared NED (no evidence of disease) afterwards.
However, Faye is not out of the woods yet. Her recovery has been slow and has had its ups and downs. Moreover, she still does have a long way to go; she will need to undergo scans for the next 20 years, with her first scan this coming November.
Despite her situation, Faye has found reasons to be positive and happy—and she is also driven to make a difference. She shares her story with us as part of her ongoing initiative to shed light on this rare kind of cancer and to let fellow patients know that they are not alone in their journey.
Name: Faye L.
Diagnosis:
Pseudomyxoma peritonei (rare appendix cancer). Low Grade Muccinous Neoplasm of the appendix
Initial Symptoms:
Severe bloating
Bad stomachache, especially after eating spicy food
Elevated CA 125 levels and tumor markers (attributed to an ovarian cyst)
… I appreciate waking up every day getting to see flowers or the sky, and it’s just minute little details now that you really do notice.
… You know, you just take in a lot more when you’ve had to fight for your life, which is what I’ve had to do.
Introduction
My name is Faye and I am from the United Kingdom.
I’m 39 years of age and I was diagnosed with a very rare form of appendix tumor called pseudomyxoma peritonei.
This is around a 2 to 3 in a million per year diagnosis, which obviously makes it extremely rare.
It behaves in a very strange way. I had it for 5 years and I didn’t know it was there.
It’s not your normal cancer where you’ll get nausea, you’ll feel the sickness, you’ll go, hold on, I’m not well here. It wasn’t like that for me.
Before diagnosis, I always loved to be active, traveling, going out with my dog and my partner, and just enjoying life.
Pre-diagnosis
Ovarian cyst
I just went in for an ovarian cyst which had grown to 17cm on my ovary. And then I came home with a cancer diagnosis. It was totally unexpected. It was a shock.
The only thing that was causing me problems was the cyst itself, bloating, tummy ache. And I just thought it was my period pains.
So my ovarian cyst made me very, very bloated. I was having severe stomach ache. When I ate, I’d feel full quite quickly like I’ve really bloated out, and I’ve not really eaten that much. And having tummy ache after I’d eaten certain foods like spicy foods I found didn’t agree with me anymore.
I also had elevated CA 125 levels and tumor markers. But the cyst can cause the CA 125 to be elevated, so there was no suspicion of anything cancer related before I went in for the cyst.
Operation to remove cyst and appendix
The only thing that my CT scan ever showed was inflammation of my appendix.
Even on the morning of the operation, my doctor actually said to me, I think possibly you’ve got a bit of endometriosis. So if that’s in there, I’ll scrape all that.
And the reason they found the tumor is because they agreed that when the gyno was in there, obviously doing the surgery for that part, that the bowel surgeon would join in on the surgery towards the end and he would come and take my appendix out. Just so I wouldn’t have any further complications later on down the line with appendicitis and have to have another surgery.
And yeah, even on the morning of the operation, I was like, I’m so scared. And I’ve been under anesthesia before. I was terrified that I just wouldn’t wake up. And then they just put me under.
And then I woke up in the evening on the same day and they said everything went well, the cyst was out.
And I said, is that it? It’s done with. And she said, they’ve taken a few samples of things. They will explain to you in the morning when they see you how the operation went.
I kind of read people and you can kind of tell if they’re trying to play things down. But there was no indication that they were trying to hide anything from me at all.
Discovery and diagnosis
So the doctors came in and said that the cyst operation went really well. We got the cyst out. However, we couldn’t take your appendix.
I’m really sorry, Faye, but we found a tumor on your appendix. We found a cancer.
Immediately they started to talk about further steps.
As it turns out, the tumor had ruptured. They brought up an operation called a right hemicolectomy, where they would get the deposits that had leaked outside of my appendix wall, because that’s where the tumor had ruptured inside the appendix. And then it releases a mucinous gel that just spreads all around your abdomen. And obviously it had broken through the appendix wall and it had reached into my abdomen.
They told me, I’ve got a few deposits on my small bowel and that’s it. So it’ll be a right hemi.
And they’re waiting for the biopsy results. But—they also left the cancer inside, which I couldn’t get my head around at first.
I was like, how can you not take the appendix out? How can you leave this tumor inside of me? Like, you don’t know what it’s doing?
And they were like, it’s doing nothing. It’s been there for a very long time. It’s extremely slow growing, and we’re certain leaving it in is the best thing for us to do until we get the biopsy.
And in hindsight, it was because I have heard cases since I’ve been thrown into the world of pseudomyxoma. I’ve heard cases where they’ve removed the appendix and unfortunately, some of the cells have spread further up the body, and then it’s become a different scenario for people.
So in hindsight, yes, they did me a favor, but it was very strange knowing that they’d found this cancer and they just left it there until I had, you know, the biopsy results.
Delays in receiving the diagnosis
I was told that it would take 2 weeks to get the results back. It ended up taking 6 weeks.
We had to raise a complaint because it just made me spiral.
Every Tuesday they would phone me and say, I’m really sorry we haven’t got your results back. And I’ll be like, but I’m in my bedroom here with the curtains closed, looking at funeral plans because I don’t know what this is or the extent of it.
You’re telling me that it’s nothing. But what if those results show actually you’re wrong and it is something a bit more serious?
So I was in the world of the unknown and I just didn’t know how to process it, what to think, what to do.
I had no motivation. I didn’t want to go out. I just thought, I’m going to die and I need to plan my funeral.
The official diagnosis
And then the 2nd of September is when I finally got the official diagnosis.
So they phoned me, and my partner answered the phone purely because I just didn’t want to answer the phone. If they were going to tell me that they’re not back again.
And my partner, I heard him say, okay, so it’s low grade. And then, yeah, the official diagnosis was that I have something called pseudomyxoma peritonei. It’s a low mucinous neoplasm.
And I asked her, okay, so the surgery is still going to be a right hemicolectomy. And she said, we need to refer you to our colleagues at Basingstoke who specialise in this type of cancer, and they will give you the best treatment that they can.
And I just said, is it going to still be a right hemicolectomy? And she said, I don’t think so. Basingstoke will tell you a little bit more when they get the referral, which we’re going to send shortly.
Colonoscopy
So I got diagnosed properly on the Tuesday.
I had to get a colonoscopy done, just to make sure that my large bowel wasn’t involved in any way.
My scans showed there wasn’t any involvement, but he wanted to be thorough. And, yeah, I had that done, and that was clear.
Because that’s how they found my mom’s bowel cancer. I lost my mum to bowel cancer two years ago.
So I was obviously very terrified of having a colonoscopy, thinking, you know what? If something else comes here to railroad me now and they found a polyp, or there’s something else going on, you’re just very irrational, but it’s so difficult not to be.
Reaction to the diagnosis
I guess until you’ve heard the word “cancer” yourself, it’s very difficult to imagine how one feels when you hear those words. It’s like the whole ceiling was just closing down on me.
You see, because of my mom’s passing due to her bowel cancer, I was kind of like, oh, okay, here we go again. History is repeating itself.
And there was a mirror directly in front of the bed. And I just looked into the mirror at myself and I just said to my partner, this is it. I’m going to die.
Treatment
Hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) surgery
So I underwent something called “mother of all surgery”. Complete cytoreduction surgery, CRS with heated chemotherapy, HIPEC.
The operation took 11 hours, and I had to lose 8 organs to ensure that they got all the cancer out of my body.
So what they do is remove all visible evidence of disease. So in order to do that, I lost my spleen, gallbladder, appendix, ovaries, uterus, womb, fallopian tubes. I had to have a full hysterectomy.
The doctor did say that my ovaries were quite healthy. However, if I do not agree to them taking everything, I’m a ticking time bomb, so they had to go too.
I had to lose my belly button as well. They scraped my diaphragm. They scraped my pelvis from one side of it to another. They took my greater and lesser omentum, which is the fatty apron in your whole abdomen, in your tummy. And they took a little bit of the liver and scraped the liver off for good measure.
And then I had heated chemotherapy applied directly into my tummy—110 Fahrenheit of chemo blasted into me. It’s just a chemotherapy wash to kill out any cells that may be hiding away and can’t be seen with the human eye.
Basically, you’re like a stew on the hob. That’s the only way you can sort of describe it. You’re a slow cooker, you know, they’re just stirring around every 15 minutes.
Quite honestly, I didn’t expect to survive the operation.
On the day that I went down to theatre, I said to my partner, look after the dog. Your mum’s got the Christmas presents.
I did know the mortality rate was extremely low. And the doctor did say that, you know, you’re young, you’re healthy, you don’t smoke, you don’t drink.
I had also worked on fitness well up until the operation, because it’s advised that you really get your protein levels and your muscle built up to give you a head start. So, yeah, obviously building yourself up was advised because that gives you a head start on the recovery.
So I had the operation at 7:30 a.m. on the 1st of November. I believe that my partner got a call maybe about 6:00 or something to say that it was completed maybe 530, 6:00. And that I was in intensive care and they were going to keep me asleep. And they’d phoned him on Thursday to let him know when they’re going to wake me up.
So when I did wake up, I was just like… Oh. Okay. I’m here.
It was a very surreal feeling. I thought, I’m having an out of body experience. Am I not here or am I here? And then I remember feeling that my lips were just extremely dry. My throat was so dry. Obviously I had an NG tube right down my throat, which was really uncomfortable.
And yeah, I just remember saying to the lady, I’m dry, I’m thirsty, I can’t really swallow. And she just said, you’ve got a tube down your throat, so try not to move. I’ll get you a bit of water. And then she just wet my lips with a tissue and told me to just lick the water off my lips, because I couldn’t swallow water straight away.
And then she said that your surgeon’s just here waiting to see you. And then he stood by the side of the bed, and they were just asking me questions like, do you know where you are? And I was like, I’m in Basingstoke, the peritoneal malignancy unit. And they’re like, yeah.
And then Alex was like, hey, Fay, do you remember me? And I looked up and I was just like, Alex. I had to feel his arm just to make sure. Like you’re actually here. And he just said the operation went really well. Better than we expected.
And I’m pleased to say that we got it all, and there’s no more cancer.
And at that point I was just like, you got it all. It’s all gone. Like the whole nightmare was just over. And he said, yes, we’ve got it all.
He then said, I’m going to leave you to rest now. Your partner’s on his way.
And, yeah, they just left me in ICU till the Friday evening when they transferred me to the ward where my recovery really did begin.
When I came out of the surgery, I lost 10 kilos. I lost a lot of muscle mass. There was nothing to me. I was just a skeleton.
Recovery from treatment, and moving forward
So I first went to the ward to recover.
I think for the first few days it’s quite a blur, though I do remember some things.
I was on morphine. I had like a PCA where I’d administer my own morphine, just press this button. It would refresh every 12 minutes.
I had an epidural in my lower back. I had bowel stents. I had massaging boots for DVT, blood clots on my legs, which were very noisy and annoying. But therapeutic at the same time to get me to sleep in the evening.
I remember being told that I could have some jelly and soup on day four. They came around with the lunch trolley, and they were wanting to order me a lunch. And I was like, what? Me? No, I can’t eat. And they were like, no, you can, you can have soup and jelly now because you’ve opened your bowels. And I was like, oh, okay.
So it actually felt good to pick up a spoon and feed myself because I had this NG tube up my nose, which was so uncomfortable. I think for me that’s the worst part.
And the chest drains. I had six chest drains. I had two here, two in my waist and two at my pelvis, so they were quite brutal when they pulled them out. A lot of people say like, oh, it doesn’t hurt that much. No, they really do.
And I just had so many wires and lines and it was just very surreal.
And even more so that I was now there without any cancer because I was on the ward where other women, sadly, have gone in for the same procedure, and there’s 20% of cancer that’s embedded deeper into organs that are too vital, they can’t touch. So they just are on palliative care. So yeah, it’s not a very nice place to be.
Day six. They took my epidural out of my back. And then I was like, oh my God. And they showered me and patted my hair for me because obviously I didn’t have much energy to even lift my arm to clean my teeth.
And then I felt like, wow. Like I feel a different person, like all this stuff’s gone. But boy, that evening did I get the mother of all gas pain? As soon as they had the epidural out, I felt everything. Everything.
I had 14 hours of trapped gas that I was literally begging them to give me more peppermint tea or more peppermint water or painkillers. And they were like, we can’t give you painkillers. It won’t make a difference. You need to try and pass it naturally. But I had a 16-inch scar down my middle from the operation.
And that was that was quite an ordeal, trying to trying to get that gas out that had built up in my tummy. It was really, really painful.
… it’s just about trying to get back to things that you used to love before. Thinking that you can never get them back.
But you will.
How she is doing today
Fast forward to today, and I’m still going through recovery.
On the 1st of June I was seven months post-op. It’s up to 12 months.
So recovery has been very up and down. It’s not linear. It’s quite hard hitting on the body, it’s brutal, not a walk in the park. I’m not going to wrap it up for anyone and say it’s easy, because really it isn’t.
