- Sep 23, 2004
- 328
- 34
- 47
- Faith
- Baptist
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Republican
Here is my story of survival from cancer. During spring break of my 6th grade year (I was 12 yrs old) I was really sick with what seemed like the flu without the nausea. This went away but I develpoed a bad cough. My parents kept telling me that it would eventually go away and not to worry about it. Well after a month and a half of coughing, I had pulled every muscle in my torso area and I had gotten so short of breath that the slightest movement would make me huff and puff. I finally convinced my parents to take me to the doctor. Our family doctor took a chest xray and totally freaked out as he could not see my lungs and he is not used to this kinda stuff so he sent me to a specialist the very next day. The specialist thought that I might have TB (tuberculosis) and decided to admit me to do futher testing. Well on the first day of my hospital stay they did a biopsy of a swollen lymph node and came in to tell me and my parents that I had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. They spent the next couple of days doing test and such to see how far it had progressed and I was staged at 4a. By the time I was admitted to the hospital I had a tumor on top of my lungs that covered one full lung, half of the other and half of my diaphram. The doctors actually told my parents if they had waited a couple of weeks more that the tumor would have grown big enough to cover my diaphram completely and I would have suffocated to death. I went through 10 months of chemo treatments every two weeks and went into remission in April of 1990. I have since had no further problems and was considered 'cured' at the end of 5 full years in remission in 1995 (which also coincided with my high school graduation). I learned that you cannot control everything and that it is just best to let go and let God handle it. I just wanted to post this because so many people are affected by cancer now that I have come to learn it always helps to here the survival stories as most people only hear about the ones that lose the fight. Remember to keep hope and never stop fighting no matter what the odds. Fight it as hard as you can and let God handle the rest.
Susan
Susan
