A rare, aggressive, late stage cancer diagnosis was not on my bingo card for 2024, but there I was, a 37 year old momma of two and happy wife facing this unexpected, life altering news.

I first thought I was only dealing with irregular cycles due to perimenopause. When I managed to get that regulated, but still faced other unresolved symptoms, I thought I must have a cervical infection somehow. Surely it couldn't be the most serious possibility that matched my symptoms - cervical cancer. 

My symptoms began in early fall, and it was December 20th when cancer was confirmed. Such news makes for a memorable Christmas in all the wrong ways. I remember sitting in our living room with family. I wondered to myself if I'd ever have another Christmas morning with my family, but I tried not to think about it. Telling my parents or children about the diagnosis just before Christmas seemed a cruel gift to give, so it was a secret between my husband, myself and my doctor at that point. I remember trying desperately to enjoy the moment, because one wishes to prioritize that when wondering if any other such moments will be allotted to them, but obviously, it was hard. There's no manual or perfected, recommended way to navigate the conversations that need to follow such a serious diagnosis and a future full of unknowns.

I was a homeschool momma to a six year old boy and a fifteen year old girl at the time. When cancer cells were confirmed from my pap smear, something I'd actually never had done before due to lack of insurance and not really thinking it was necessary, I was at a homeschool skate event with my kids. I remember how surreal it was, walking back into the building after being told they found cancer cells. I put a smile on my face so life could carry on around me normally, even as I had no idea what to even think or feel myself. I know so many reading this know that feeling all too well. 

Having always been holistically-minded, I wanted to get a head start doing whatever I could to fight cancer instead of waiting for conventional treatment to get mapped out, approved, etc. I actually had no insurance at the time of diagnosis, so it all seemed unimaginably overwhelming. I started water fasts, some supplements, and cut sugar out of my diet entirely. I also utilized insight provided in a book called Radical Remissions - a book I wish everyone would read! I was actually sitting in a chair receiving a high dose vitamin c iv treatment when I learned, via my patient portal, precisely what I was facing - small cell neuroendocrine carcinoma of the cervix.

Like the vast majority of us when we were diagnosed, I had never heard of it. I turned to Google, which after plugging in all the details I didn't understand, informed me that my prognosis of facing stage 3c1 small cell, high grade, poorly differentiated neuroendocrine carcinoma with a ki67 score of >90% was "dismal." 

Dismal is defined as disastrous, calamitous; causing gloom or dejection. There isn't a lot of hope to be found when researching this diagnosis. My oncologist would go on to tell me I had a 30% chance of surviving 3 years if I did all the treatments available to me. 

Not being satisfied with those odds, a family member helped me launch a GoFundMe so I could hope to at least be financially equipped for whatever else we could add to the arsenal we would chose to fight with.

For me, that meant becoming a patient at The Riordan Clinic, stacking chemo and radiation with the vitamin c iv treatments, plus repurposed drugs and a myriad of other supplements overseen by my holistic oncologist. She worked alongside my other two oncologists. I radically changed my eating habits, although for part of the time, chemo sabotaged my best efforts to down as many veggies and healthy, healing foods as possible. Just the thought of veggies made my stomach turn for months on end. I thought my willpower would be stronger than chemo's effects. I was wrong.

Thanks to Susan Plummer's High Grade Neuroendocrine Carcinoma group, I was able to join in on some zoom calls with Dr. Chauhan, a neuroendocrine carcinoma specialist. I hadn't been able to meet personally with a specialist due to insurance restrictions - having thankfully qualified for state assistance - and as a one income family, we certainly didn't have the finances to make that happen. He had shared that, in some cases, if his patients had a complete response to treatment, as evidenced by scans after 4 rounds of chemo, he didn't always require them to finish the last two rounds of chemo, therefore minimizing the risk of them facing further toxicities from these brutal-but-necessary treatments. 

With a cancer known for recurrence, and those battling it facing so many harsh treatments during their fight, and being someone who wouldn't have imagined ever agreeing to chemo and radiation in the first place but having been told by all three oncologists that we had to throw absolutely everything at this, I knew that was the route I wanted to aim for. Thankfully, my team agreed to do scans after four rounds before continuing to the last two rounds of chemo.

And I thank God for that, because chemo was taking its toll on me. I was told that I would likely "just feel fatigued" and my hair would "thin." I lost almost all my hair before round 2 of chemo. My white blood cell count dropped to .1 after the first round. My hemoglobin dropped substantially after each treatment and left me almost needing a blood transfusion - which if I had to go back, I'd opt for that over the iron infusions I chose to do instead. Additionally, I had an allergic reaction to Etoposide on one of the chemo days. To my shock, they added allergy meds, tried again, and all was well. Except by round 4, I felt like I was dying. I didn't know how I could make it through another two rounds. I remember laying in bed, scared to go to sleep, because I felt like if I didn't make sure I was intentionally breathing in and out, I would just stop breathing. My body felt that exhausted and weak. 

Praise the Lord, my scans and internal exams after four rounds showed no sign of a tumor. The tumor had been just under 3cm and there'd been one affected lymph node. The tumor was gone and the lymph node was now normal. I ended up completing four rounds of chemo, 25 external beam radiation treatments, and 5 brachytherapy treatments. As I write this in November of 2026, I've been NED for a year and seven months!