I think I started to feel better, more myself, probably around the 3-month mark. So the surgeon did say to me, for some reason, we don’t know why, but it seems to be between the 8- and 12-week mark that patients suddenly say that they feel that they’re more on the up than before.
I started to get on the exercise bike gradually, as advised by the physio. I did five minutes increasing it to seven minutes, ten minutes. And I have actually gone to 40 minutes now.
I still struggle, you know, I still get a bit of fatigue if I overdo things. Driving my car is a little bit uncomfortable if I drive long distances. I haven’t been able to stand and do any washing up or cooking as of yet. Because I still get a bit of discomfort around the tummy where my scar is. But yeah, I’m getting there.
I mean, I’ve been out with my dog, which was really nice because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to walk him again. And it’s just about trying to get back to things that you used to love before. Thinking that you can never get them back. But you will.
I went back to work. I’m on a phased return. I work at the airport, so it’s quite physical and busy.
Yeah, it’s just the new normal. They call this the new normal. And it’s just about getting to know your body again.
Thankfully, I haven’t had any problem with food. I know a lot of patients have had issues. They can’t have onions, they can’t have steak, they can’t have certain foods. But me, thankfully, I haven’t suffered too badly with food.
When I came out of hospital, it was jelly, ice cream, soup, just liquid, you know, a very low residue diet. So my bowel could just fully recover and just heal. But internally, I’m still healing to this day.
20 years of scans
Some have said that my treatment was like ringing a bell. But it actually isn’t.
I’ve got 20 years of scans. I’ll have scans annually for the first 6 years. And then at the 20 year mark, I’ll skip 1 year at 6 years and go to 8 years, and then it’s 10, and then I believe it’s 14 and then 16 and then 20, I think is when I’m officially cancer free if I’m still OK by then.
So for now, I just get called NED. No evidence of disease. Because they said, you’re not out of the woods just yet.
Trying to process that I’m under scans for 20 years is mentally difficult. It’s like you said, with normal cancers, you’re in remission for 5 years and that’s it. You know, you’re free. Off you go. So yeah, to have 20 years hanging over my head is very difficult to process and get my head around.
However, on the flip side, a lot of people say, at least you’re being under surveillance for 20 years. You know, a lot of us get 5 years and then no more. And then we sit wondering like, oh, okay, I’m on my own now. Am I okay?
But yeah, I mean, being so young, like age 39, I won’t be declared cancer free till I’m 59. So that for me, is a lot to try and process mentally.
One scan between 39 and 59. One scan could change my whole life again. And then, you know, some people have to have a second surgery. There has been reoccurrence, but there’s 20% get reoccurrence, and that’s across all grades.
I guess I’m lucky that I had low grade, where, you know, it’s not the aggressive type Yeah, it’s very strange trying to get your head around that.
My first scan’s this coming November. I haven’t had any scan since I’ve come out of the surgery, so I’m quite nervous, anxious about this upcoming scan. And I have been since I came home last year in November.
You know, on my first scans coming up now, is it going to show me that they actually got it all, or is there going to be a cell there that was there that’s now had a year to do something, and they’re going to tell me they can see some mucin again on a scan. You just think all these things.
A lot of people say like, don’t look at the future, look at the now. But I think it’s easy for people to say that when they’re not in the situation that I’m in and others are in.
You know, I know people say stuff to try and play it down to make you feel better, but on the flip side, it really doesn’t make you feel better when people try and say to you like, don’t look in the future, look at the now. And it’s like, well, I’m sorry.
My future is, you know, scans for 20 years. And that’s a reality of my life and that’s my future.
No hair loss
I also wanted to share that a lot of people say to me, you didn’t lose your hair. Hey, I had heated chemotherapy blasted directly into my tummy as part of my HIPEC treatment.
Thankfully, I haven’t had to have “proper” chemo because this cancer very rarely or doesn’t really spread through your blood or your lymph nodes. It stays very localized in the abdomen and that area.
Sure, it’s a hard cancer to combat. You have to have the massive surgery to do it. But it’s also one of the easiest cancers to get rid of because it doesn’t usually spread anywhere else like your brain, your lungs and things like that.
So, yeah, you don’t lose your hair with that.
Reflections on her experience
I think with my mum dying from bowel cancer, I always had the fear of cancer. Like, you know, I’m a mum’s daughter. It’s genetic. It’s hereditary in some certain cancers. But I never imagined that I would have it this soon.
So, yeah, my perspective on life just changed massively.
I’ve got no time for people’s drama. I’ve got no time to argue. I just want peace and to just live life.
And, you know, I appreciate waking up every day getting to see flowers or the sky, and it’s just minute little details now that you really do notice. Whereas before you could be like, you know, it’s just a tree. Yeah, it looks pretty. But now it’s like, wow, look at that tree.
You know, you just take in a lot more when you’ve had to fight for your life, which is what I’ve had to do.
… that’s the world that you go in after you’ve had cancer.
You just hope for the best. Really.
Why she’s telling her story
And that’s why I went out and decided to tell my story from my admission into hospital, because when I was diagnosed, there was there was no information for me about this cancer.
I felt very alone and isolated, and I just don’t want people to feel that way.
And anyone that’s newly diagnosed with it now hopefully sees my page or my story and and they will have a better understanding and think, wow, you know, she’s lost 8 organs and look at her, she’s survived. She’s living, she’s cancer free. I can do this as well.
So it’s just about giving someone hope because I think anyone with a cancer diagnosis— that’s all you live on now: hope.
You hope it doesn’t come back. You hope that you get to see your retirement age. You hope that you go forward with your life now without any cancer, and you hope that every yearly scan is clear.
And that’s the world that you go in after you’ve had cancer. You just hope for the best. Really.
Going global
My story has been shared and read all around the world. I mean, I never expected to be global in my wildest dreams.
The press approached me here when I was diagnosed because I’ve got a modeling background. I had quite a following on Instagram. Which is why I decided to spin that now. I don’t want to be the model version of me anymore. I want to go out and spread awareness and use my platform that way.
And when they approached me after I was diagnosed and I just said to them, look, there’s not really any story just yet, you know what? You’re going to have to wait until I’ve got something to tell. Because after undergoing the mother of all surgery, you want to show people that it’s possible that you can survive it and you can come out of it.
So they waited for me. And December, my story dropped with one of the newspapers here as an exclusive. And then that was it.
Next thing my friends are texting and saying, you’re in Tunisia and Turkey and Hong Kong and Brazil and Sao Paulo. And they’re sending me screenshots of the news articles. And I’m like, well, okay, this is insane.
So yeah, I’ve gone global 29 countries and counting. Yesterday I was in the news in Denmark, which a friend showed me.
And I’ve got more media coming. I’ve coming out this month in the UK health magazine. I’ve got radio interviews lined up.
And obviously I’ve done my own reels on my page and Instagram, just about HRT, because obviously I’ve lost all my reproductive system. How it is with the HRT, what women can expect, what the methods are.
I started to do it because like I said, when I was diagnosed, I didn’t know what to expect at Basingstoke. You know, I went in two days before the surgery to prep me and I didn’t know what to expect. So I thought to myself when I was in my room that night, right, I’m going to start vlogging day one. What it’s like here, what I’ve had done day two.
And yeah, just the morning before the surgery and I just carried it on all through my recovery, I’ve been documenting and just vlogging everything and yeah, just to give people hope.
Supporting campaigns
Locally, I’ve also been doing a lot to support campaigns that fight cancer and help fellow patients.
Cancer Research UK are a very big organization here in the UK. They reached out to me and said, you know, we’ve seen your story. We think whoever hears it, it will have an impact on them. So we’d like to bring you in on a campaign.
And now I’m doing race for Life in Brighton. They’ve chosen me to be the face of race for life in Brighton. So I’ll be starting the horn off to sound the race. And I’ll also be doing a little speech on stage on the day. I signed up for a 10-K. I don’t know if I’m going to complete it.
So loads of people have just wanted to bring me on board and it’s great. It really helps to spread the awareness, but show people that we’re not just a statistic.
You can go out and you can still rebuild your life after cancer. Yes. It’s hard. I’m not going to say it’s easy, but it’s all you can do, right?
We’re still living. We’re still breathing. So just enjoy it.
… just have the faith that our bodies are stronger than we realize.
… my body has done amazing work and still is doing amazing work to get me where I need to be.
Closing message
So my message to people that are watching this is yes, it’s scary. Yes, it’s overwhelming. And it’s fearful. But you know, you’re not alone in those feelings.
Anyone that has been down this road, all your feelings are valid through the whole of your journey. You know, it’s how you feel about it. So don’t let anyone tell you any different.
If you need to cry, cry. If you need to scream, scream. But just have the faith that our bodies are stronger than we realize.
And I’ve learned that going through this major surgery that my body has done amazing work and still is doing amazing work to get me where I need to be. So never give up.
I’m also going out to show people that cancer’s not pretty.
You know, I documented when I was in hospital crying all through my recovery. Like, this is brutal. I can’t cope. And it’s important because I think I’ve had the modeling background.
People just think, oh, you know, pretty girl, images are photoshopped and edited. Of course they are photographers’ and editors’ images. But it’s important to show people the reality of it, as much as it’s hard hitting and it can be triggering for some people to see.
And that’s what I think will help people, especially newly diagnosed people in the future.
“My God, it is a journey. But she got there. So hopefully I will, too.”
Mark and his family had just moved to a new city where he was going to start a new job. He had been experiencing weight loss and low energy, which had been easy to attribute to stress from the move. However, a visit to a new doctor for a routine checkup revealed that his spleen was quite enlarged and his white blood cell count alarmingly high. He had also been experiencing other symptoms such as heavy night sweats and a frequent need to urinate after bedtime.
Tests conducted by an oncologist confirmed that Mark had CML. Mark quickly began a range of treatments aimed at treating his spleen through lowering his white blood counts, as well as addressing his leukemia through tyrosine kinase inhibitors or TKIs. His doctors also helped him become more familiar and comfortable with living with CML.
Mark’s story underscores the importance of listening to one’s body and not shrugging off symptoms, and of finding a supportive community that includes doctors, family members, and colleagues.
Name: Mark K.
Diagnosis:
Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML)
Initial Symptoms:
Weight loss
Low energy
Night sweats
Frequent need to urinate after bedtime
Enlarged spleen
Elevated white blood cell count
Treatment:
Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) including Sprycel
This interview has been edited for clarity. This is not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider to make treatment decisions.
Interviewed by: Taylor Scheib Edited by: Chris Sanchez
Brescia was only 20 when she was found to have early-stage Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
When her cancer was caught, Brescia was returning to America from a study stint in Italy and was on the verge of returning to college. Her primary care physician discovered a suspicious swelling in the side of her neck during a routine physical examination, and she was scheduled for an ultrasound. A subsequent biopsy confirmed her cancer.
Brescia’s diagnosis was unsettling, to say the least, but she found refuge in the things that bring her joy and fulfillment, including being creative, making movies, and enjoying nature.
Brescia and her family sat down with her team of doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona to discuss her treatment options. They considered a combination of chemotherapy and radiation, but decided to go for 6 rounds of ABVD chemotherapy and no radiation, given her youth and the fact that radiation can have long-term side effects. Brescia ended up taking the whole semester off to focus on her treatment.
Brescia has been cancer-free for 5 years now. She is now a photographer and videographer and runs her own boutique agency. Looking back at the time she was ill, she notes how she gained a new appreciation for school as well as the simple things in her life, appreciates the perspective she gained after her illness, and shares the lessons she learned from her experience.
In addition to Brescia’s narrative, The Patient Story offers a diverse collection of stories about Hodgkin Lymphoma. These empowering stories provide real-life experiences, valuable insights, and perspectives on symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options for cancer.
Name: Brescia D.
Diagnosis:
Hodgkin Lymphoma
Initial Symptoms:
Swelling in the side of her neck
Treatment:
Chemotherapy: 6 rounds of ABVD
This interview has been edited for clarity. This is not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider to make treatment decisions.
Interviewed by: Taylor Scheib Edited by: Chris Sanchez
When he was just 24, Josh was diagnosed with stage 3A testicular cancer.
Josh’s diagnosis came as a rude shock given his youth and excellent physical condition. He maintains a healthy lifestyle, has no vices, and loves to join triathlons. That said, he had been experiencing several symptoms for some months before his diagnosis, including pain in his torso and shortness of breath, which were easy to shrug off but in retrospect were suspicious.
Armed with a positive attitude, Josh decided to fight his cancer by undergoing chemotherapy. The succeeding months of his life were traumatic and difficult. Among other things, he experienced serious side effects, including a significant reaction to a medicine there was no substitute for. He also had to face the possibility of becoming infertile. However, his good attitude combined with successful treatments helped him get through those challenging days.
