Beginnings in cancer are tough. Not because of the medical issues, but because you don’t really know what the beginning was. The day she was told to go to the ER because her Hemoglobin was 4 was April 13th, 2024.
This was discovered because of a routine blood test by her new General Practitioner. My wife had been going to the same GP for nearly 20 years, until he retired. Which was probably a good thing. Not just for my wife’s sake, but for his other patients as well. Because my wife had been having issues with her digestion for a few years before this. The old GP had diagnosed everything from IBS, diet, exercise and the final one — because she was bored due to Covid. She explained that our lives had not changed during Covid. We both continued to work and do the same things we generally did, except vacation as much. She explained that her grandmother had died due to colon cancer and her uncle had been treated for it. He told her she was too young, 43 at the time, to start worrying about colon cancer.
Knowing how much it had started affecting her life, I told her to just go get one and we would just pay for it if insurance wouldn’t cover it. Still, she had to get a doctor’s referral. So she contacted a hospital screening center and had an appointment with a colorectal doctor. He decided her symptoms and family history were enough to justify getting a colonoscopy. That had been set for the Friday after she was told to go to the ER. She would end up having one done in the hospital on Sunday. They would find she had a tumor in the sigmoid colon.
Jennifer had worked her way from being a secretary at a small real estate company to being its COO over the course of 20 years. She was the anchor of the office. Keeper of all things. She handled the money, kept track of all the properties – both current and past – had an iron memory of her job and what needed done and by when. Jennifer is one of the most honest people I’ve ever known. Is awful at lying, couldn’t steal without having a panic attack and even the hint that something she did could be interpreted as wrong, she would be bothered by it. All good things for an employer to have in one person who manages your business, until the day that person can’t do it anymore.
Even after the diagnosis there was hope that this could be managed and she could get back to a normal life. The doctor who did the colonoscopy said to me “We found a tumor, but snip, snip and a little sewing back up and she will be good.”
He wasn’t yet privy to the CT scans to be done next however. They would show that the tumor was over 8cm and had involved the left ovary and was resting against the left kidney. They determined that it would be better to reduce the tumor with chemo before doing any surgical intervention.
It’s at this point her first oncologist wanted to attack the cancer aggressively. She was started on FOLFLOX and Bevacizumab. She did very well after the first dose. The second one put her into septic shock. It turns out that the left kidney the tumor had been bumping up against had caused an abscess. Giving someone chemo while they have an active infection is a very bad thing. The tumor had cut off the urine flow from her kidney by blocking the ureter so when they had her do a urine test for any infections, none of the infected urine had come out. When the chemo destroyed her immune system, her body could no longer fight the infection. She had no fever, no symptoms. One minute she was fine, went to the bathroom and yelled for me that something was wrong. I ran in just in time to catch her before she hit the ground.
She was taken to the local county hospital, chemo pump still attached. They quickly realized this event was a bit bigger than they were equipped to handle. She was transported to a level 1 hospital. She was in a coma for 3 days as they pumped more bags of saline than one would think possible. She would, against all odds, wake up again. She was moved to a care unit, where she would spend the next 45 days. She had to learn to walk again. Even sitting up again. For several weeks she would need help just to roll on her side. She would do 2 weeks after that in a rehab facility.
I know this sounds like a lot but there was even more going on during her 45 day stay. Every time they would get the infection under control, it would come back. Her platelet level wouldn’t get above 9,000. So after several returns of the infection it was decided to remove the kidney as soon as she was able. Since they were going in anyway, they also decided to remove the tumor, resect the colon, do a hysterectomy and remove any suspicious lymph nodes. It would turn out to be 50 lymph nodes.
So right now we are at the point in the story where she has been feeling not so great for a few years, finds out she has colon cancer that had advanced, had a few doses of chemo, septic shock, extended hospital stay with the removal of 2 organs, part of another one and lots of lymph nodes. She would be discharged with a lung drain and two tubes draining the infected area where the kidney had been, coming out of her back. These had to be emptied, cleaned and rebandaged every day. She also had to be on intravenous antibiotics that I had to administer every 8 hours for about a month.
