How my story begins: My story began 9/24/19. I took a trip to the ER for major pain in my right side of my pelvis. After spending 8 hours in the ER taking different tests, they finally told me I had a cyst on my right ovary. I didn’t have insurance at the time so I was told that Planned Parenthood had a women’s wealth center I could visit. I went there to get further treatment for the cyst. On my first appt in October 2019, they asked me about the last time I had a Pap test. I said about 13 years ago when I had my daughter. So they wanted to start there as part of my work-up. My pap came back abnormal and I was positive for HPV. I then was scheduled for a colposcopy In November. That biopsy came back with info that I had precancerous cells on my cervix. I was then scheduled for a leep procedure in December. At the start of the leep, the doctor told me "this looks like it’s cancer already." She tried to cut as much as she could off and then couldn’t get me to stop bleeding. A couple days after Christmas I got the phone call to go into the office and speak to a counselor. That’s when I was told I had cervical cancer.
Life before my diagnosis: Life before diagnosis was rough. I went many many many years in pain. Pelvic pain. My periods were so bad. I would spot in between periods. I bled during intercourse. But I just kept going.
How I felt after diagnosis: The word cancer is so scary. After I found out I had cancer, I was completely devastated. I got very depressed. Seemed like now that I knew what was really going on in there, the pains started to get worse. I had applied for insurance through my work and it would start January 1st, thank God!
Telling my family and friends: I couldn’t come out and tell my parents. My husband did it for me, but I was there. I couldn’t get two words out of my mouth without crying. The hardest part was telling my daughter. After everything was out in the open, the amount of love and support I gained from this was so amazing. I also made a Facebook group to keep everyone updated so I didn’t have to text 50 million people after every appointment to let them know how it went.
My treatment: After speaking to my oncologist about my PET scan results, she gave us two choices. Due to a lymph node lighting up above my right ovary. She said it could be that the cyst on my right ovary is touching the lymph node or it could be cancer. So she said we can either do a radical hysterectomy and that once she opened me up she’d look at the lymph node and if it looked ok she’ll proceed with the surgery. OR if she opened me up and the lymph node doesn’t look good, she won’t do the surgery and close me back up and I’ll have to do chemo and radiation. OR I could just not do surgery and go straight into treatment and hope for the best. My husband and I asked her what her best suggestion was for the best outcome and she said the surgery. But she stressed to us that I would still maybe have to do treatment. So we went with the surgery. An hour into the surgery she called my husband and let him know that the lymph node looks good and the right ovary had the cyst there. So she went ahead with the surgery. A week after surgery I ended up in the ER, I was having trouble breathing. They did a CT scan and found I had a blood clot in my right lung. After a couple weeks of recovery I started chemo and radiation. I did six weeks of chemo which was a low dose of cisplatin, I had chemo every Monday. Radiation was Monday through Friday. I had a very hard time with treatment. I’ve never been so sick in my life. I took a couple trips to the ER, I had to have a couple hydration bags during the week after chemo, My hair thinned out so bad even after my oncologist and my radiation doctor told me I would not lose any hair. They didn’t mention hair thinning.
How I felt after treatment: Life after treatment was rough. Like I said before, it took a lot out of me. It took me a couple weeks to even be able to eat. I was still throwing up for a couple weeks after treatment. The side effects started showing up from radiation with the pains in my legs. But I was so glad to be done with chemo every week
What was most difficult for me: I think the most difficult thing for me was chemo. You need to drink a lot of water to get through chemo and I absolutely hate water. I think I was so sick because I had a hard time staying hydrated.
What I did to help myself: I got up and went to my treatments regardless of how I felt. Looking back on some of those days, I don’t know how I even made it in. But at the end of the day I knew I had to go so I can beat this. Because I have a husband and a little girl that need me.
Where I am today: I’m only a couple days into knowing I am NED. I’m still recovering. Dealing with side effects from radiation. But I’m alive and thank God for helping me through this.
What I want other women to know: Women should know how important it is to get that yearly check up. To listen to their bodies and not brush off symptoms or anything that isn’t normal.