Josh now shares his story with us to grow awareness of testicular cancer and to fight the stigma attached to it; the importance of finding a community that can provide support, and of giving back to said community as well; and the significance of staying positive even when times get tough.
Name: Josh T.
Diagnosis:
Testicular cancer
Staging:
Stage 3A
Initial Symptoms:
Pain in his chest, lower back, and abdomen
Shortness of breath, especially during exercise
Mass found on one testicle
Treatment:
Chemotherapy: bleomycin, etoposide and cisplatin (BEP)
This interview has been edited for clarity. This is not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider to make treatment decisions.
Interviewed by: Taylor Scheib Edited by: Chris Sanchez
33 year-old Tiffany is undergoing treatment for stage 3A ovarian cancer.
Tiffany was about to embark on a yearlong trip when she received life-altering news, a cancer diagnosis. Her diagnosis not only forced her to postpone her trip, but also convinced her to undergo IVF egg retrieval in order to preserve her ability to have children later on.
Tiffany is in the midst of her ovarian cancer treatment and, as of her interview, was steeling herself to undergo major surgery. But she has many reasons to be positive about her future. She shares her story with us to help others in the same situation.
In addition to Tiffany’s narrative, The Patient Story offers a diverse collection of stories about ovarian cancer. These empowering stories provide real-life experiences, valuable insights, and perspectives on symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options for cancer.
Name: Tiffany L.
Diagnosis:
Ovarian cancer
Staging:
Stage 3A
Initial Symptoms:
Severe bleeding after insertion of IUD
Discomfort and pain after working out
Treatment:
Chemotherapy: Carboplatin and Taxol
Surgery: Total hysterectomy
This interview has been edited for clarity. This is not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider to make treatment decisions.
My biggest advice is to be really honest with yourself first.
Like, really checking in, are you feeling something or not?
Introduction
My name is Tiffany. I’m based in Austin, Texas. I’m 33 years old.
I love pole dancing, contortion, and I’m learning how to draw for fun, as well as watercolor in my free time.
I’ve been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, stage 3A.
Discovery and diagnosis
I was supposed to go travel abroad for a year in 2024, and was supposed to leave the first weekend of January. Didn’t want to carry a year’s supply of birth control with me, so I decided to get an IUD.
I had an annual exam at the gynecologist, just standard stuff, and then that was when I mentioned an IUD, and so we got that inserted. We did the normal stuff that you would do during the annual exam. The gynecologist didn’t find anything weird then.
At first, the IUD was fine, it wasn’t too painful or anything. About a week after it was inserted, I started bleeding like crazy.
I had my strings checked a month later, and that was okay, too, but I was bleeding a lot. It was like I was soaking through a heavy pad every hour or so. And so I just left it because it went away eventually.
But a couple weeks after the string check, I started bleeding a lot again, and I didn’t really stop bleeding until they took it out. I was having heavy bleeding, and then it would it would kind of slow down a bit.
It just went on for weeks. So that’s why I called them to double check to make sure it was okay.
I called them probably mid December or so. Because usually what happens is like, you call them and they just tell you, oh, it’s normal. It’s an adjustment period for the IUD, you’ll be okay. But I’m leaving in a few weeks. I need you to make sure this is okay before I go abroad.
So finally, they got back to me and they’re like, okay, we’re gonna do an ultrasound to check. I remember going in, I was like, I’m pretty sure this IUD is misplaced. I remember the sonographer going through everything. And then I looked at the screen and I saw this huge hole.
I can’t read the graphics, but I saw her face and I was like, what is going on? I’m pretty sure there’s something more than just this IUD problem. But she’s not able to tell me what’s happening because I don’t think she’s allowed to by law.
I almost was able to talk to the doctor right away, but then I actually had a work meeting, so I had to schedule it for I think the next day or something. I was just really anxious for 24 hours or so. And then the next day I went in and the doctor was like, hey, look, we found a gigantic cyst.
We don’t know what it is, the doctor said. I’m going to need to refer you to a gyno oncologist. Like I’m supposed to leave next week. Can I get an appointment right away? And she’s like, yeah, I’m gonna try to see if we can bump you up. And then she ran this blood test for the tumor marker, CA 125, that same day. So the new doctor can get all the results and stuff.
So I had an appointment I think the next week, right before I was supposed to leave. I was like, well, there’s a huge thing in me, regardless of it being cancer or not, I need to take this out. So I probably do have to postpone my trip. There’s no way, you know, this person can just take it out in a week. So, yeah, I postponed my trip.
In my head I was like, okay, maybe it’s just postponed for a few weeks or a month. Maybe I can head out in February or something, which is not a big deal. But by that time, I had already quit my job because that was the plan.
My last day of work was right before I was supposed to leave. It it just put me in a weird position because, I was like, well, I might leave soon anyway, so I guess it’s just like a month, I don’t need to get my job back. So I didn’t really bother with it. But also, it was just like a strange, in-between time where everything was up in the air.
So I went to the new doctor, the gyno oncologist. And she basically was like, I need to see an MRI. So I had to get that done the next week.
And then after that, the follow up appointment, she didn’t really say it was cancer or anything, actually, even though my blood work was over the chart, my CA 125 was like 4000 and the standard was like 35. So it was crazy high. But, different things can affect your CA 125, such as endometriosis, which I wasn’t diagnosed with. All I knew was that I had PCOS. [Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a hormonal disorder in reproductive-age women, causing infrequent or prolonged periods and elevated androgen levels.]
So when I talked to her after the MRI, she wasn’t definitive that it was cancer, but she wasn’t saying that it wasn’t either, because they don’t really tell you until they really go in there anyways. So she basically she knew that she had to take out the ovary that was attached to the tumor. But she asked me, if it’s cancer, what are your thoughts about having kids? Um, because if it’s cancer, usually they take everything out.
It took me a few days to get back to her because it was just so shocking to think about. We ended up deciding that we would keep the other ovary in there, even if it’s cancer, because we wanted to preserve my fertility and see if we could go through the IVF route.
Going into surgery, the doctor thought it’s probably borderline because it’s rare that someone in their 30s would have ovarian cancer. But, I mean, it could happen. She said that if it is borderline, then I probably wouldn’t need chemo. It ended up not being borderline.
What happened during surgery is that she took the tumor out with the ovary, and she said the tumor was hard to take out. It wasn’t like a solid tumor, where, she could just pick it up with the robot and take it away. It was mushy and weird, gross-sounding.
The surgery took five hours, I believe, which was way longer than I expected because, besides taking it out, she also had to wait for a biopsy to see if it’s cancer and then after it’s cancerous, she does surgical staging. So she would swipe samples of different areas of my pelvis. I think it was bladder, bowels, uterus.
She took the omentum out for biopsy to see if there’s any cancer cells there. So that’s also probably why it took five hours. I took up pretty much the rest of her afternoon, so I didn’t really see her until the next day. And that’s when she told me that, hey, it is cancer.
But we didn’t know the staging; we just know that it’s probably more than likely, more than stage two, based on what I saw in there, but not definitive. Two weeks later, during my post-op appointment, I got the report.
So the original report says there were cancer cells in the omentum. So that would put me in stage 3A. But there was another part of the report where they weren’t exactly sure where the origin site is for the cancer.
So they were suspecting that it’s either primary ovarian or possibly could be from the uterus or it’s synchronized cancer, because the type that I have was called an endometrioid ovarian cancer. That might come from endometriosis. So they are thinking that it could be synchronized, but for now they are treating it as a primary ovarian cancer.
So it’s like still not definitive in a way. A little strange because I think the staging changes depending on the primary side.
So if it’s ovarian primary, it’s like stage three, if it’s uterine primary and it’s in the omentum, that could put me in stage four. But then if it’s synchronized then it could be stage one for both. So it’s very confusing. The staging kind of tells you the prognosis, but then all the information data that they have are for like older women. So then it’s not like that information is for my population.
At this rate, like honestly, I don’t look at my prognosis because none of the data is very specific to my population.
So I went ahead and got a second opinion too, just because why not? Insurance covers it. And I got a second biopsy at MD Anderson. And the report came back the same.
So that’s a good thing, that it’s the same, I guess. Ultimately they’re not really going to be able to really find out exactly what it is until they take everything out.
Treatment plan
After the doctor told me about my ovarian cancer diagnosis, she gave me a treatment plan.
So I was going to be having three rounds of chemo, surgery to take everything out, and then three rounds again.
So the midway point for the surgery, they just wanted to get the chemo in me first, but because I already would have had three rounds of chemo by then, they might not be able to really biopsy enough. There might not be enough cancer cells there for them to find out what is really going on.
IVF
About a week after the report and discussing it with her, I started my IVF cycle, so I started freezing my embryos.
That wasn’t fun. It was a lot of injections, doctor’s appointments., and going back and forth, trying to get a discount.
My insurance didn’t cover the IVF cycle, so I had to look into different organizations that would provide discounts on the clinic. And there are discounts for cancer patients, I think in most clinics, at least mine did. And I was able to get help from Livestrong and the Heart Beat program with Walgreens.
The Heart Beat program basically gave me all the medication for free, which was really helpful because the medication itself, it’s like $10,000. And then the Livestrong also helped with the medication as well. It was like a 20% discount on certain things through the clinic.
I think we were fortunate in a sense, because I know a lot of women, they have to go through multiple cycles to freeze 1 or 2 embryos. We were lucky in a sense that we only had 1 shot, just 1 cycle before chemo started. We were able to freeze 8 embryos, which was amazing.
The clinic helped. They were the ones who told me about Livestrong. And they were the ones who applied on my behalf for the Walgreens Heart Beat program.
I think the complicated part, at least with my clinic, it was more like I wasn’t really sure who should be doing what part of the application process. It might have just been a clinic issue, but they weren’t very clear on who is starting? Am I the one applying directly or are they doing it on my behalf? So I had to do a little bit of work in that regards. But ultimately they were the ones who found the programs.
My doctor was the one who referred me to this clinic, so it seemed like she already had a relationship with the reproductive endocrinologist. So before I even went on my consultation, she already knew what was going on.
In terms of figuring out financially, I think we were fortunate in a way, because we had saved up for a trip and so we already had that nest there. If it wasn’t going to cost like that, we would have just done it anyways.
My husband and I, this has been a lot of discussion between like having kids or not. He’s the one that really wanted the kids. I was more like, could be maybe. Maybe not. It was just like, okay, might as well do this because if we don’t do it, we might regret it later.
This is a little bit morbid. If I, you know, pass away in 2 years, I felt at least I left something for my husband—a part of me there for him.
So, the IVF process. The first appointment was just discussing the different options. So I had the option of just freezing the eggs or embryos. But you still have to go through the IVF process. It essentially means they’re just taking the eggs out, the embryo part comes later.
During the process, they would monitor your follicles to see how they’re growing. Usually they want you to start, I think, like day 1 or 2 of your period. Um, I didn’t. I was on a timeline, so it didn’t pertain to me But I also luckily had my period the first day I saw her. So it kind of worked out in that sense.
So the first appointment, the doctor would check to see how many eggs are already there. In a way it was fortunate I had PCOS, so I had extra eggs. Apparently, if you have PCOS, it’s better for the process because you have more eggs.
Once she thinks you’re ready, you will start doing your injections. I did two medications, on my abdomen. The first injection was just so scary because you guess your spouse or someone could help you, but I just did it on my own. The medication helps grow the follicles.
I only had one ovary to do this, for others they might have two. But for my one ovary, she saw like 18 or something on there already. So they’re trying to grow everything at the same time essentially with the medication, but they don’t want you to grow it so fast, your ovary will get too big and then you will get hyper stimulating ovaries, which will cause a lot of pain.
They want to monitor you, every other day or so with blood work to check your estrogen level and also ultrasound. So I had to go to the clinic every other day. They gave me a different medication to start, to kind of balance it out so it doesn’t overgrow.
And then after about ten days, they decided that it was time for the trigger shot. They’re checking the size of each follicle. They want them all to be as big as possible. I think I had three that were like 20mm or something, I can’t remember. And that was when they decided it was time.
So then I did the trigger shot, and then the day after, they did the egg retrieval. During egg retrieval, they put me under, and then the process took like ten minutes.
And then they woke me up and they were like, we took out 22 eggs or something.
Treatment
Chemotherapy: Carboplatin and Taxol
Right after, a week after IVF, I started chemotherapy to deal with my ovarian cancer.
I got a week break between IVF and the chemo cycle. And I went back to Jersey for a wedding.
Okay, so the chemo regimen I’m on, it’s carboplatin and taxol. My chemo regimen is every 3 weeks. I would say it’s only bad the first week, and then it’s pretty much back to normal the next two weeks.
I did so much research before, I feel like I already knew everything before I started. And also, before chemo, they did like a chemo teach where I met with one of the physician’s assistants and they gave me a binder of information. So I already had an idea of what to expect.
