My Story

Here is the story of my ovarian cancer diagnoses, treatment, and life after...

About Me

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i am a young, creative type of gal. i am a video editor for my local PBS station. i love harry potter and doctor who. i am left handed. i love to read and wish there were more bookstores. i say live and let live. i love my family and my friends, they are the best. my family doctor found a tumor on my ovary in august 2010. after surgery they found it was cancer. i was 29...

cancer sucks

at the end of august in 2010 i started to feel something "not right" around my stomach area. i went to my family doctor thinking it was something silly like gas pains but as soon as he felt my stomach his face changed. he sent me right away to get an ultra sound. when that came back inconclusive i was sent to get a CAT scan. when the results came back he said i had a tumor on my left ovary about the size of a pack of ramen noodles (my dad made that lovely comparison).this all happened in the span of a few hours. he believed it to be non-cancerous and sent me to an oncologist about a week or 2 later to plan my surgery. my oncologist also believed it to be non-cancerous but said it was growing. they scheduled my surgery in another 2 weeks. so after living with this growing thing inside of me i could not wait to get it out! but when i woke up from my surgery haze on september 24th my best friend aimee (who is also a nurse and was in the surgery) told me the tumor grew even more then they thought and that it was cancer. they gave me 2 weeks to recovery from my surgery and then it was off the chemo on october 11th.

fights with insurance, dealing with all of the side effects of chemo and dealing with the emotions that come along with all of that was quite exhausting to say the least. i would never wish chemo on anyone. it was the worst. food didn’t taste right, hair started coming out by the handfuls 10 days into treatment, i couldn’t concentrate on anything, and it was the most tired i have ever been in my life.

i think what i want people to know most is that just because you are young and healthy doesn’t mean nothing can happen to you. and if you are doing something that is known to cause cancer i want you to stop. don’t use the excuse “we are all going to die of something” because cancer is the worst, and diffidently NOT a good way to die if you can help it.

so if you know someone with cancer please be patient. don’t pretend nothing is happening, that doesn’t help. understand that even though they have been done with treatment for months and look healthy, they still feel side effects. don’t tell them everything is going to be fine because when it turns out not to be, they might feel like they let everyone down. just listen and understand what they are going through. make some jokes, let them fall asleep if they need to and understand that this is the most scared they have ever been in their life.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

chemo done, now we wait

originally posted on my facebook on Tuesday, December 14, 2010

i had my last chemo treatment december 6th and had my follow up appointment with my oncologist today.  he said my counts look good.  i will get blood work done again next week and then that will be it until march.  i will have a PET/CT scan done in 12 weeks to see if there is still any cancer.  we have to wait 12 weeks because the chemo is still effecting my body and they want to make sure the chemo is out before they do the scan.  after that there will be another PET/CT scan in a year.  i will need 3 years of clean scans before i am considered cured.
he also said that the chemo after effects could last for another 4-6 months.
so now i just have to wait.

chemo is a crazy thing.  right now i still get extremely tired (i fell asleep last night at 7:30!) and my hands are swollen and sensitive (i can't even open a bottle of water).  i will still get short of breath once in a while and my energy level is still down but getting a little better.  even though they said i handled the chemo very well it is still something i would never want to do again.  but on a positive note my friend kelly (who unfortunately has been through this) told me her hair started to grow back a month after treatment so i'm looking forward to that :)
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