It all began for me in the oncologist's office in 2009. I got the paralyzing message ... there was no cure for the highly undifferentiated uterine sarcoma. I sat terrified and in shock. I didn't even know what to ask. She told me I had end-stage cancer with the most aggressive type of cells. What do you do?
Sound familiar? Remember thinking if you've been diagnosed with cancer, or any debilitating disease, if that doesn't feel like a death sentence, I don't know what does.
First thing that hit me—I'm a mother. What would happen to my kids? With all due respect, the doctors didn't have much to offer.
I knew I needed to do everything I could to survive. That meant I needed to use everything the doctors knew about, and much more, just to stay alive.
So I began my journey through two years of chemotherapy and three major surgeries. The cancer was relentless; it kept coming back. After my final lung surgery, guess what news I got? Get ready for hospice. Like my life was over.
Yet during those two years of treatment, I also went through an enormous personal makeover. I unwittingly did what many stage-4 cancer survivors have done. I went into remission—a process I now call the ABCs of healing. I had changed my attitudes, my behaviors, and made major life choices. This brought healing to my heart and my mind... and my body followed.
I've been in radical remission since November 2011, free of evidence of disease and free of cancer treatment.
In 2014 I received the Voices of Women award for outstanding achievement in personal growth and transformation from Whole Living Journal magazine. More than 250 practical tips I used during the cancer journey are included in the surgeon-endorsed, traditionally published Thriver Soup: A Feast for Living Consciously During the Cancer Journey.