Survivor Story: Jennifer Mendez
My cancer survivor is my daughter. She didn’t have ovarian cancer but she had a very rare form of uterine cancer!
She is very in tune with her body and knew something was wrong. She was having unusual bleeding in between periods and at times extremely heavy (to the point of hemorrhaging). She kept going to the doctor, they treated her with birth control pills (she had already had her tubes tied after the birth of her last child).
Twice she had to go to the ER because the bleeding was so bad. The first time they did tests and gave her IV fluids, they said it looked like she may have fibroids and they can cause bleeding. The second time she actually had the same doctor as the first, he did more tests, a vagina ultrasound included and blood work, they found her red blood cells were too low so she received a transfusion. He then called her GYN and insisted she come in because he saw more then a simple fibroid. This time he said it appeared she might also have polyps, which could possibly lead to cancer.
That night they did a D&C, thinking that might solve the problem. That visit was the same day as her brothers wedding which she missed due to being in the bathroom bleeding then going to the ER. I left at the reception to meet her in the ER once they said they wanted to do the D&C. Well that didn’t stop the bleeding either! Several weeks later at the follow up appointment the GYN concluded she would need exploratory surgery, with a hysterectomy to resolve the bleeding. When she did her pre op work up they discovered that her red blood cells were severely low and needed four blood plasma treatments prior to having surgery.
Once that was done she was scheduled. Again, when she was admitted her red cells were too low, so another transfusion and surgery was delayed another day! She was in the hospital on Christmas Day!! A week later, after her follow up appointment she was called back to the doctors office with a message that the test results from the surgery were in. She called me and asked me to go with her because it couldn’t be good if she had to actually go to the office!! Myself, my daughter, and her husband all waited nervously! They had results that showed positive for cancer but it had markers for three types of cancer so the lab had to send some of the biopsies to UCLA hospitals lab to be further tested. She was referred to an OB/GYN Oncologist.
Her first appointment with him was seriously bad, he led us to believe she had the worst of the three types and only had a matter of weeks to live!! I asked how he knew if the final results hadn’t come in yet from UCLA. I don’t really remember what he said, but she had an appointment with the Chemo doctor the next day and he was so much better!! He met with us, said his staff was getting all the paperwork ready for us. He brought in three copies of the lab results plus info about the potential treatments, side effects, talked about so many things! It turned out to be something called leiieomyosarcoma in the uterus. It’s actually very rare in the uterus but is not as deadly as the first doctor thought.
He thought she had a different type since the UCLA results were not in. So my daughter had more plasma treatments, another surgery to remove the ovaries and Fallopian tubes. Then went through four rounds of chemo. She finished chemo almost two years ago and is still in remission. She has had complications from everything (the scar tissue from both surgeries wrapped around her intestines and caused them to twist in on them selves, strangle off and die. She had severe pain and because the intestines dies it got infected and started to leak into the body cavity.
She was in the hospital from Sunday through Wed. Until they finally brought in a surgeon. They removed 24 inches of intestines and had to flush out her insides with gallons and gallons of saline solution). She also had a bought of kidney stones, but no recurrence of the cancer. She is being followed closely by the Chemo doctor and the OB/GYN Oncologist, with either CT scans or PET scans and blood work. It’s been a really trying few years, especially as her mother! I couldn’t kiss it and make it all better this time!!