Side effects
In terms of side effects, I think the major one is the hair loss. That pretty much happened after cycle 1 and throughout cycle 2 as well. But I think after cycle 1, I was just so anxious, I was like, I’m going to shave it off anyways. Just get it over with.
When I was reading online, I wanted to know when my hair loss would start. And most people said it would start about the second week. So I thought, I wish I knew that because I remember after the first, for like a week, I was just obsessive about my hair.
I would wake up and be like, are you going? Are you leaving me yet? And then when it was still here, I was like, oh my gosh, maybe I’m one of those lucky people. I wish I would have known that it really would start like after the second week.
I was never too attached to my hair. Or at least I thought so. Some women love their hair and they want it to look a certain way. I guess if I cut it and it’s ugly, I didn’t care too much, would be upset for a minute, and then I’d be like, okay, it’s gonna grow back. You’ll be fine.
When my hair started falling off, when I started seeing strands of hair on my pillow, It was just horrific to see that much hair coming out. I did get a little bit emotional. I think because I didn’t have that much time to process everything. Just seeing the hair kind of hit me in the face a little bit.
And then I felt really concerned about how I looked like without hair. I wasn’t sure if I would still feel attractive or if my husband was still find me attractive.
Ultimately, when I shaved my hair off, I was I was kind of surprised that, I thought, I still look good without the hair. I went on a lot of shopping sprees, just for new styles and wigs and makeup stuff. So I think that kind of helped.
Right now, I have days where I’m like, I really miss my hair. Especially like when I go out and I see people with beautiful hair, I’m like, oh, I really miss having hair.
But then most of the other days I’m just like, oh, how would this look on me now? I feel like I get to play a little bit with a different style. And then sometimes I’m also kind of like, I wonder what style is going to stick after this is over. Maybe I’ll adopt some of these new things.
So other side effects have mostly been swollen hands. I’m also having a slight neuropathy, only on my index finger. Very strange. And then a little bit of brain fog, but that tends to fade away after the first week.
Surgery: total hysterectomy
So my next milestone in my ovarian cancer journey, I guess, is my surgery. That’s coming up on May 20th. I get 4 weeks in between surgery and chemo, which means I get an extra week to play.
So the surgery I’m getting will be a total hysterectomy. They’re going to be taking out my remaining ovary, my uterus, the fallopian tube that attaches to the ovary, and my cervix as well.
I am incredibly anxious about it, because once they take out that ovary, that puts me in surgical menopause. And for women that are in forced menopause, I’m high-risk later on for osteoporosis as well as heart disease.
Not to mention, I’ve been reading a lot of other women’s experiences that are around my age, mostly breast cancer survivors. It sounds like there’s like a thing called vaginal atrophy that will happen or might happen as well.
Also, all the other stuff that comes with menopause, like hot flashes. I’m very, very scared just about what might happen.
Also they say that sometimes you don’t get those symptoms right away. So it’s not like I’m gonna wake up and it happens. It might take a few weeks before it happens.
They haven’t really talked to me about post-surgery. I just know I get a 4-week break and then I go back for chemo, but I do believe it’s the same chemo.
… don’t brush away that little voice that’s telling you something is probably wrong.
Shifts and learnings
Support
I felt like because of my ovarian cancer situation, everyone was extra nice to me. I would say I’m very fortunate, because everyone is being so supportive.
My mom lives in Jersey and flies here every cycle to help me out, and my husband has been very supportive, too. My friends like giving me rides and everything, too.
I think it’s going pretty well for what it is.
Realizations
So when I look back, I do feel like I had the symptoms of ovarian cancer, I definitely ignored them. I do crazy workouts, so, yeah, I’m going to be like, there’s some tightness there or I just kind of brushed it off. but when I look back, I was kind of in pain.
I was remembering how there were days after I trained and I would be like, wow. Training really hurt today. And I really don’t want to do this post because it’s putting a lot of pressure in my abdomen and it’s really pretty uncomfortable. But I just brushed it away.
And so I think that if I did not get that IUD, I think it would have gotten me eventually, Because I’m young and healthy. I didn’t think of it as anything. I mean, I didn’t really bring it to the doctor or anything, but even, like, with the whole IUD thing, I felt like I had to really push for them to, take a look at it. And so, it is very important, don’t brush away that little voice that’s telling you something is probably wrong.
I think it’s mostly realizing, this sucks, but I still get to do so much cool stuff later on. Hopefully.
It sucks that I didn’t get to travel, but after this, maybe I can I can travel again, but it’s gonna look a little bit different than I planned because I’m not going to be able to just leave for a year now because of all the monitoring that they do. Kind of realizing that I’m still going to be able to see everything.
But I honestly think what has really gotten me through this is just me on the pole. Because I’m still able to pole dance, and contort, which I don’t understand how sometimes. So that has been pretty incredible, very helpful as well. Like for my mental health, too.
But I think what shifted in the way I’m thinking about it is to just appreciate what I can do, versus going after certain things and being frustrated with it. So I kind of see it in like a new perspective. Oh, I just took a class, and then I never looked back. Yeah.
Pole dancing is like a challenge. I love it because as long as you put the work or the training, the time into it, you will see results. And it’s like a way to express yourself in whatever way you want it to be.
So it doesn’t have to be sexy. It could be like emotional. It could be very athletic or just like, whatever you want. And I really love it for the art form and also for the physical challenge. And also the pole community is incredible. I made so many friends off of it, and it’s just a great place.
Advice
My biggest advice from everything that I’ve learned in my ovarian cancer journey is to be really honest with yourself first. Like, really checking in, are you feeling something or not? Even if the doctor thinks you’re being a little too much, just push them to do something because you never know.
And then really do your research before going to the doctor, because, hopefully you have a good doctor, but, if you don’t, you have the knowledge to back up what you are suspecting. And then be very assertive as to what you’re asking them for.
I would say something like, hey, I have a concern with this. Can we do a scan or something, instead of having them lead the way? You kind of want to almost lead the conversation instead.
And then also be honest with them as to what you’re feeling, too, because I think sometimes people brush away symptoms because they’re scared of what it could be. It’s better to know what it is and deal with it earlier versus later.
Interviewed by: Taylor Scheib Edited by: Chris Sanchez
61-year-old Tim, who hails from Lexington, KY, is being treated for multiple myeloma.
An elite cyclist in his youth and still striving to be active and live healthy, Tim and his family were blindsided by his surprise diagnosis with multiple myeloma in the course of treatment for a gallbladder infection. Tim refused to succumb to depression and anger and, upon his doctors’ advice, chose to undergo chemotherapy and stem cell transplants.
Thanks to his treatments, support from his family and friends, and overall can-do attitude, Tim faces each day with positivity and hope. He shares his story with us to help others who may be facing the same situation.
In addition to Tim’s narrative, The Patient Story offers a diverse collection of stories about multiple myeloma. These empowering stories provide real-life experiences, valuable insights, and perspectives on symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options for cancer.
Name: Tim H.
Diagnosis:
Multiple myeloma
Symptoms:
None that could be identified; cancer found through CT scan for emergency gallbladder removal
Treatments:
Chemotherapy: Revlimid, Velcade, and Dexamethasone; Darzalex, Kyprolis, and Dexamethasone; Melphalan (preparatory for stem cell transplant)
Stem cell transplant
This interview has been edited for clarity. This is not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider to make treatment decisions.
You’ve got to look for hope. And you’ve got to look for help.
Introduction
My name is Tim, and I currently live in Lexington, KY. I’m in my 60s. I’m married and we have kids.
I work full time, and I also have a side business. We live on a on a small farm here in Kentucky. We have a few dogs that we like to play with. I have some old cars I like to work on. And I also try to exercise as much as possible.
In my youth, I was an elite cyclist. I’ve continued riding throughout my life.
In the late summer of 2022, I was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. It was devastating news. But it’s almost a couple of years now and things are going quite well. My family has been very supportive and we’re trying to make the best of it.
Initial “symptoms”
I actually feel I was asymptomatic.
In the late summer of 2022, I turned 60. I had never been in a hospital for any form of stay up until that point. I broke bones and, you know, had gone for stitches and things like that. But I’ve never had a hospital stay.
For about a year prior to that I was having a lot of stomach problems, but they were not very consistent. They were sporadic and sometimes months apart. And in actuality, they had nothing to do with my multiple myeloma diagnosis.
Discovery and diagnosis
In August of 2022, my wife and I were in Colorado camping to celebrate my birthday, and I started having some severe stomach problems.
About 3:00 a.m. at the start of Labor Weekend, I was in excruciating pain. At about 5:30 a.m. or so, my wife and I drove over to the emergency room and they let me in. I got seen really quickly.
They went through the normal questions, asked where the pain was and everything and said, do you still have your gallbladder? Push comes to shove, and it ends up being a severe infection in my gallbladder.
While I’m there, they’re running all the tests. They put me on some heavy painkillers and we wait and they come back eventually after quite a number of hours and say, okay, we’ve run our tests. You know, we’ve contacted a surgeon we’ve scheduled, we’ve determined that your gallbladder is very infected, you’ve got several severely large gallstones. And tomorrow we’ll go in for surgery to have those removed.
And by the way, while we were doing your CT scan, the technician noticed some things. So we will be contacting our oncologist on call to come in and have a discussion with you. We see some lesions and we think it might potentially be a few things. One of them being multiple myeloma.
At which point I looked at my wife and I’m like, did he just say they’re going to bring an oncologist in? Completely random and out of the blue. I admit I was still doped up, so I don’t think it had quite the effect that one might expect, but it was pretty startling to hear that.
So they ended up keeping me in the hospital for five days. My infection was pretty bad, and they were waiting for it to clear, but they also were running parallel tests, protein tests and such to see what they can do.
At the end of my stay, they were pretty sure that’s what it was.
I was released and then scheduled to come back a couple of days later for a bone marrow biopsy. They did the biopsy.
And then I met with the oncologist and he said, the results show that, you know, you from what you see, you have about a 25% coverage in your bone marrow. So we’re going to start scheduling your treatments. So that was at the end of September.
Multiple myeloma really messed with my head after having a full life of good health.
But you cannot put me in a downward spiral.
Reaction
There are aches and pains in my life. You know, my back has never felt great for 15 years. I don’t think any of those things were related to my multiple myeloma diagnosis.
And so it was really out of the blue and you just get dumbfounded to begin with that somebody would say that to you.
I’m like, how can I? How can I have a multiple myeloma diagnosis? I feel other than my gallbladder problems, I feel perfectly fine. I mean, I didn’t feel tired. Really didn’t feel anything like that.
But then you start worrying, of course. Especially when, you know, you start talking to your doctor, the oncologist, and I started meeting with a secondary oncologist, so I have my primary oncologist who does my treatments. And then I have a secondary oncologist at the University of Kentucky, where they decided that it would be best to do my stem cell transplant.
So when I met with them and it’s a teaching hospital, so they’ve got fellows and students there and everything while you’re being diagnosed and, you know, they can be pretty frank about some things as well. And they didn’t really sugarcoat much.
When they talked about what we can expect from this and how my multiple myeloma was not curable. They can basically prolong things for a while, but inevitably, as the fellow put it, this is going to be end up being what causes your death eventually. Unless obviously something comes along and whatnot, you get hit by the proverbial bread truck.
Multiple myeloma really messed with my head after having a full life of good health.
But you cannot put me in a downward spiral.
Choice of treatment
My doctor gave me a choice.
At the beginning it was, listen, here’s a couple of different pathways we can take. We can do multiple myeloma treatments continuously. And then when your numbers go down, we can put you on a monthly and hopefully maintain it that way. Then you can go through a stem cell transplant. And hopefully that will add a number of years onto the end. That might not be there if we just do treatments without a transplant.
Now he really didn’t have the numbers to back that up. They’re not far enough into, I think, the collective that they can really show one way or another. But it’s again, I mean, it’s a daunting thing to think about the transplant and what that might mean. But it was the best avenue. It seemed to get the best quality and length out of what time I had.
So at the beginning of October I started my multiple myeloma treatment.
Treatment
After I was diagnosed, my oncologist said, we should start treatment. We want to get you in right away.
But my wife and I asked if we could prolong a week, go away for a little bit and come back and start the treatment. It was our anniversary coming up within a couple of days. They said yes.
In the interim, they sent me the list of treatment dates and what I would be getting.
Chemotherapy: Revlimid, Velcade, and Dexamethasone; Revlimid
So I was treated twice a week. Twice a week, and then revlimid 14 days on and seven off up until mid-December, when I started having a reaction to it. I ended up with a three-quarter body rash from my chest down.
I was also not reacting to it well enough. My protein levels were coming down very slowly, much slower than they really wanted to see.
Chemotherapy: Darzalex, Kyprolis, and Dexamethasone
At the beginning of the year, they moved me over to a darzalex, kyprolis, and dexamethasone treatment, which I actually liked a lot better because it was only once a week, and then you get like a week off or and whatnot.
