Living with Cervical Cancer

My name is April and I am 31 years old. My story starts back in January 2007. I started to notice changes in my body. I had always had very regular periods and I began to have bleeding in between my regular cycles. I did not think much about it. My husband and I had bought a house and I thought the stress of moving had changed my body.

Within a few months I started to have cramping and heavier bleeding. I decided to make an appointment with a gynecologist. My last pap smear had been three years ago. I had never been to this gynecologist but trusted that he would find out my problem. They scheduled me for May 1. When he consulted with me I told him about my heavy bleeding and cramping. He said he thought it was a hormonal imbalance and wanted to put me on the pill. He proceded to give me a transvaginal ultrasound. He said everything looked fine.

My mind was at ease and I thought the pill would help me. I assumed that an ultrasound was just as effective as a pap smear, which he did not mention anything about. Over the next few months I continued to have heavy bleeding and more cramping. I called back several times and they changed my pills and told me it would take time to work. By September I called back once again to complain and this time they told me to come back. This time he did a pap and when he did I had severe bleeding at which point he said he wanted to do a biopsy. I was really scared at this point. Within a week the results came back.

I will never forget that day or those words, positive for squamous cell carcinoma. My life flashed before my eyes and I thought where did I go wrong. I went to see an oncologist on September 26 and she scheduled me for a hysterectomy the next day. She explained to me that if my tumor were any bigger she would not perform surgery. The next day I went to the hospital to check in. I still remember when they called for me to come back how bad I just wanted to run out of that hospital and go home but I knew what I had to do. After the surgery was over things had not gone as planned. The doctor explained that my tumor had latched onto one of my ovaries and she had to remove both. She also removed 18 lymph nodes and my fallopian tubes. Five of my nodes had cancer in them. She decided to leave my cervix in place for internal radiation.

To make my long story short I went home from the hospital about a week later to heal. I preceded to have external radiation to my pelvis for 5 weeks and I also had to have 5 weeks to my stomach due to a lymph node near my belly button. I had chemotherapy once a week for six weeks. I also had to have 5 internal radiation treatments. I finished everything the second week of January. It has been about a month and my life feels like it is back to normal although I am still afraid of recurrences.

My faith in God gets me through the rough times. I always tell myself no matter what any statistic says I am 100 percent healed with God. It is really funny how something so tragic can really turn out to be positive and I just want to tell anyone going through something like this that good things can come out of it. I want to express to all the women out there to get their once a year pap smears. It could have made my situation so much different. God Bless.