8/10/2016
Hello World and Welcome to my page!
I decided to start a blog to share my journey and let others know about this silent killer of a disease.
A little bit about myself… I’m 32 years young and I was diagnosed with Stage IIIB Ovarian Cancer in June of 2016. I work full-time from home and love it. I was born and raised in a fairly small town in Florida, never married/no children except my fur critters. I’m very close with my parents of which have celebrated 47 years of marriage. I was home-schooled from middle school forward and don’t regret it one bit. I had an active childhood always outside, riding bikes or climbing trees with my friends from my neighborhood and we’re still friends almost 20 years later, a rarity in this day and age! Big credits to my awesome friend Beth for helping me set this up… she’s been my friend for nearly 20 years now and I’m so blessed to have her in my life! ♥
How I found out about my cancer was a blessing from God, otherwise I would have never known until it was too late. The beginning of May 2016 I got strep throat and it progressed fast, within days my throat was completely white. I went to an urgent care walk-in and they gave me an antibiotic of Amoxicillin. After a few days I felt better and my throat cleared up a bit… then I started getting nauseous every morning around 3-4am. I would throw up several times and it would last almost all day. I stopped taking my antibiotic after the 2nd day of throwing up. This went on for roughly 4 days then my mom suggested we go to the Emergency Room. Once we were seen I had mentioned I also had a headache (probably from throwing up) so they did a CT scan on my head and my abdomen. I had no idea they’d come in the room later and said they saw masses on both my ovaries. They also tested my CA125 which is common blood-work for monitoring some female cancers but we had not got those results back yet at the time. They gave me several possibilities of what these masses could be including endometriosis, PCOS, cancer, etc. They also scheduled an ultrasound, which did not show any better results. Some of my blood-work came back and my white blood count was extremely high so I was admitted and given strong antibiotics. A few days passed and they scheduled an MRI of my lady parts. After this 3rd test they still could not determine what these masses were. After 6 days I received a Picc-Line to continue antibiotic treatments via IV at an infusion center and was discharged from the hospital. I continued daily antibiotic infusions for 5 weeks before my infection was finally gone!
I was referred to an OBGYN/Oncologist in Tampa. June 1st I met with him and he explained all the possibilities of what this could be and what could happen while in surgery and the possibility of never having children. We discussed some things from my lady symptoms over the years we both felt confident endometriosis was a high possibility. Whoa I thought to myself… this is a lot to take in for someone who has never been sicker than just a cold/flu. Surgery was scheduled for June 21st 2016, my first surgery ever and it had to be this!…. (to be continued)
Click Here for Part 2!
Please follow me as I continue to post new blogs about my journey to fight this disease. I also have a Facebook at www.facebook.com/GirlFightWin and an Instagram if you’d like to follow me there as well under ‘girlfightwin’.
Thank you for visiting!!
♥ Melissa