I reacted to that much better. I came down very quickly in protein levels.
So by April, I had slotted in for the mid-May stem cell transplant. So they stopped my multiple myeloma chemotherapy at the end of April.
Pre-stem cell transplant procedures: Melphalan chemotherapy and vaccinations
I took a couple of weeks to start getting ready for the transplant, have a chest catheter put in, and do the tests that they require to make sure you’re a valid candidate for the transplant, which I was; and then extraction of stem cells from my blood via the catheter; and then cryogenic storage of these cells.
And then I went in for chemo with melphalan to basically kill everything in my bone marrow.
After that, interestingly, I needed to get all my childhood vaccinations again.
So one of the things that the pre-stem cell transplant does is it necessitates you getting all your childhood vaccines all over again, because that protection is no longer there.
I thankfully did not have much of a reaction. I’ve heard some people tell some pretty gnarly stories about it.
I went in for my infusion and they’re like, okay, we’ll have your vaccines for you. So the nurses lined up on either side of me and then just did a countdown, and then they all just did the shots all at once.
I think they do that just to keep people’s anxiety down and such. I had some reactions of soreness and whatnot, but nothing really major.
And I had the transplant the day after that.
Stem cell transplant
The 18th of May is my rebirth day coming up. It’s going to be here in a few weeks.
Stem cell transplant sounds like a severely complicated procedure, but in reality I was amazed at how uncomplicated it can be.
After the pre-transplant procedures I described, the day afterwards, they reintroduce your frozen stem cells into your body. And then they basically replicate or grown, you’re given some other medications to agitate them quite a bit.
So they replicate fairly quickly, and then it raises your white blood count, the blood count rate and such. The idea here is that when you’re reduced to the level that myeloma is fairly undetectable in your marrow, and then the new cells are reintroduced, it will help combat them from coming back.
I got thrown straight into things like bone marrow biopsies, things where they cycle the blood out of your body, extract the cells, put it back in, and that itself is like a five hour procedure for three days each day where you’re just lying there while it’s done. That was freaky, to put it mildly.
And then the transplant itself. So they just start reintroducing the stem cells they previously extracted back into your body through the chest catheter.
I’m not a needle guy. Like I’ve spent the last almost a year, year and a half or so of having blood taken all the time, having IVs all the time and all this stuff. And I’ve never liked that at all. But now it’s just a fact of life.
My former boss, when this first started, he was like, well, what’s the alternative? So, I just kind of learned how to deal with it.
I think if you look at it, it’s probably very disturbing to a lot of people to see things like that, but maybe it’s the disturbing things that people need to see to help them along their way, to understanding that they should not let these things go. You know, go for your colonoscopy, go when things don’t feel right.
My transplant experience wasn’t much fun, mostly from the chemotherapy. Had a lot of issues with my stomach and the general feeling that you get just from the chemotherapy itself, because it is such a high dose.
I was in the hospital for three weeks. I started off with the transplant on day one, and then they kept me in the hospital for three weeks. Felt completely and utterly lousy all the time. Just severe tiredness, nausea, that kind of stuff.
Couldn’t sleep. Had a lot of things like leg cramps and just odd muscle pains, which, they medicated me for, but you’re just lying in bed at night because you can’t sleep. And your mind is going a thousand miles an hour.
I mean, you’re trying to get sleep, but they’re running tests every x number of hours. So you’re sort of asleep and they’re coming in and drawing from you through your catheter and things. So you never really get a real full rest.
Release from hospital and recuperation at home
So I was released. Went home. Was severely fatigued for a while.
It took a while to build up, I think until about the middle of July when I started to feel better. I felt like I was cheating because I’m like, I should feel worse than I do at this point. But I had just started treatment again in the middle of July and I still feel good.
I get tired. I have neuropathy. Shins on down. That’s bothersome, but I’m perfectly capable of doing all the things I like to do. I ride all the time. I work around the house and such.
That time during the hospital stay and right after the month or so after were really rough, a lot of lot of sleep, a lot of lying on the couch. I was still working.
Other than my time in the hospital, I’ve been working full time while this is going on. I manage web operations for a firm, so it’s not physically demanding.
It was a little rough; chemo fog and things, you know, it was a little tough putting words together sometimes. But my boss knew, the heads of the company knew, they were very supportive. And the sharpness came back, thankfully. And I can talk normally again.
After the transplant, there were a couple of months where I didn’t really have anything. And then I started with my maintenance chemo for my multiple myeloma at the end of July.
So I’m on darzalex and faspro once a month, and then every third month is zometa. I’m guessing it’s going to be like that for a bit more.
I’m just at the moment getting subcutaneous shots once a month and then every third visit is a matter for bone health. So that doesn’t bother me so much, but the meds they’re giving me can leave you feeling kind of funky for a little bit.
It’s a belly shot. Nobody’s favorite thing to do, and like I said, it leaves me feeling flu-like for several days. I also get a high dose of dexamethasone on those days, so I get that lovely steroid reaction.
If you think about the fact that there are still a lot of things to experience in this life and a lot of people that want you to be around, that gives you the hope to really continue on with things that just seem really daunting.
Moving forward
My general idea here is I’ll be on maintenance for my multiple myeloma for probably another year. And then they will see where my numbers are. If my numbers are still responding, then hopefully we’ll be able to go off maintenance.
It eventually becomes something that you accept. And you learn that it’s just going to be a part of your life.
For instance, like I mentioned, I don’t mind doctors and I’ve always had blood drawn and whatnot. But it’s still a bothersome experience for me no matter how many times it’s done. But it’s just something I’m going to have to accept as part of my life from now on.
And at some point somebody’s going to say. The multiple myeloma numbers are jumping back up again, and we’re going to have to start all this all over again. And I’ve accepted that that’s going to happen sometime in my future.
Hopefully it doesn’t happen for a while because there are some things that I still want to do. But do I wish that that they had the things in place to eradicate? Sure. But I know that they don’t. And I mean, just like most other cancers, there’s really not much you can do about multiple myeloma.
Fortunately, they’ve got enough treatments in place that as my oncologist refers to it, he says it’s just a treatable illness right now. There are others out there that are less fortunate in that respect.
So it’s kind of a two-sided sword there that you have to deal with. It does get you at the point where you start wondering, do I have everything in place that I need for my multiple myeloma treatment? You know, that was that’s part of the spiraling that I think happens right after diagnosis. My kids, my wife, all that.
What’s going to happen there? As I mentioned before, I’m very fortunate. My family is extremely supportive. My wife has been a trooper through this whole thing. I had a chest catheter in that had to be cleaned every day. She took care of that. It’s not something I could do, but she did.
She’s been with me to all the treatments. She wanted to be there in the hospital. They wouldn’t let her during my transfer. I mean, she was there during the transplant, but she couldn’t stay there.
I still have a lot of things I want to do. I’m not ready to give up on some things there. I guess it’s one aspect of my personality that has always been with me in my whole life. You know, you can have daunting things happen to you, whether they be financial or family or medical or anything like that. And you can give up. There’s that possibility that you’re just gonna throw in the towel.
And again, I don’t want to give up living life as long as I can, my multiple myeloma notwithstanding. So for me, I still plan out pretty far. And, you know, I’ll be honest, sometimes I’m thinking about things and it’s like, whoa, wait, why am I doing this? I should just be like, planning short term or something. But it’s just my personality. I just don’t want to give up. I’m not much for giving up.
So I still keep thinking long term in the future. I think that again could be personality, but it also I think is a learned thing that you don’t give up.
If you think about the fact that there are still a lot of things to experience in this life and a lot of people that want you to be around, that gives you the hope to really continue on with things that just seem really daunting.
Because I’ve been doing this for so long, I still plan out training plans for my riding, even though there’s really no end goal other than being able to do it and such. And there are days when, I have something planned, a workout or whatnot, and I wake up and I’m gung-ho. But by midday, it’s just too overwhelming. And I can just sit on the couch, you know, and that that would be perfectly fine.
I have trouble riding for a couple of days after my treatment just due to the fact that it’s an abdomen shot. They’re sometimes a little uncomfortable. So I just usually plan on not doing anything at that point in time.
But I think more than anything, it is doing something for yourself that can help you build strength both in mind and in body. That is just paramount for me.
I was riding all the way up until shortly before my stem cell transplant. I don’t ride every day, I try to get 3 or 4 times a week. Most of it is indoor training, except for the weekends. You know, if it’s nice, I try to get outside, but I have to be careful because I haven’t had a CT scan done since the originals, but I had lesions all throughout my femur, pelvis and lower spine.
And so the threat of fracture and things is extremely high. So I do have to be careful about that. I live in the country, so I don’t encounter much traffic. And I don’t go out for five hours at a time like I used to. If I get an hour and a half in, it makes me very happy.
But I find that even though you get really tired from the exercise, the end result is that you feel fatigued less from the treatments. Helps keep the weight down, helps with my blood pressure and such. It was it was pretty high from some of the treatments that I had. I was actually on blood pressure meds at the beginning of the year for a while because it seemed like I was having a little bit of a reaction. But I don’t have to do that anymore. That’s really good.
Because those have all hosted side effects as well And I just liked being out there and doing something for me. You know, I don’t have to think about work or any of those things, I can be out there just enjoying sunshine and wind and sometimes rain.
… I’m not going to hide my multiple myeloma again.
You don’t want it to be hidden if you could help somebody.
Lessons and takeaways
Once I got out of the hospital, the first couple of days, as I said, were really rough, were just spent on the couch, but I forced myself to get up and do things.
I would go for small walks around the neighborhood. It was very tiring, but being outside, being in the sun, getting air was very important.
And then continuously as I started feeling better, doing more and more. I started off just kind of shuffling around, but I worked up to half hour walks in the next couple of months and just being outside and seeing the flowers and things and just reminding yourself of what you know there is to experience in life.
I feel like also eating correctly is paramount to making sure that you recover well. My wife has celiac, and we don’t do a lot of processed food because of that. I made bread for her, all kind of things like that. Lots of vegetables. We eat a lot of beef and get a lot of protein that way. I can usually tell when I don’t think I eat well, how badly it makes me feel now.
I drink a lot of water and hydrate very well. And they were all adamant about hydrating because we’re putting all this stuff in you and you got to get it back out. The longer it stays in there, the worse you may feel. And it’s even now I have maintenance once a month. It’s still a thing to deal with. It’s mostly flu like kind of symptoms.
Another thing that I’ve found has been so important is to lean heavily on loved ones, family and such.
A lot of people, myself included, are very much, “I should be able to handle this myself. I shouldn’t have to bother other people for something that is my responsibility.” Meaning, it’s my multiple myeloma. It’s not their illness. Why do I have to bother anybody else about it? My dad, who’s still alive, he’s 92. And he’s battling his own battles with skin cancer.
At the beginning of this, I’ve been very open with everybody about my multiple myeloma . As I mentioned, I brought it to the attention of the people at work, even though, technically, I don’t have to. I think it’s very important.
And my dad was wondering, why are you telling people this? Shortly after my diagnosis, I made a post on Instagram and it got shared and some of my friends and family and whatnot reached out. “I was very surprised to hear that you did this.”
But I’m not going to hide my multiple myeloma again. You don’t want it to be hidden if you could help somebody.
Get people to realize or open their eyes that there might be something going on in themselves. Again, multiple myeloma is a disease that is usually not caught until it’s pretty far in, until the point where you can’t work, can’t walk. Or you break a bone bending over or turning over in bed or something like that, because your bones have been eaten away by the disease. At which point, it becomes so much harder just to do anything about it.
So again, if you’ve just been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, don’t be afraid to rely on those around you to help you. You know, if it hadn’t been for my wife helping me with these things, I don’t know what I would have done. You know, if she wasn’t there to help me clean the catheter or just help me when I couldn’t move. Making meals when I couldn’t get up. She put up with my massive dexamethasone treatments every week– shortness of temperament and such.
You’ve got to look for hope. And you’ve got to look for help.
You know, at this point it’s like, okay, I have this journey that I was basically documenting, but I’m like, now what do I do? I feel okay, but I’ve started thinking about it more and more.
And one of the things I’d like to do is get more involved in the cancer world and helping people. Just like we’re doing now. Learn how to answer questions. Deal with it because you’ve been through it.
Again, I’m not hiding my multiple myeloma. I’m trying to be open about it. I feel like I’ve learned a bunch of things, experienced a bunch of things.
So I have no objections to being very open about things that have gone on with me in this. It’s looking for all kinds of avenues to help wherever I can.
Interviewed by: Taylor Scheib Edited by: Chris Sanchez
Andrea, a nurse practitioner from Spokane, WA, got through stage 3 colorectal cancer.
