In the beginning of this cancer journey, I did not know what to expect or what the best actions would be. I spent ten days in the hospital while first waiting for the inflammation to go away, then having a colonoscopy prior to having a colectomy (where they surgically removed part of my large and small intestines). Here is the good news… they also removed my appendix, so I no longer need to worry about having appendicitis! And on another positive note… they had clear margins around the tumor when they removed it!
So, I went home to recover from surgery with high hopes that the worst was behind me. I could not understand why they wanted me to have an appointment with the oncologist at Moffitt. I mean, after all, I had clear margins! I did not want to go. I even told my husband before going that I am not going to be doing any chemotherapy. It was bad enough that I had just destroyed my gut with strong IV antibiotics while in the hospital. They would probably want me to do chemotherapy… “just in case”. However, I wanted nothing to do with that! I just needed to eat healthier and exercise more, right?!
Needless to say, the doctor appointment did not go as I hoped. They indeed wanted me to at least do 3 months of chemotherapy because of how large the tumor was and because it was already at Stage 3A. Of course, I was protesting this idea. So, he made a deal with me. Let’s take a blood sample for a test known as CT-DNA which will show if there is circulating colon tumor DNA still in my bloodstream. If it comes back negative, then he would still prefer that I do 3 months of chemo, but will be more understanding if I do not. If it comes back positive then it is very important to go on the stronger chemotherapy and for a full six months. So, I agreed to this option. And three weeks later, I had the results: POSITIVE!
Needless to say, I was pretty devastated to get that news. I thought… maybe it was just left over cells from the surgery. He told me those would have been out of my system within so many hours, and was definitely gone 3 weeks later when I had the blood drawn.
Let me explain what the CT-DNA test does. It looks in the blood for traces of the DNA that are like the colon tumor that was removed. There is no False Positive reading. If there are any CT-DNA strands there, and it is seen, then that is a positive result. There is such a thing as a False Negative result. This happens when there is still some CT-DNA strands in the blood, but it is under a threshold level where it can be detected. (This happened to me later, when I thought it was all gone after finishing chemotherapy.) This possibility of a false negative is why the doctors want you to at least do a three-month round of chemotherapy of just one of the chemotherapy drugs to ensure it is gone.
But I had a positive result. I still did not want to do chemotherapy. I wanted to go a natural way. I had been researching some healthier ways to fight cancer without chemotherapy. But my husband looked at me and said, “I don’t think nuts and berries are going to heal you. How am I going to tell our 9-year-old that her mom died because she didn’t want to do the chemotherapy?” I knew then that my battle was not my own. I am just one part of our family of five. I needed to do everything that I could to fight this battle. And so began my journey with chemotherapy.
