By Phyllis Tryon, Great Falls, Montana
In September 2007, I was diagnosed with uterine cancer following a hysterectomy. When I heard the lab report, I thought that must a mistake – they had someone else’s uterus! When you are told something like that, your mind can’t seem to wrap around it.
Prior to the hysterectomy, I had been bleeding almost constantly for a year and a half. It started when I was 54 years old. At that age, I suddenly hemorrhaged and had an emergency ablation, a procedure where they cauterize the uterine lining. It’s supposed to stop or diminish unusual bleeding. Only for me, it didn’t.
After the ablation, I kept bleeding. My gynecologist kept telling me I just needed to get through menopause, but she never did any blood work to check.
She then put me on a regimen of hormone therapy to try to force my body into menopause. The pharmacist tried to tell me not to take the hormones, but I blindly followed my doctor’s advice.
Finally I demanded a hysterectomy and then got the cancer diagnosis. By this time I was 55-1/2 years old. The doctor said she was confident the cancer was contained. However, the lab report said there was no “clear surgical margin,” meaning, she might have cut through the cancer.
I needed a catscan. The doctor made appointments for me with an oncologist, a radiologist, and a specialist in Billings.
I had the catscan and the gynocologist told me it was normal. She said the specialist would do a labroscopic surgery to stage the cancer. They would remove some lymph nodes in the abdomen and remove my ovaries. I was confident I was fine.
Finally, about three weeks following my diagnosis, I saw the specialist. He said, “Your catscan is NOT normal.” He said the cancer had not been contained. Instead of a staging, he suggested immediate radiation with chemotherapy to follow.
I felt like I was in a fog. To my benefit, each of the doctors I met said they believed I would beat this, that it was curable. But it was vital that we attack it hard and beat it now. A recurring cancer would not be good news.
I was scheduled for 7 weeks of radiation, 5 days a week, followed by 6 chemotherapy treatments, one every 3 weeks.
