I had just transferred to the University of Illinois, joining the class of 2015, and I was ready to have a real college experience. I had made new friends, joined a few clubs on campus, taken my midterms and found the most perfect Halloween costume.
Never would I have expected that my dream-come-true college year was about to turn upside down, and that I was about to go through the toughest few months of my life.
On October 29, 2012, I had just come back from lunch at the dining hall when I felt a throbbing pain in the lower right side of my abdomen. I brushed it off, figuring a quick nap or some Netflix would make it go away. But after an hour, it had only gotten worse. This was no ordinary cramp or stomachache; it was unlike anything I’d ever felt.
So, on instinct, I headed to the school health center. After four hours there, a transfer to the local emergency room and another few hours in the ER, I was told I had a large cyst, and it would take a routine procedure to remove it.
After a round of very confusing phone calls, my parents and I decided that I would come home for whatever procedures I’d need to take out the cyst. The next morning, my dad picked me up bright and early and took me to a hospital outside Chicago, which was right near my house.
Almost immediately after we arrived, everything changed. The doctor who read my previous scans came in during surgical prep, and he told my dad, mom, stepmom, stepdad and me that the “cyst” was actually a 12-inch tumor in my abdomen. It might be cancerous, we learned, and he was calling in a whole new team of surgeons to help him with the removal. Before he’d even finished with his update, I was shaking and crying. I’d never had surgery before, and I was terrified of hospitals. Something serious was wrong with my health, and I was so, so scared to find out what it was.
I spent four days recovering in the hospital post-surgery. The doctors had taken out the tumor, my right ovary and fallopian tube, some lymph nodes and my appendix. It was a struggle to try and walk again, but I recovered incredibly fast, and I had my doctor’s permission to return home by Saturday afternoon. I struggled to be as independent as I could once I got home; I was in my third year of school, and I was embarrassed that things like carrying my laptop around the house, making breakfast and taking a shower required my mom’s help. But she and my family were so supportive and helpful that I learned to brush aside the embarrassment.
After a week of recovery at home, my parents and I returned to talk to the oncologist who had handled my surgery. She’d been the one called in after my CTs were re-read, and she had also spent the last week reading the biopsy reports from my tumor and discussing the findings with her colleagues.
That’s when we got the official news: I, a supposedly healthy and happy 19-year-old collegiette, had stage 1A ovarian cancer.
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My tumor had been partially benign, or non-cancerous, but about a third of it contained cancerous cells. Stage 1A meant that it was in the very first stage of cancer development, but it was still deemed an aggressive cancer. My oncologist was confident in her diagnosis, and she was also certain that she’d removed almost all of the cancerous cells during surgery. But because the cancer was aggressive, I needed chemotherapy. She recommended a nine-week treatment plan called BEP, where I’d alternate between staying in the hospital and visiting as an outpatient. I’d definitely miss the rest of the semester.
I remember the first time I cried after finding out I had cancer was when I found out I’d lose my hair. I’d spent years growing out my long, blond locks—now I had to have them taken away? I couldn’t go back to school, see my friends or have fun? I’d be sick all the time? What about my birthday, December 3rd? I wouldn’t be back at school in time to celebrate, but would I still have a fun day? Questions ran through my head, but I took the news quietly, nodding and listening while the tears began to fall.
The first thing my parents wanted to do was get a second opinion, and maybe a third, on my diagnosis. We had my biopsy report, along with slide of tumor samples, sent to hospitals nationwide. We visited other local hospitals, where I underwent a lot of poking and prodding so that doctors I had never met could figure out what they thought of my case. One doctor was convinced I needed nearly half a year of chemo treatment with six very toxic drugs. Other doctors had varying other diagnoses, and it seemed like nobody could agree on what the best plan of action was. That night I refused to eat dinner; instead, I locked myself in my room and cried myself to sleep. The questions started up in my head again as I cried. Why me? Why did I have to be sick, and why now? Why couldn’t the doctors agree on how to get rid of the stupid cancer? When would my life be normal again?
We ended up deciding to follow my original oncologist’s plan and scheduled my chemotherapy to start the week following Thanksgiving. I made the most of those next few weeks, finding time to visit campus again with my dad for my school’s Dad’s Day, see my school friends one more time while I packed my things to stay at home, reconnect with friends from my first college (as well as from my high school and my synagogue), eat a Thanksgiving feast at home and celebrate my brother’s bar mitzvah. I danced, laughed, sang, smiled and forgot all about what was to come. Knowing my family and friends from all over supported and loved me was a huge step to becoming confident that I was going to make it through chemo and that everything would be okay.
On Monday, November 26, 2012, I started treatment. But before I could be given any chemo, I had to have a chest port put in. My PowerPort was the point at which nurses and doctors could more easily access my veins repeatedly, both to check blood samples as well as give me the treatment, medicine and fluids I needed. I wasn’t asleep during this surgery, but thanks to all of the numbing medicine I was given, I didn’t feel a thing. After it was over, I was wheeled up to the room I would call home for the first five days of chemotherapy.
