Adele: a disturbing diagnosis
Hi. My name is Adele. I'm 35 years old, about to be 36 and I currently live in
the San Francisco Bay Area, and I'm single, no children, and probably no
possibility of children. But that's one of the things I'm living with now. Two
years ago, exactly, I was rafting up in Idaho and I hurt my shoulder, and when
I came back from Idaho, I went in to the doctor and said, my shoulder hurts, I
can't sleep at night, and they prescribed some anti-inflammatories. Rather
than fixing my shoulder, the next thing I knew, I was bleeding from my
intestines every time I went to the bathroom there was blood in the toilet. I
got pretty scared about that and started panicking and calling everybody I
knew, including a doctor. I got in to see a doctor, and they were all sort of
surprised, couldn't understand what was going on, and decided that I need to
go and have a colonoscopy immediately. And the next day, essentially two days
after I started bleeding, I was in having a colonoscopy where they told me I
had a tumor in my sigmoid colon and that I'd probably had it for three or four
years.
So at the time I was 33 years old and I found out that I had
cancer, not something that I expected, not that anybody expected. I don't
know, the week after that was sort of a whirlwind. A lot was happening and I
was involved and not involved. I was sort of given a surgeon and the surgeon,
without even waiting for a biopsy said, oh, yes the tumor in your colon is
definitely cancer and it has to come out immediately, and they scheduled me
for surgery. And there was very little choice, it seemed, at the time, and
everything was just sort of happening around me rather than happening as part
of me. I had some great friends who were doctors who were kind enough to do
some research and to go with me to doctors and to ask questions, because I
think I was at the point where I couldn't ask any questions. But I changed
that pretty quickly, because I like to be in control of things, and one of the
things that I really strongly feel is that you need to be in control of your
health as much as possible when this happens. So I had my surgery and I
recovered for about five weeks and then I went on a regimen of six months of
chemotherapy and radiation.. Overcoming the hurdles I went and
interviewed different oncologists. I didn't have a choice in the surgeon and I
think I was pretty lucky in the surgeon that was chosen for me, but I decided
that since I was going to be working so closely with an oncologist I really
wanted to like that person, and I feel that's really important to have a good
relationship with your oncologist, because if you want to take an active role
like I did, you need to have somebody that you can talk to. So I interviewed a
couple of different so I chose a doctor I really liked and I felt like I could
talk to. And I went through a pretty standard round of chemotherapy. I
lost my hair, which was sort of fun, actually. I tried to make the best of
things. I mean, it was a horrible situation that was going on, just to find
myself sort of in this situation, I think anybody would not know what to do.
And I decided I was going to try and have the best kind of attitude and make
as light of it as possible. So when I lost my hair, I bought a whole bunch of
different wigs, and sometimes would be a platinum blonde and sometimes would
be a brunette, which is my natural hair color, and sometimes I would go out
without any hair at all. I really felt strongly about doing that. It was sort
of a, I'm here and I'm fighting it, you know. I didn't want to hide the fact
that I was going through this battle with cancer. I wanted people to know that
I was battling cancer and it wasn't anything to be ashamed of, because I used
to think when I was younger, I used to sort of associate cancer with something
to be ashamed of. I don't know why. Finding support and strength
So during the time I was going through chemo, my friends were just amazing.
My mom also was fantastic. She moved out from New York and essentially lived
with me for six weeks at a time, and I really needed that. I'm a very
independent person, but I found myself needing people because some days I was
too weak to get out of bed. Most days I did work, I worked through the whole
thing, but some days it was just really hard. And having my mom there and
having my friends come in and stay over when I needed them was really
important and really helped me get through things. I think the most surprising
part was my attitude, that I was able to try and make light of it and I'm
surprised that I kept up as good an attitude during the treatment as I did
have. It was actually pretty easy to fight it and I don't know where that came
from and if you had told me before the whole thing started that I was going to
be able to have as good an attitude as I did, I wouldn't have been able to
believe you. And I think it is what helped me get through the six months of
treatment as easily as I did. It certainly wasn't a walk in the park, it was
difficult. But it also wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. So I
finished my treatment in about March of 1999, and I waited a little bit to get
all of the chemo out of me, just kept working, and then I took a big vacation,
I guess. One of the things I'd always wanted to do was travel all over the
world and I had been working too hard at being sick, hard at having cancer, so
I decided, okay, once I fight this, I'm going to start doing the traveling I
wanted to do. And my boyfriend and I went off to Burma last year and sort of
did the celebration of getting through things. A true blessing
One of the things is actually in the middle of all my treatment when I was
bald and too skinny and pretty sick, actually, I met the man that I'm
currently dating. And it was pretty amazing that this guy just sort of came in
to my life when I really would not imagine anybody, would want to get involved
with somebody. And he just made it easier, also, I mean, completely
supportive. I think having supportive people was really important, being able
to pull through. But even since then he's been just great. He takes better
care of me than I take care of myself. It was he who organized the trip to
Burma, to go see some of the really amazing temples there, and he's the one
who coaxes me now to take care of myself, because it's been two years, and so
far everything's good. I've been working normally, I've been starting to bike
again and starting to you know really just get my life back to normal, and I
think my tendency is to try and forget that this happened to me. And of
course, you can't forget that. One of the side effects of the chemo and
radiation is that I'm not in menopause and it's very hard for me to deal with
from time to time when I let myself think about it too much. But you know, I
was never sure I wanted to have children anyway, and now I guess the decision
was made for me, which is what I hate the most, not having the power to make
the decision myself. I'm happy to be alive, I appreciate my life and
every day a lot more than I did, and I have a much better attitude about
what's important in life. Before I was diagnosed with cancer I worked too
much, and I still work a lot, but I work less, and I'm trying to take time off
and do things that are important to me besides work. And one of them is
traveling. I've been traveling a lot lately, I also see my family more and I
cook more and I spend time walking around outside more and I just appreciate
being alive. I'm really happy that I'm approaching my 36th birthday in a
couple of days now, and I used to always dread my birthdays. I don't think
I've changed enormously as a result of having cancer. I wish I had changed
more. I wish I could be perfect person and not, you know, want to spend a day
in bed because I'm tired. And that hasn't happened. I still have all the
problems that I had before, and even with the knowledge that life is so
precious, and you can't just assume it's going to be there every day, it's
still not as easy as I thought it would be to take advantage of it. But I'm
happy to be alive and I really appreciate my friends in a way that I didn't
before. They were friends, but they were all part of this with me, and they've
become more than friends. |
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