My Journey With Cancer: Round 5

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Greetings everyone! I am looking forward to this blog as I go through my fifth round of cancer. My overall goal is to emphasize the importance of your own advocacy and the ups and downs that I have had as I go through this medical journey.

My surgery will be on March 24 at Stanford University. Until then I will be blogging about my emotions, my history with this disease and other experiences with the medical profession. I will always look forward to your feedback and hope this can turn into a dialogue.

My thoughts go back to the morning of January 6. I awake, knowing that today I find out whether I have cancer or not. It is an odd feeling, a feeling of total vulnerability.

I have been here before. If it is positive, then it will be the fifth time that I have had endometrial sarcoma, or uterine cancer. I have been through this drill before. The cat scan shows something is there, and we hold out hope that it is just scar tissue from previous surgeries. It never is, but I can’t help but hope that this time will be different.

This time my scan was the week before Christmas so it was more important than ever to hope. Get through the holiday season with a smile on my face, mostly for my daughter.

My procedure is I have the scan in Los Angeles, where I used to live and work at hospitals so I know a lot of medical professionals. Then the results are sent to my gynecological oncologist at Stanford. He is the one that will know.

Back to that morning. I feel alone but that is my choosing. My friends would be there in a second for me. But there is something about my Midwest upbringing—don’t be dramatic. Don’t draw attention to yourself. It is hard to shake that which has been drilled into you from an early age and yes, even fearing I might have cancer again feels like drama. I’ve had it before. I’ve always survived.

Dr. Berek e-mails me in the mid-afternoon. It is cancer. Let’s talk, he says.

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Mary Schnack View Profile

We value and respect our HERWriters' experiences, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice, although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.