As told to Nicole Audrey Spector
January is Cervical Cancer Awareness Month.
In 2020, my then-teenager son and I were still adjusting to a relatively new life. A few years earlier, in my late 30s, I had left my husband, moved from Washington to Utah, and became a single mother. I had a corporate job and my days were full of work and motherhood.
Despite a busy schedule and complete absence of symptoms, I made sure to get annual health exams, including Pap tests. I have had abnormal results in the past, which may indicate serious problems such as precancerous lesions or cancer cells. In my case, I was told that monitoring was all I had to do.
As I lay on the thin, crumpled sheet of paper on the exam table, I didn’t feel anything was wrong. But as the nurse began examining him, it became clear that something was very wrong.
“Do you know you have a mass on your cervix?” she said.
“What?” I said. “I have what?!”
“I’ll take you to the next room,” she said. “The on-call doctor will come to help with the biopsy.”
My heart was racing with panic and my mind was racing, but I felt some peace of mind knowing that this issue was being taken seriously by my medical team.
After the biopsy was done, I had to wait about a week to get the results back. The wait was excruciating. Not only was I afraid of getting bad news, but I was especially afraid of bad news on the phone. When the nurse finally had the results, I told her that I needed to see her and a doctor in person as soon as possible.
When I went to the clinic the next day, the nurse and doctor told me I had cervical adenocarcinoma, a type of cervical cancer. I knew nothing about this type of cancer. I was desperate for answers.
“Will I overcome it?” I asked. “Will I survive?”
The doctor looked at me with eyes devoid of compassion.
“Hmm,” she said absently. “I don’t know.”
Her casual indifference infuriated her. I didn’t have time for it.
I asked her to leave.
The doctor left and the nurse explained that I needed to be seen by a gynecologic oncologist to find out the stage of the cancer and discuss treatment options. She had all of my medical records faxed to one of the top doctors in the state.
Once I was gone, I went to my vehicle and sobbed. I texted my partner and asked if I could call him at work. I called him as he was coming out and he asked me about the results. The first thing he said when I told him I had cancer was, “We’ll get through this.”
Next, I had to make an even more emotional call – to my mother in Michigan. It’s such a cliché, but when she answered the phone and I told her I had the results, I asked, “Are you sitting down?”
“It’s cancer, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Where are you?”
“In the parking lot at the hospital.”
“Well, what are you going to do now?”
“Believe it or not, I’m going to work.”
And that’s exactly what I did. I needed to be in a familiar environment where there was no talk about cancer and where there were no entertaining thoughts about me dying. The drive to Salt Lake City took 45 minutes. I blasted the rock station, merging Ozzy Osbourne’s harsh wails with my own.
I waited until a week had passed to tell my 15 year old son what was going on. As soon as I said the word “cancer,” he asked with hopeful concern, “Now what?” I assured him we would find out soon. After talking to him I felt better and lighter.
About two weeks after diagnosis, I had a PET scan and learned from the radiologist that I had stage 1B1 cervical cancer and was close to stage 2. Two weeks later I met with Dr. Hunn, the highly recommended gynecological oncologist.
Dr. Hunn was everything I could hope for in an oncologist. She had thoroughly reviewed my case and said with empathy and confidence, “I will see you through and we will succeed in the end.”
She laid out the following plan of attack:
–Six weeks of chemotherapy
–Six weeks of radiation therapy, five days a week
–Two to five rounds of brachytherapy if the tumor has not shrunk
–A complete hysterectomy
I was all in and ready to fight. Going through all of these treatments was an extremely challenging time. The radiation left burns on my lower abdomen. The chemotherapy made me violently ill with vomiting and diarrhea. I had no appetite. Even my great love, coffee, was repulsive.
I ended up needing two rounds of brachytherapy and then had to have the hysterectomy. I had no plans to have more children, so a hysterectomy was emotionally a no-brainer, but the consequences were still painful. Since this all happened at the height of Covid, I had to be alone for the most part during treatments. Being masked alone after surgery to remove my uterus while recovering from chemotherapy and radiation was terribly lonely. I cried my eyes out.
My entire treatment lasted about three months. In 2021, I officially received the best news ever: I was in remission.
Although I was afraid I was going to die from day one and had recently lost a dear friend to cancer, I tried to stay positive and optimistic throughout treatment. My nurse nicknamed me “Positive Petunia.” I have continued to embrace this optimistic mentality, not only for myself but for others in the cancer community.
I am deeply involved in a group of other cervical cancer survivors and am constantly learning how to be a better advocate – not just for cervical cancer, but for all cancers. Still, I see a worrying lack of conversation about cervical cancer and other cancers that affect people below the belt, so to speak. On a social level, we stigmatize them. Part of the purpose of advocacy is to end this stigma.
Today I am disease-free. I live with some unpleasant side effects of cancer treatment, including neuropathy in my feet and lymphedema in my left leg. I’m only in my 40s, but some days I feel so old. I remember fondly that I’ve been through a lot.
I’m sharing my story now in part because it’s related to a much larger and very relevant issue: the HPV vaccine. I didn’t even know I had HPV until I was diagnosed with cervical cancer. All I was ever told was that my Pap tests were “abnormal.”
Although most HPV infections clear on their own within a few years, some high-risk strains of the infection can cause various types of cancer, including cervical cancer. There is a way to stop the spread. The HPV vaccine is available to people between the ages of 9 and 45. As soon as I became eligible for the vaccine, I was happy to receive it at the end of my treatment.
Part of building and supporting advocacy for diseases like cervical cancer is becoming educated about the availability and safety of key prevention measures like vaccines and screenings. If I hadn’t taken my routine Pap test on time, I might not be here today.
resources
Cervivor
This educational resource was created with support from Merck.
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