Andrea’s symptoms began when she was about 7 months pregnant with her son—bloody stool and lower back pain and pressure, progressing to more serious symptoms like rectal pain during childbirth and as many as 20 bloody bowel movements daily—but she was consistently told that they were due to her pregnancy. A colonoscopy, done after the symptoms progressed significantly and her husband was able to get some help, finally diagnosed her stage 3 colorectal cancer.
Treatment–chemotherapy, radiation and surgery–as well as a lot of support, a can-do attitude, and self-advocating, eventually helped Andrea get better. Her story isn’t without some twists and complications, though, most especially an agonizing period during which she thought her colorectal cancer might have progressed to stage 4. Thankfully, this was a false alarm: she was actually already cancer-free, and she remains so to this day.
In addition to Andrea’s narrative, The Patient Story offers a diverse collection of stories about colorectal cancer. These empowering stories provide real-life experiences, valuable insights, and perspectives on symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options for cancer.
Name: Andrea P.
Diagnosis:
Colorectal cancer
Staging:
Stage 3
Initial Symptoms:
Frequent bloody stool
Lower back pain and pressure
Rectal pain
Severe stomach cramps
Treatments:
Chemotherapy: 5-FU
Radiation treatment
Surgery
This interview has been edited for clarity. This is not medical advice. Please consult with your healthcare provider to make treatment decisions.
… I was chosen to go through this fight so I could help bring awareness to other people.
We were chosen for a reason, and we need to be strong through this fight.
Introduction
I’m Andrea, I’m from Spokane, WA. I’m 34 years old.
I am a nurse practitioner. I was a nurse for a long time, going on about ten years. And then I went to nurse practitioner school, and now I’m a nurse practitioner in the emergency department. I also was a nurse educator for some time, so I taught nursing students.
I’m married; my husband is a nurse anesthetist who works at one of the local hospitals. We have two beautiful kids: our daughter is going on 5, and our son who’ll be 3 this year.
If I’m not working, I love working out, going to one of our local gyms. We do CrossFit, and that’s like my hobby. It is like my home away from home. Working out, doing those things and spending time with my family and spending time with my friends. I have a really close group of girlfriends, and we tend to do a lot of our little girl’s nights.
I think I’ve been much more outgoing since I’ve been diagnosed and not holed up in my house; I used to be such an introvert. Like, I just want to stay home. I don’t want to go do anything. But after this I’m like, no, I want to go do all the things.
Initial symptoms
My colorectal cancer story starts when I was about 7 months pregnant with my son in June 2021. That’s when I started noticing blood in my stool.
The doctors shrugged it off. Because of my pregnancy, they said it was normal. You can have hemorrhoids, they said. So I didn’t think anything of it.
But it just kept getting worse. I started to have a lot of lower back pain, as well as this feeling of back pressure. I always felt like I needed to go to the bathroom.
Even then, I was told that it was because my baby was sitting really low. He’s sitting posterior, they shrugged. Just pregnancy stuff.
I gave birth to my son on August 9. While I was in labor, I was having an incredible amount of rectal pain. I remember telling my husband, gosh, this hurts so bad—there’s no way this is just a hemorrhoid. I was having contractions back to back, but they paled in comparison to the pain.
Give me the epidural to take the pain away, I said to my husband. Again I was told that it was because the baby’s just sitting very low. But I had had a daughter before, and I knew that this was completely different.
Come October and November, I started to have even worse symptoms. Each and every bowel movement was bloody—worse, sometimes all I would be excreting would be blood. I was having 15, 20 bowel movements a day that were just blood.
I asked my OB to refer me to a GI doctor in Spokane. While they did get me in relatively quickly, in November, once again, my symptoms were only chalked up to pregnancy.
I was told: you’re way too young. You just had a baby. You have a bunch of hormones going through you. You’ve had hemorrhoids. Basically just dismissing my concerns. But at least I did get them to commit to a colonoscopy at the end of December or the start of January.
But something happened in December that sped things up. I was at my cousin’s basketball game, and I had a sudden really severe stomach cramp. And I went to the bathroom and it was all blood clots, the worst one I’ve had. It was just bright red blood with dark red clots.
My husband contacted one of the GI docs that he works with and was like, listen, no one’s taking my wife seriously. Can we please get her in? And the GI doctor went, bring her in next week. I’ll scope her right away.
And December 20th is when I got my colonoscopy and colorectal cancer diagnosis.
Diagnosis and Reaction
I was 32 years old when I was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer.
Going into the colonoscopy, I knew it would be cancer deep down. But my husband was so reassuring and supportive; he told me I shouldn’t think like that. So when I went in for the colonoscopy, I actually wasn’t terrified or even anxious.
But when I woke up from the anesthesia, the doctor came over to me. He said: there’s a really big mass there. I’m so sorry.
And I think in that moment, I was like: there’s no way this is my real life. You think it will never happen to you, but it does. The thought in my head was: is it everywhere?
My son was 4 months old at that point in time. My daughter was about to be 3 or 4 years old. I was like, am I even going to see my son turn 1? I was in the middle of nurse practitioner school. Why even finish school? Shouldn’t I just spend as much time as I can with my kids?
I remember the first thing we did was call my mom, who was watching my kids, and I couldn’t even tell her. My husband had to tell her. I got on the phone to my best friend, and I told her. And then I had to FaceTime four of my best friends who knew that I was going in for the colonoscopy.
I could die next month, I remember thinking. It is the most terrifying, sickening feeling. The diagnosis really put things in perspective.
I’m thankful that when my diagnosis came out, my doctor really took charge. The doctor came over and said, we’re getting this looked at today. I’ve already scheduled you for an MRI. I’m getting you a CT scan today. I’ve already talked to an oncologist, a surgeon, a radiation oncologist. I’m not letting you leave until we have a plan for you today.
It was a really long day that day because my colonoscopy was in the morning, and then I had to go through the CT, go through the MRI. Luckily, the doctor fixed it up so that the radiologist would read those scans when I was there.
So I was able to find out quickly via my CT scan that there were no other masses anywhere at that point. The MRI did show the tumor and some lymph nodes, but it didn’t show any masses anywhere else. So I felt some relief that, okay, so far it hasn’t spread.
I went home and all I wanted to do was be around my kids, but at the same time, I didn’t want them to see how upset I was. My mom was trying to hold it together and she was having a hard time.
I tried to be normal, but I hadn’t eaten or drank in that day, so I ended up getting so sick that I ended up having to go to the ER for fluids because I couldn’t keep anything down and kept vomiting profusely. I also think I cried every ounce of water that I had in my body out.
So I ended up calling one of the girls I worked with, and she actually snuck me into the E.R. One of the doctors who is a good friend also knew, as well as the provider who took care of me. That level of support was really nice.
Treatment
Chemotherapy and radiation
My colorectal cancer treatment was a whirlwind of “let’s get your appointments going”.
So I actually got called by the radiation oncologist the very next day and they were like, we want to get you in today. We’re going to map everything out for your radiation.
And then I got called from the oncology office and they said, we want to see you today to go over what your plan is going to look like. And so I ended up going to the oncologist that next day, and, he mapped everything out for me.
He said, we’re going to start with radiation, where you’re going to go under 28 treatments of radiation. And while you’re going radiation, you’re going to have a chemo pump. So you’re going to have continuous chemotherapy infusing. And then once you complete those treatments, then you take a week break from the chemo.
Then you do eight intensive treatments of chemotherapy where you come in and get the four hour infusions. After that, you have surgery.
And after your chemo, we rescan you, we remap and see what your tumor is doing. There is a possibility that if your tumor is gone, you don’t have to have surgery.
But I was like, absolutely not. You’re taking that thing out. We’re not watching and waiting for anything. I had already made my mind up that I was going to have surgery.
So I went to the radiation oncologist later that day and got mapped. So he tattooed my back, my abdomen, mapped where they were going to do the radiation treatments. And then I think the day or two after Christmas, I went and got a port placed for all of my treatment.
And I started treatment January 3rd. So really very quickly, I started my first radiation treatment, and then they hooked me up to the pump that I had to wear 24 -7.
Initially the GI doc said, surgery first. But then when I talked to the oncologist he said, typically if it’s stage one, if it’s just this isolated tumor that hasn’t gone into the lymph nodes, we would do surgery where we cut the tumor out and then we do like a clean up chemo. But mine was very eroded. If I would have waited a couple more months, I probably would have had a perforated colon, that’s how bad it was.
And because I had lymph node involvement, we needed to get the chemo in there and kill what we can. The radiation was to kill the tumor, and the chemo was to stop the tumor cells that were floating around from duplicating and so on. That’s why I had to do the chemo and radiation before the surgery.
Surgery
I underwent a pretty major surgical procedure. They basically went in and dissected the entire tumor, plus did a few things on one side of the tumor and then the other side to make sure that it gets all taken out.
Then they did a temporary ileostomy, where they basically take my colon and bring it out through my stomach to let my surgery site heal. I had to have that for 8 to 10 weeks.
I had to be in the hospital for a couple days, just to make sure that everything was working, and that was the first surgery. And then I had that ileostomy for about 8 to 10 weeks, and then I had to go in and have it reversed.
So they go in and they just basically put my colon back together without that tumor in it. And that surgery was actually a little bit more intense. It was much more painful, even though it was a shorter surgery, and I was in the hospital for about two nights with that one too.
When I got told about the ileostomy, you know, my initial thoughts were like, I don’t care. Do it. I just was in that mindset. Do what you need to do to get me better, I don’t care.
But when I actually came home with the ileostomy, it was a very big mental block for me. I felt like I didn’t want to go out in public since I found it disgusting. I never minded taking care of them on other people, but I never thought that I would have to have one.
And I remember the first day that the home health nurse came over to help me figure out how to change the bag and stuff. I couldn’t do it. My husband had to do it because I was so emotionally distraught from it. And my husband actually just said, you don’t ever have to look at this. I will take care of it for as long as you have it. It took me a couple of weeks to finally get used to it.
And actually one of my preceptors for school has an ileostomy and he and I actually became really good friends. And I remember when I found out I was going to have one, he was like, hey, I got your back. I’m going to walk you through this whole thing. I’ve had mine for years. And he was such a big supporter.
He would talk me through it. He’s like, this is just part of our lives now. He was a big reason why I think I did so well with it, because I had him just there, supporting me through it.
And he knew what it was like to have one knowing that it wasn’t permanent. There is an end in sight.
And when I got it reversed, I just remember the doctor being like, okay, it’s getting reversed, but I’m just telling you right now, it’s not going to be a walk in the park. We have removed a lot of your nerve endings, your colon has basically been asleep for weeks. Basically, you might have to potty train yourself again. And I was like, maybe I don’t want it reversed, maybe I just want to keep it.
And so when I had the second surgery, I remember I was in so much pain, I can’t even remember being like, oh, it’s gone. I just was like, get this pain taken care of. Definitely having it reversed was worse than having it placed. And that took a mental toll on me for sure.
Side effects
So the side effects of the radiation, I didn’t have too many. The most significant was fatigue from the radiation, which was insane. More fatigue than I had when I was pregnant with my son, when I was 12 weeks pregnant and I got Covid. The fatigue from the radiation felt maybe 20 times more than that.
I also had a lot of back pain, aches in my pelvis.
They also had said that we’re radiating your uterus, your ovaries, you’re not going to be able to have any more children. They did give me a chance: we can do what’s called an ovarian transposition, where they pull the ovaries out of the radiation field to try and salvage if you want to have kids. And I was like, listen, I have two healthy babies. I need to be there for them. I can’t delay this any longer.
As for side effects from the initial chemo pump, I didn’t have any other than my fingertips turned different colors, like I dipped my fingertips in self-tanner. And everyone would be like, whoa, your fingertips are brown. My oncologist said that the chemo regimen I had to do was called 5-FU, and he was like, oh, it’s the 5-FU fingers. It’s totally normal to have that.
But later on, the side effects from the chemotherapy got way more intense. I went into the first treatment and after the treatment, I felt fine, just a little tired. I was told, though, that the side effects would really hit me—and they did.
Tuesday night after my very first infusion, I ended up so violently ill that I passed out. I got rushed to the emergency room at one in the morning because I was so sick.
When I got to the E.R., my blood pressure was in the 70s. My heart rate was super high. They were like, she is so severely dehydrated, we might need to admit her to the hospital. I can’t even tell you how many liters of fluids they gave me. Every antiemetic possible. I was still so sick.
They called my oncologist. They were like, what do we need to give her? And he was like, you need to give her this specific type of antiemetic. That’s for chemo. That’s really expensive. And hospitals don’t usually carry it. But he’s like, that’s what’s going to keep her out of the hospital.
So after that I went to my follow up appointment. He’s like, we need to do pre-meds on you because that obviously can’t happen again.
And I remember after when I was laying in the hospital after my first treatment, I said, I will not do this anymore. I’m done. I’m done with chemo. I can’t do this for seven more times.
And my mom’s like, you don’t have a choice. You have two children at home. You’re doing this. So we need to figure out what we need to do to make it so you can do this.
