A little over a year ago she was suffering from some severe chest pains that she tried to deal with, but eventually was forced to see a doctor about. During this visit she went through some numerous tests, one being a scan of her chest.
A couple days after the test she received a phone call with news neither her nor her family would ever had expected. The doctors had found cancer cells in her chest. There was one large cell and 3 separate smaller ones. Obviously this news was taken very hard, and she spent most of the day trying to stop crying and sitting with her family.
The doctors were wanting to do some intensive treatments and right away, so Cindy went through radiation treatments every single day for 6 weeks as well as chemo once a week. These treatments made her weak physically and mentally, but she did her best to stay strong with her families support. Once the weeks of treatments were done, more scans were taken to see what the progress was. They were all very pleased with the results being 2 of the tumors had completely disappeared and the large one was much smaller. With this, the doctors wanted to try surgery to remove part of the upper lung that contained the larger sized tumor and Cindy was all for it.
A couple days after the test she received a phone call with news neither her nor her family would ever had expected. The doctors had found cancer cells in her chest. There was one large cell and 3 separate smaller ones. Obviously this news was taken very hard, and she spent most of the day trying to stop crying and sitting with her family.
The doctors were wanting to do some intensive treatments and right away, so Cindy went through radiation treatments every single day for 6 weeks as well as chemo once a week. These treatments made her weak physically and mentally, but she did her best to stay strong with her families support. Once the weeks of treatments were done, more scans were taken to see what the progress was. They were all very pleased with the results being 2 of the tumors had completely disappeared and the large one was much smaller. With this, the doctors wanted to try surgery to remove part of the upper lung that contained the larger sized tumor and Cindy was all for it.
The surgery went well and was a success to remove the larger one. It was followed by more weeks of treatments to make sure anything else that was to small for scans and left behind would be taken care of as well. The doctors were sure this would complete the battle with her cancer.
However, a couple weeks before the last round of treatments were over she started to have headaches and feeling in one of her feet was going and coming. Of course, more scans and tests were ran too see if it was due to the cancer. Unfortunately, the results revealed even worse news then they thought was possible. While the treatments worked very well to attack and kill the cancer cells in her chest, they are to large of amounts to penetrate the outer protection of the brain. Because of this, the cancer that had been removed from her chest, had spread to her brain and now turned into brain cancer. This crushed her and her family who thought the battle she had been fighting was over and she had won. Yet the battle continues.
Cindy and her husband decided to go to a clinic that specialized more into just fighting cancer, so they started making trips for evaluations. After finding one that they were pleased with, the out of state trips began. There were several trips made every 7-10 days for treatments and tests. They have given Cindy more hope and strength to keep fighting even through her pain, loss of physical strength, and loss of balance to where she now uses a walker. Along with this comes the financial frustrations with the cost to travel, the treatments, over night stays in the facilities, and all the prescriptions to help her.
As said in the beginning, she is a fighter and does her best to keep her head up and moving forward. For added strength she carrys photos of her kids and grand kids, in which she places on the table by her as she is given her treatments. "Their smiling faces help me quite a bit" she has said. She is down, but not giving up. This is why she is an inspiration to her family and friends, and why I am so very proud to call her Mom!!