Ovarian cancer patient Christine Matthews shares her story of her cancer journey at Miami Cancer Institute.
[Transcript]
Christine: My name is Christine Matthews and I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
My entire family history on my dad’s side is very heavily affected by cancer. So my father got tested and he came back positive. My sister and I got tested and I came back positive. She came back negative. So I opted to do a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction.
At the time my doctor highly recommended that I take out my ovaries but after discussing with, now my husband, at the time my boyfriend, we had decided to wait because I did want the opportunity of having a child.
Even prior to getting pregnant, I had been followed very closely by my G-Y-N by doing the CA-125 blood screens, extra ultrasounds, extra testing, more frequently than the average woman gets checked. My baby was born on March 4th, 2016 and best thing that ever happened to me. But then two months later is when things started to go wrong.
Dr. Shroder and I decided that I was going to have a hysterectomy. When I woke up from surgery I found out that they did not do the surgery, because I had stage 3C cancer. Ovarian cancer. And I had a debulking surgery and a hysterectomy. There was so much all over the place, it was so spread out that we went for chemo for about three months.
So I had an initially two ports, I had the port here and then I had one in my belly where they were giving me the chemo directly into the abdomen area. Then I finished and went into remission for a brief period of time and then I started again.
So I was chosen for a clinical trial for HIPEC therapy which is basically a hot chemotherapy and directly into the belly. I basically was cut from sternum to pelvis, I guess, if you want to say and they put in like very hot, like a 109 degree chemotherapy for like six hours.
So when I came out of that I was in the ICU for two days. And then I was in the hospital for a week in total.
So the biggest advice that I would give is to try to stay positive like no matter how hard it gets, because when you get down it just gets harder. Don’t shut people out because support is a huge part of healing and getting through this. Without my support system, I would have never made it.
[end of transcript]
Likes: 0
Viewed: 165
source