If you stayed around long enough to get to this point, I know you think this is just too much. Well fine people, hold on because the ride is not over yet.
She would spend months trying to get healthy enough to restart chemo, but she would. It took a lot of protein shakes, even more crying, and way to much pain, but she got well enough to do it again. She would finish out her first chemo regimen. Not without difficulties, she lost her hair and most of her modesty, long term hospital stays change a person in so many ways. Her hair would eventually return, this time curly and with some gray. During this time, she started having some back pain issues. She was giving a spinal MRI to see what was going on just before her last chemo dose. That was on a Monday I believe. We had a meeting with her oncologist on Friday after her last dose and CT scan to check for tumors. He said there was no evidence of cancer at that point, that she would need to get new scans every 6 months
to keep an eye on things but as far as he was concerned, she was cancer free at that time.
The next Monday she got the results of the spinal MRI. She had degenerative spinal disease. While that seems bad, and is, they also said they spotted a lesion on one of the vertebrae. They wanted a contrast MRI to check if it was cancerous or not.
2 Days. She got 2 days to think she was cancer free. The waiting to have a new scan to find out if that was true or not was as bad as the knowing I think. Amazingly, the spine had no hits from the MRI for cancer. Good news, right? It is so long as it doesn’t find 3 lymph nodes that are cancerous. She would now officially be stage 4 cancer.
The same oncologist that said she appeared to be cancer free, 2 weeks later was talking to us about how long she had left and what treatment options would give her the most time but basically it was terminal now. That would be the last meeting we had with him.
We proceeded to get 3 more opinions. One old guy said the same thing as her first one. The next one was a young female oncologist that wanted to put her in a drug trial, and the 3rd doctor wanted to use standard chemo of FULFIRI and Erbitux. We opted for the trial drug option. 3 weeks later she was ruled out of the trial because of one chemo drug she received in her first round before the septic shock happened. So we went with the 3rd doctor, she is a very good doctor though. She started the chemo back up. My wife’s cancer had started shrinking. The 3 lymph nodes would reduce by almost half after about the 10th dose of the new chemo. Her CEA numbers (Basically how many free cancer cells are in your blood) came back as undetectable 3 straight times. Things were looking hopeful.
Except for this weird problem of her getting out of breath and lightheaded sometimes. This would progress until it became out of breath and fainting. This would lead to her falling hard a few times. Which is likely what broke her back.
Another trip in an ambulance to the hospital. Finding out they couldn’t handle a broken back, seriously though a broken back was not on anyone’s bingo card for why she started having a seizure. It wasn’t found until they did another MRI to see if she was having neurological problems or spinal issues for the seizure.
Another transport to a level 1 hospital. She would end up with a spinal fusion of 5 vertebrae, a new device to wear and lots of pain. Chemo on hold once again.
She actually recovered from the spinal fusion much faster than I thought she would. Chemo would be restarted after about 6 weeks. Her CEA number came up to be detectable but told it wasn’t really that high. The new CT scans should mild growth in the lymph nodes during the break, but nothing severe.
Now the problem is her breathing issue and the fainting. It continues to progress. They have done a cardiac MRI, followed by a TEE scan (they put the device down your throat to get a better image) and is shows she has a bicuspid valve (2 flaps instead of 3 is what I was told) and mild aortic stenosis. The cardiologist says its not severe enough to cause her current issues, the oncologist thinks chemo needs to be held until the breathing issue can be managed. It’s been left as a wait and see for now. Unfortunately, wait and see doesn’t work for stage 4 cancer patients.
This is as far as I can go for now. We have to wait and see what is done next. She has a few more appointments over the next few weeks. Hopefully one of them can figure out what is causing her problem and have an answer to fix it.
We appreciate you taking the time to read her adventure. I will try and make updates here when anything new is known. I will denote the updates, so you know where to find them easily.
If Jennifer's story moved you, any support helps with medical expenses and allows me to keep creating music during this journey.
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