Marcia: coping with cancer twice My name is Marcia, I'm forty seven years old, I live in Connecticut, I'm married for 36 years this year, have two daughters, 34 and 31, and three grandsons. And back in 1988 I was graduating from Yale School of Public Health and my daughter was graduating from Harvard, the older one, and I discovered that I had rectal cancer. And I had surgery, which left me with an ileostomy, because I had had colitis, and I had radiation, which burned out my ovaries, which nobody told me about. I wish I had, I didn't know enough to ask. And I had chemotherapy which lasted for about a year but was relatively benign except that it took 3 or 4 hours, once a week for 6 weeks, and then a couple of weeks off. I didn't feel bad and I didn't lose my hair, so after that was all over, I decided not to continue working. I had planned to do something with my public health degree and I became a photographer and I volunteered at the local hospital for a doctor who was doing cancer research. So I muddle along until about 1997, and I hadn't had any periods, and I suddenly started bleeding. I went to my doctor, had tests, they couldn't figure out what was wrong, they kept saying there wasn't anything, it's just "radiation damage". And I knew that probably wasn't right but there wasn't any way of proving it, until 1998, November, I had an intestinal obstruction in the small bowel that I have left, and when they did the CT scans, my colorectal surgeon said, "You're uterus looks enlarged." And I said, "well, please feel free to have somebody take it out." And they did, and the discovered that I had uterine cancer, which had actually eaten through my uterus and I guess what was eaten through was covered up by the obstruction, so it may have protected it from any of the cells from getting out. So, I had the obstruction fixed and my uterus and ovaries removed, and then I had to have chemotherapy. I'd had so much radiation that the normal treatment would be radiation but they couldn't do that so I had chemotherapy. This time I had adromycin and anybody I guess who's reading this who's a cancer survivor, must probably know, but your hair falls out. And it used to be that you got very sick. I'm lucky enough to have gotten it late enough that by this time they'd developed some very nice drugs so I never really felt particularly bad. My hair fell out. So I'm in the process of writing a book that deals with that that hopefully might be uplifting for other cancer patients. And that, the chemotherapy was from December 98 to April of 99. Since then I've been feeling fine and my hair has grown back. I've got a website with some pictures and some of the story, and I'm trying to get the book published. The present situation What's happening now? I'm happy that I'm writing this book, and it was based on photographs that I took as I went along. It was really a photography book. I took pictures of my hair falling out and it seems to be, at least everyone I've shown it to, who's had some kind of relation to cancer, thinks it's useful. I hope I can find someone else who agrees. I probably don't think I've changed as much as I should have. I'm kind of running around frantically, trying to do as much as I can in case I do get sick, but I don't think about it too much. I think it's important if you think you're sick, to keep going back until you find someone who finds what's wrong with you. And it's important to have all the various kinds of tests that you might not want to have, because they are the things that help discover what is wrong with you. And I guess that's about it. Well, I don't think it's changed me as much as I kind of wish it had. I'm so busy on this book, which is better than I usually do, but other than that, I guess I'm more aware of the fragility of life. But it hasn't made me a calm person, it's made me maybe a less calm person. Trying to stay positive I guess, try and make sure you keep a positive attitude. I was very, I've been and still am, focused on being positive. Not going in and sitting at my chemotherapy and moaning and not moaning about how I feel the time to, my doctor actually accused me of being "in denial" and I personally don't think there's anything wrong with denial. The more normal you can keep your life, the easier it is to get through all the stuff. I didn't allow the chemotherapy to get me down. And I feel a lot better for it and I imagine, there isn't any good in being depressed and thinking, "why me?" and "this isn't fair", and all that stuff. Because it IS you, so you might as well learn how to deal with it and make the best of it. |
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