Cancer Treatment Update

If you have been following this blog any time recently, you might have heard that I was diagnosed with cervical cancer this past summer. I have gone through a radical hysterectomy to remove all my girly parts and the cancer. I then spent quite a few weeks recovering from surgery. I have been meaning to update you all since I went in for my check up with my doctor after surgery, so here it is…

I went in at about 5 weeks post surgery to get checked out and make sure I was healing well and get the results of the pathology for the cancer they took out. My doctor was very pleased with how well I was healing. She said “You look like a cream puff(so soft and sweet) but you really are a mack truck(tougher than I look)!” I was really doing well by then with all the incisions healing and my body functions coming back to normal. Things were looking up!

But then… Off to her office to talk about the pathology results. Thankfully there was no cancer in the lymph nodes that they took out, but because of the size of the tumor, how deep it was embedded in the tissue and traces of cancer in the vessels that she recommend I get radiation and chemo. Cervical cancer is one that likes to spread and she was quite shocked that it hadn’t yet based on the size that the tumor had gotten.

So not the news I wanted to hear. I could not do treatment then hope that the cancer wouldn’t come back somewhere else, or I could be proactive and have radiation/chemo combo to fight whatever may be left deep down in the cells. I decided to go ahead and get treatment. This is what I was hoping to avoid, but as my doctor said if they tumor had grown how most of them do, then I would have been having treatment from the beginning then surgery.

I will admit that I am more scared about this part than even the surgery. It is going to be a BIG time commitment. 5 days/week radiation for 5 weeks as well as 1 day of chemo a week for 5 weeks. Then there is the worry about how will my body handle it all. How tired will I be? What other side effects will I have? How much will this all cost?????

The money part of it all is more stressful than all the other things combined!! We just barely make it each month paying our regular bills and life in general much less to add surgery, hospital stays, treatment, and lab work on top of it all.

We could definitely still use prayers, good thoughts, all the above!! My treatment will start on October 14th and go for the 5 weeks after that finishing up right before Thanksgiving. I will keep you all updated 🙂