So I would pre-medicate, I would get this infusion of this antiemetic that was supposedly only for like chemo patients, before I got my chemo. And then on Wednesday when I got my pump disconnected, I would get fluids and that I did pretty well with that. I really didn’t have any other side effects from the chemo from that point on other than fatigue.
Aside from that, I would usually have to take a nap. I got a little bit of neuropathy towards the end where my feet were really numb and it felt like my feet were asleep, just chronically asleep. Which was pretty common for this type of chemo.
I didn’t lose my hair.
I had so much support and I will always be grateful for it.
Support
I had so much support and I will always be grateful for it.
I’m originally from Portland, Oregon. I have a really close friend group in Portland. I have a really good friend who contacted all my friends in Portland when she heard about my colorectal cancer.
She contacted all my family, all my friends in Spokane, like friends that I have in Arizona. She just went above and beyond, and she basically had them send her a letter of everything they love about me and basically wishes for me and then send pictures. And she put together this book. And so each page was like a friend who wrote a letter to me. I took that with me to my treatments because it was just like seeing how much love and support I had.
My best friend put together a bunch of stickers that said Support Squad Blue for Andrea, and people throughout the hospital were putting them on their water bottles, people I didn’t even know, but worked with her on in her unit and knew how much I meant to her were like wearing, buying these stickers to support me. And so just seeing that was like, so helpful.
I think when you’re literally fighting for your life, I didn’t hold grudges; didn’t get upset or anxious over really little things. I actually had a way better outlook on life when I was going through that because I was like, hey, I don’t know what next week looks like. I’m just going to enjoy everything I can right now, like my children and school.
Keeping Busy
My oncologist was like, you can’t work. You need to just rest. And I’m like, I’m not just going to sit at home and sulk.
So I actually completed my last semester of nurse practitioner school while I was in chemo. And I used my colorectal cancer treatments as my study time away from my kids. So, keeping myself busy and just continuing to push through, really helped me.
But I had days like there there were absolutely times where it would hit me like, I cannot believe that I have colorectal cancer and that this is what I’m going through.
And I would have to go upstairs. I’d lock myself in my room so my kids didn’t see me, and I would completely break down and just have a moment of hysterically crying, like ugly crying. Why? Why is this happening to me? Like, what did I do? And then I’d pop right out of it.
One of my good friends, she’s always like, okay, have your moment in Pity City and then get yourself out of it and let’s go. So I’d always just tell myself that, get out of Pity City. We had our moment, time to get back.
Stage 4 Scare
I had a bit of a scare during which I thought my colorectal cancer might be stage 4, but it hadn’t after all.
I was just starting my job as a nurse practitioner. Right after I completed treatment. Right before I had my first surgery. They wanted to rescan me and see just how much the tumor had shrunk. So I ended up having another CT and an MRI, and I remember being at my very first day of work at my new job, I was training, and I got the MyChart result.
So I opened it up and the first thing I saw was a new lesion on the liver, and my heart dropped. I remember I got through another hour of work, and then I finally just told my preceptor, I need to go. I’ll be back tomorrow.
And I called my husband, and I’m like, I’m stage four. He’s like, what are you talking about? And I’m like, there’s a lesion on my liver.
That day was the worst. Way worse than the day I got diagnosed. One of the most defeating days ever.
I came home and said, we need to plan my funeral, we need to get our things in order. And my husband, at that point, he’s always tried to be so positive. And at that point he literally goes, I don’t really know what else to say other than, we need to get things in order for you. Because he knew, this isn’t good. That day gives me more anxiety and just makes me cringe more than the day I got diagnosed. Because it felt like I had gone through so much for it just to not work.
The next day I remember messaging my oncology team and I was like, can I please can I have a phone call with my oncologist so we can talk about my CT scan? And she goes, yeah, he’ll like, do a telephone call with you or tell a zoom video. I was like, okay. So I went out to my car. I was again at work.
I went out to my car and got on the call, and he had my CT scan pulled up and he was there. And so I was sitting there and I was just waiting for him to tell me. And he goes, you know, the spot on your liver. He’s like, I am 99% sure it’s not cancer. I actually have a call out to the liver specialist to just look at it.
He said, you know, the chemo you have can really damage your liver. And I had actually had on my last chemo, I had labs done in my liver. Enzymes were elevated. And he said, I think this is a piece of your liver that just died from the chemo and is just trying to regenerate. Doc’s calling me right now. She’s reviewing all your images.
So he talked to her and then he got back on. He’s like, yeah, she is pretty confident.
This is nothing to be worried about. So at that moment I was like, oh my gosh. He said, you know, your tumor is actually shrunk significantly. It’s still there. We still need to do the surgery. But yeah, this spot on your liver, I’m just really not concerned about.
Remission
So technically, my colorectal cancer was in remission on the day of my surgery when they pulled the whole tumor out. June of 2022. And I guess at that point, I didn’t necessarily think I was in remission because I was like, well, they still need to scan to make sure they got everything.
They took the tumor out and they take the test, the margins to make sure there was no tumor cells. And I had negative margins, which they said is really good.
But unfortunately I had like eight lymph nodes that had live cells in it. And that puts you at such a high risk for recurrence.
I remember my oncologist being like, you have a 40% chance of going to stage four even with all of this out. And still it’s like a 60% chance of it not happening. Yeah, but 40% is pretty high. Because of that, they were like, we’re going to have you on a really close scan bloodwork every three months for five years.
So it wasn’t until probably my three month scan after that where they didn’t see anything that I was like, okay, I’m officially in remission. I don’t have the colorectal cancer in me anymore.
To this day, I still don’t think I’ve ever gotten to the point where I don’t feel that I have colorectal cancer. It’s just, I think a part of me feels that someday it probably will come back. And I don’t know how to get out of the mindset that it won’t.
Like, even though, my blood work, I get a CT scan, an MRI every three months, and then I get a tumor DNA test where they actually extract DNA from my tumor, and then they draw my blood every three months, and they compare those so they can actually pick up if there’s like, tumor cells floating. Every single one’s been negative since June of 2022.
But I can’t get in the mindset that it’s gone. I just I think that’s just part of it. I just can’t no matter what, I’m like, okay, well, another month where it hasn’t popped up again, but we’ll just wait till the next month like so.
And I think that’s just part of the process of this. Like you just once have once you have colorectal cancer, you’re never going to feel like you’re fully out of it.
Going during the treatment and everything, I felt less anxiety because I think when you’re going through treatment, you feel like you’re actively doing something to get rid of the cancer. When you’re in remission, you feel like a sitting duck, like you’re not doing anything to actively get rid of it, even though it’s technically gone.
So that has been really hard because when I was in treatment, I’m like, oh, every day I’m going in that’s killing more of those cells, and it’s getting rid of it, and you feel like you’re actively taking care of it. And then sitting in remission for the past two years, I think, okay, is this next scan, the one that’s going to pick something up, is this next bloodwork, the one that’s going to pick something up.
You just kind of feel it’s just like a waiting game. I think it’s because, you know, they say you can’t say you’re cancer-free until five years out.
So statistics show that I was 71% at stage three B, which I was I have a 71% five year survival rate. In hindsight 71% is great, but there’s also that 29% rate, that’s not. And so, I also get to the point where like, okay, yeah, I’m two years out from this. Does that mean I only get three years left? So I just get into a negative headspace and you just have to take a lot to get yourself out of it.
There are going to be dark days. There are going to be days where you feel like you cannot go on any longer. I had plenty of those days where I felt like, I cannot, I don’t want to wake up tomorrow. I cannot move on from this.
Just know that we can. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
There is a bright side, even though you don’t feel like there is.
Lessons and Learnings
I am a huge advocate now for self-advocating.
I’ve had people reach out to me, on Facebook, on Instagram who’ve seen my story and they’re like, hey, I started to have these symptoms. I went to my doctor and my doctor was like, oh, you know, we’ll just follow up in a couple of months.
Absolutely not. You find yourself a new doctor, you go to an urgent care, you go to an ER and you say, this is what I need, this is what I want. You have to push for it. And, you know, I have told people: exaggerate your symptoms a little bit, like if you had one bloody bowel movement, go and you say I’m having multiple bloody bowel movements.
You get the colonoscopy because right now the colonoscopy age is 45, which is so crazy to me. With the rates of colon cancer showing up in people 18 to 35. I read an article that showed rectal cancer is supposed to increase by 112% in patients 18 to 35 by like 20, 35 or something crazy like that. And then colon cancer is supposed to increase by like 114%, just some outrageous number. Then it’s supposed to be the leading cause of cancer death in people 18 to 35.
And yet the colonoscopy age in the United States is 45. I’ve been in ER medicine for ten years now, but I’m a new provider and I’ve actually had a couple young patients come in who have had similar symptoms and they’re like, yeah, my primary doesn’t take me seriously.
And I’m like, we’re gonna call GI here in the ER today. We are going to try and get this figured out. We need to lower the age. But I also understand that with the increased amount of cancer cases and people needing scopes, they’re overwhelmed too. There isn’t enough providers.
I just think that we need to stop making it an age thing like it is. Colorectal cancer is not a 50 year old man’s disease. Someone who is 19 can get it, someone who is 20. And you can do all the right things and still get it.
I have never smoked a cigarette a day in my life; I do not do drugs; I hardly drink alcohol. I work out and I eat relatively healthy. And I still ended up here. And I had genetic testing. I have no genetic risk factors. I have no family history. So it can happen to anyone, it can literally happen to anybody.
Advice that I’d have for anyone in this situation is that there is a reason for everything. There is a reason that we were chosen to go through this fight.
I look at it as like I was chosen to go through this fight so I could help bring awareness to other people. We were chosen for a reason, and we need to be strong through this fight. We need to be there for our friends.
There are going to be dark days. There are going to be days where you feel like you cannot go on any longer. I had plenty of those days where I felt like, I cannot, I don’t want to wake up tomorrow. I cannot move on from this.
Just know that we can. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is a bright side, even though you don’t feel like there is. And know that your feelings are validated.
I had people be like, look at you, you’re still here. It’s like, no, you don’t know. You have no idea how this is feeling. And we are the only ones that will know truly how this feels. Know your feelings are validated, but know that you can get through this. I’m always here to talk to anybody who’s going through that.
My other thing is, stay off of the internet. I was in that support group for a little bit, but then it got to the point where I was seeing so many just negative things, stuff that started to bring me down, and I’m like, I had to remove myself from it. Stay off the internet, stay off of social media, stay off of any of that. That is the best advice I can give, because you will go down a rabbit hole of so many things, and that’s not what your body needs.
And your fight is your own fight, like my colorectal cancer fight isn’t somebody else’s. Like we’re all going to be different. Try not to compare it to other cases. Just know that, like your fight’s your own and you’re going to be different.
Interviewed by: Alexis Moberger Edited by: Chris Sanchez
Viola is a survivor of Stage 4 stomach cancer.
Viola’s cancer diagnosis came as quite an unwelcome surprise, because she is athletic and active; has practically no family history of cancer, save for a grandfather who got lung cancer from chain-smoking; and aside from a couple of symptoms, initial tests including a CT scan, blood testing and biopsy came up with nothing.
Nevertheless, further testing just a few months after that healthy diagnosis revealed Stage 4 stomach cancer that had started to spread outside of her stomach.
A shaken Viola began to undergo the aggressive chemotherapy regimen known as FLOT, but also started to speak up for herself. Her doctor told her that should FLOT be successful, it would open the door to surgical removal of her stomach. But this was unacceptable to Viola, since doing so would not do anything about the other afflicted parts of her body.
Viola and her mother began to do research, and discovered another treatment called HIPEC that could help. But this was not something she could automatically avail of. The doctor who administered HIPEC would need to check her CT scans to see if she could undergo this treatment. Thankfully, the doctor and his staff later agreed to treat her even without seeing her CT scans.
In a 10-hour operation, the doctor removed her stomach, ovaries, gallbladder, and part of her small intestine and big intestine before administering the chemotherapy drugs that are part of HIPEC. Viola’s response was positive, and she was discharged after a stay in intensive care to heal at home, where she carefully resumed her athletic activities to help herself recover.
Months later, however, Viola was back in surgery because she had to constantly use the toilet, and upon arriving at the hospital she started vomiting and could not stop. She underwent a 6-hour operation to deal with her intestinal issues.
But Viola’s body continued to refuse to absorb nutrients. A few months after the surgery, as advised by another oncologist, and despite the objections of her own oncologist, Viola took a gamble and stopped her chemotherapy treatments. The gamble paid off: her condition normalized. Moreover, a checkup revealed that her cancer was gone, which quarterly checkups continue to verify.
Viola’s story is testament to her strength and positivity, to her refusal to accept the status quo and undergo standard treatment, and to her unwavering belief in herself.