My BEP treatment plan (which stands for the names of the drugs I was given: bleomycin, etoposide and cisplatin) is a common treatment plan for younger patients with reproductive cancers. I was prescribed three cycles that were three weeks long each. The first five days of every cycle were inpatient, so I had to stay in the hospital and was given chemo through my IV every day, often early in the morning or late at night. After that, I spent the next two weeks or so at home, coming back to the hospital at the start of every week to receive one of my chemo drugs as an outpatient. In addition to chemo, I took a ton of other medications in the hopes of feeling as good as a cancer patient can. I’m no biology major, but after so many weeks of chemo, I definitely know the biology of what my body went through!
The hardest few days were the ones immediately following my first hospital stay. The chemo had taken a lot out of me: I didn’t get hungry very often, I was tired by 7:30 p.m., I didn’t have the energy to focus on very much and even movies and television were hard for me to watch. My first full day at home, I went to take a nap at 4 p.m. and ended up sleeping until the next morning—I was too cranky to deal with being awake. I also had to make sure I drank water constantly and had a good amount of fresh air to breathe, since the chemo affected my lungs and hydration. I actually fainted one day in the shower; I had forgotten to turn on the bathroom fan, and I couldn’t breathe with all of the steam in the room. Luckily, my mom was cleaning my room just next door, and from then on, I made sure she was nearby whenever I took a shower. Once again, it was so hard to feel so helpless, but my family helped me through it without ever doubting that I’d be okay at the end.
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Week two of chemo marked my 20th birthday, and unfortunately, it fell on an outpatient visit day. However, I made the best of it, and I even wore a little crown to the hospital. That afternoon, my parents had a surprise waiting for me at home. My friends and family from all over the country (and even the world!) had sent in photos, videos and well-wishes for me on my 20th birthday, and a family friend had compiled them into a nearly 30-minute montage DVD so that I could watch them all. I laughed, cried, smiled and felt the love on my special day, even if it was under tough circumstances.
My nine weeks of chemo ended up being 10 weeks. One week, my white blood cell counts were too low to administer my drugs, and I spent an extra four days in isolation at home before I could continue with treatment. I had the best Christmas I’ve ever had (being Jewish, it was also my first Christmas!) in the hospital, spent a week with my dad, visited with friends and family and overall tried to make the best of my weeks being a cancer patient.
Not that going through chemo was easy by any means. Shaving my head was so hard, especially because I did so before my hair had fully fallen out. People stared at me as I walked around town hairless, wondering why a young, beautiful girl would dare to bare her head. I was called a punk and a hipster—labels that don’t define me at all—just because I had a shaved head. There was one night in the hospital when my stepmom just hugged me, reminding me that it was okay to be upset and to cry- I didn’t have to be brave all the time. I blogged about my emotions, some of which were uplifting and some of which weren’t. My family and friends followed my journey through my own words, photos and comments, always making sure to leave notes letting me know they were still behind me 100 percent. Those messages were what left me smiling each night as I went to sleep, knowing I’d conquered another day of chemotherapy.
My last inpatient cycle ended on January 13, 2013, eight weeks after I’d began. In my mind, that was the end. I was done with uncomfortable hospital beds, being woken at 5 a.m. to have my pulse checked and dealing with the constant nausea. That week was full of goodbyes to family, packing up my clothes and even a trip to a concert—Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, my favorite band—with my mom and her best friend. It was a great way to celebrate the near-end of chemo and the start of my “regular” life again.
I actually finished my outpatient treatment in Champaign after returning to school. My friend Vaughn (who shaved his head in solidarity) went with me, and I ran out of the hospital smiling and cheering when it was done. I expected everything to go back to normal almost immediately: I’d have my long blonde hair again, I’d get great grades and soon enough, nobody would remember that I’d been the “cancer girl.”
Now, looking back on that moment, I laugh thinking about how different my life is now than I’d predicted then. I was declared “in remission,” meaning there was no sign of cancer in my body, on February 18, 2013, and I couldn’t have been happier that day. I celebrated with my roommate Carrah by ordering sushi for dinner (since I hadn’t been allowed to eat raw fish during treatment). Slowly, my energy started to normalize, and I went back to studying late at night and going to parties on the weekends. My hair started to grow in under my wig, but instead of blonde hair, I rock a curly brown fro these days.
My blog, which was originally a side project to update friends and family, helped me realize my true love: writing! I’m now not only a contributing writer for Her Campus, I also blog for The Huffington Post, and I declared a new major in news-editorial journalism. Not being able to do anything for a long period of time really renewed my vision and drive. Now I want to do everything and see the world. And I know I can; if I beat cancer and became even closer to my friends and family, I really can conquer whatever I set my mind to.
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