In addition to Viola’s narrative, The Patient Story offers a diverse collection of stories about stomach cancer. These empowering stories provide real-life experiences, valuable insights, and perspectives on symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment options for cancer.
Cancer is just an opportunity to prove how strong you are.
Introduction
My name is Viola. I’m Polish, but I’ve been living in Australia for 20 years.
I turn 51 in April this year. I have two kids, 14 and 17.
I like sports, I used to run a lot, I love swimming. I just enjoy being outside, I love nature.
I love talking to people. I just get a lot of energy being around people.
Pre-diagnosis
Before I got diagnosed with cancer, I was thinking that I might die from a different disease, but not from cancer, because there’s practically no cancer story in my family.
Only my grandfather had cancer, many, many years ago–he died from lung cancer, but he got it because he smoked a lot.
This means that my cancer was a big surprise for all of us.
My own story goes back a little. Five years before I got diagnosed, I knew something was wrong with me because I was very tired and I could feel a little pain.
But when I went to the doctor and they checked my blood, did a CT scan, and all that, there was nothing. And because I was so active, too, they really didn’t think that something was going on.
All of a sudden, in February 2020–when the pandemic started–my husband, daughter and son all got sick with influenza. And one day, I went to work and suddenly felt a sharp pain. And ever since then, I started to feel weak, and got weaker and weaker. But I thought it was just influenza, too.
My family was fine after 2 or 3 or 2 weeks. But I was still very, very weak. And I kept going to the doctor for checkups, two or three times. But he still couldn’t find anything wrong with me.
Diagnosis
In April, we did the blood tests and CT scan, and the doctor couldn’t see anything. And he said, okay, let’s have you do a gastroscopy or endoscopy.
But he then said, oh, since there’s a pandemic, I don’t know if you can have these tests. But I put my foot down, and said, I have to give it a go, you know?
I got a referral for a different doctor, and I said, OK, if I’m going to have to pay for these visits, let’s get the best doctor we can get.
So I did go to see that new doctor and filled him in. He noticed that I had lost weight–all of a sudden, I had lost 5 kilos. But I personally didn’t notice, because I’ve always been pretty skinny, and I’ve been running quite a lot, too.
The doctor had me do an endoscopy. I went to see him on a Friday and we did it on Monday. And once again, they couldn’t find anything. But this time, this new doctor said, let’s do another one in a couple days, because I don’t have a good feeling about it. So we did another one after three days.
The doctor didn’t have results yet, but he called me and said–I think it’s cancer. Of course I said, no, it’s not possible, in fact, I already feel much better.
And two days after that is when he called me with the confirmation that it really was cancer. Stomach cancer, stage 4.
And as it turns out, it was hidden in my stomach wall, which is why it didn’t show up easily or right away. And the other thing was the cancer had spread a little bit outside. I think it’s called peritoneal.
Reaction to the Diagnosis
It was from nothing to a big thing. In April 2020, I was a healthy girl; on June 1 of the same year, I was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer.
So this is how sneaky cancer is. Stomach cancer just takes you by surprise. And it’s so ironic because I was always laughing at my husband, saying, hey, I can eat anything, and he would go, oh, I can’t eat this because my stomach hurts.
And moreover, I didn’t have any symptoms like blood in a stool, or anything like that.
So yeah, it was a big, big, big shock to me. I didn’t know what to think. Of course I thought I would die. Just the word cancer freaks you out.
My friends were incredulous. They said, your blood results, they didn’t show anything. The CT scans from April didn’t show anything. The first biopsy didn’t show anything. Is it really cancer?
But it was just hidden in my stomach wall. That’s why I never had constant pain. Because if you have stomach cancer and if you have a lump, wherever you eat, it hurts.
Treatment
Stomach cancer is aggressive cancer, so we had to move right away, and the first treatment I was given was aggressive too.
So the surgeon I was going to said, okay, because you’re young–I was 47 at the time–let’s do the chemo, we’ll put you on FLOT.
FLOT
So they put me on FLOT, and like I said, it was very aggressive chemo. It’s not for everyone.
The doctors put people on FLOT if they have hope that their patients can undergo the surgery and regimen. If not, I would have been put on palliative chemo instead.
The doctor wrote a report and in it he said, if the chemotherapy works, we can consider an operation to remove the stomach. When I saw the word “consider”, I freaked out. I could feel that my life was in his hands. And I’m not the kind of person who’s okay when someone else decides about my life.
What about the rest of the cancer that’s outside the stomach, I asked him? He said, well, this is what I can do. But I put my foot down and said, this is not enough. You can’t just leave the rest of the cancer in my body.
So I talked to my mom, who lives back in Poland, and we started searching for alternatives. And she came across a method called HIPEC.
HIPEC
Now, HIPEC is something they don’t recommend for stomach cancer patients. It’s more for people with colon cancer, or ovarian cancer. But we still wanted to give it a shot.
So I started searching here in Australia and found one doctor who could administer it, but I could feel that she didn’t feel confident about HIPEC for me. So I kept on searching.
I found another doctor who actually started HIPEC in Australia, and who was supposedly the best in the country. He had been doing this for such a long time and was very experienced. I think he was about 70 years old at the time already.
I wanted to make an appointment with him, but it wasn’t that straightforward. I had to send all my CT scan results beforehand, and then his staff would have to see if I was qualified for it. So I was waiting for all my scan results to arrive–and praying and praying that he would accept me.
And all of a sudden, I got a phone call from the doctor’s secretary. She said, you’re clear to make an appointment, even if we haven’t received your CT scan results yet. So it was like a blessing from God.
So when I finally met him, he was like, OK, no problem, we can do it. And I said, really? It’s stage 4. He said, yeah, not a problem, we see how we go.
Out of curiosity, I asked, do you get a lot of stomach cancer patients? And he said, I actually don’t. Most of the time, it’s too late and there’s no chance. But with you, I can see a chance that HIPEC will work for you.
So they put me on what would eventually be 4 rounds of HIPEC chemo. It was tough, and not just the chemo itself. It was doubly tough for me, for my family, because I’m responsible for all the cooking and cleaning at home and all of that. And when I got sick my husband had to take over everything.
Also, being on chemo, not having appetite, and thinking about death was traumatizing. And people around me were in shock, too. Because we didn’t have that family history of cancer. And I was also pretty young when it started.
People didn’t know how to help. They were sending flowers and I said, I don’t need flowers, sorry, I need food. Some people just couldn’t get it. I don’t know, maybe I expected too much from people.
So I tried to eat and be strong for the next step, which was an operation. I remember that they really wanted to operate on me quickly. We can’t wait, they said–this is aggressive cancer. We have to do it quickly.
Surgery
So, in September 2020, they rescheduled all their operations just to fit me in, and then they performed the surgery.
Mine was a long operation, ten hours. They removed my stomach, ovaries, gallbladder, part of the small and large intestines. Honestly, I don’t know if the cancer spread to my gallbladder, but they just removed this just in case.
They told my husband that apparently my stomach was sitting or lying on my intestine. And if the stomach was full of cancer, then it could spread to the intestine. That’s why they removed as much as they could.
Chemotherapy
And after removing all the stuff, they performed the next part of HIPEC.
This is like a hot chemo, 42 degrees. So after they take all the organs out of you, they put in the hot chemotherapy, they close you.
And this is like in the washing machine, it’s just killing the cancer cells that are left after the cancerous parts are removed.
It should have taken just about one hour and a half, but I started bleeding after an hour, and they had to disconnect me. That’s why it took so long, ten hours. And then I went to intensive care.
… the secret of my success is that I was doing the stuff that people don’t want to do.
I’m alive because I was doing stuff that people don’t do.
Post-Procedure
They expected me to be in intensive care for 4 or 5 days.
Because this is very aggressive treatment, and only strong young people can be qualified for it. But, you know, I always had a lot of energy.
When I had the operation and woke up the next morning, I was strangely happy.
My first question was, did you even operate on me? And they said, yes. So I was happy already.
This is like when you go on holiday and then come back home; you still have this energy left over from the holiday.
After I woke up the next day in intensive care, I had all this good energy.
It was in the middle of the night and I was chatting away. The whole world was quiet and I was so active and talking because I was still on this healthy energy.
And when the doctor saw me, he said, oh, I’m pretty happy with the result. You look OK. So maybe we can move you to a normal ward straight away. In fact, they wanted to discharge me under 24 hours because I look pretty OK.
But I said, no way, not yet. I want to stay in intensive care first. I didn’t know if the people in the normal ward would know what to do with me.
Sure, I did have all that good positive energy afterwards. But recovery turned out to be hard. Because everything stopped inside my body. The intestines were not working. It was a big shock for my body. They did remove half of my organs, after all. I remember after the operation, after the HIPEC, they wanted me to go to the toilet by myself. They didn’t want to do anything that was not right with my body.
After 3 days, I got discharged. I went back home. I was healing. But I wanted to take the next round of chemo straight away. However, they said that I needed at least 2 months to recover, because it was after all quite a big shock for my body. Not just because of the operation but also because of all the chemotherapy that was pumped inside me.
I recovered at home, and I tried to be active while doing so–stuff that people don’t ordinarily think of doing while in recovery. I got myself to walk. I even jumped on the trampoline. Anything to keep my body moving. I slept a lot as well, of course.
But the secret of my success is that I was doing the stuff that people don’t want to do. I’m alive because I was doing stuff that people don’t do.
Second Operation
After this operation, I had to undergo a second operation in April 2021, because I had a problem with my intestines.
I was already skinny, on chemotherapy, and I lost a lot of weight. Maybe I’m mentally strong, and my body was strong too.
But I couldn’t keep the food in my body; the toilet became my home. Honestly, I could sleep there. It was just a nightmare.
So my weight was only 38 kilos in April 2021. So, to fix me up, I had to have a second operation. They had to open me up again and see what’s going on.
Of course, it was a scary moment, honestly, because this was the time when I started vomiting a lot at the hospital.
And even my son said, I thought you are not coming back, because when you start vomiting, it means that your intestines are blocked, and if the intestines are blocked, you’re done for.
So I underwent a 6-hour operation to repair my intestines.
Afterwards, the doctor checked–and there was no sign of cancer.
Even at the hospital, I kept on doing the things that were working for me. I was pushing myself. I tried to walk and do different things. I meditated and prayed. I just refused to accept that I can die.
Stopping Chemotherapy and Being Cancer-Free
After the surgery, I stayed on chemo for over a year because my oncologist didn’t think that I was going to survive.
My oncologist, by the way, didn’t want me to do the operation. He said, people with stage 4 shouldn’t be operated on. But I retorted, I don’t need to talk to you–this is my life. Why should I put it in someone else’s hands?
I should also say that my surgeon and oncologist don’t get along. They don’t speak, because my oncologist doesn’t like my surgeon. But I’m really grateful for my surgeon, because he’s a great man with a big heart. He’s helped so many people the same way he helped me. So I continue to pray for his continued health.
In December 2021, I ended up stopping chemotherapy. This was a risky choice I had to make. I was losing weight again and my body wasn’t absorbing nutrients at all.
I was scared because chemo was saving me, it was keeping cancer away from me. But then I went to another oncologist, who backed me up.
The oncologist said, you’re right, Viola, stop the chemo. Get stronger. If something comes back–hopefully nothing will, but just in case it does–your body will be much stronger and will be better equipped to fight it off.
So I took his advice and stopped chemo. And since then, every 3 months I’ve had a CT scan and a check up.
So far, so good. No signs of cancer.
… don’t be scared, really, because people want to scare you.
Saying you have cancer and then you are just–bang, you’re done.
You’re not done.
Words of Advice
Because you live, people look at me and they said, oh, you’re fine, blah, blah, blah. Even my family, they don’t get it.
People said, well, you should go and live your life. But you can’t live your life if you could die.
My death was in front of my face. It’s changed me. It’s changed me a lot.
But honestly, I don’t care what other people think. You know, people, this is my life. This is my decision.
And I think I’m a big winner.
I don’t listen to anyone, honestly. Even to my family. The only person who supports me is my mom. But I’m strong. I’m very mentally strong. And I wish more people who are going through cancer will listen to themselves instead of other people. People who have never gone through this.
I only listen to people who have experienced what I went through. People who have never gone through this honestly don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.
I know, maybe I’m too straightforward, but this is me.
If someone can learn something from me, that will be great. Look, whatever happens next, I’m much stronger. And I have more knowledge.
When I got diagnosed for the first time, it was a big surprise. But now I know that cancer is just another sickness. This is about what you eat. It’s about your mindset. It’s everything. But don’t be scared, really, because people want to scare you. Saying you have cancer and then you are just–bang, you’re done. You’re not done.
Cancer is just an opportunity to prove how strong you are.
Symptoms: None; found during the evaluation process for kidney donation Treatments: Surgery (partial gastrectomy & nephrectomy), chemotherapy (oxaliplatin & capecitabine), radiation ...
