LeeAnne K.

I am a 41 year old mother of two children. My first encounter with cancer was when I just gave birth to my daughter and the doctors realized I had cervical cancer. They wanted to do a hysterectomy, but I fought this and found a doctor who did a new procedure to rid the cancer while hopefully preserving my fertility. Long story short, I gave birth to my son 2 years later.

I see my gynecological oncologist three times a year and every six months, I go for a CT scan. All scans have been clear except for the one last year where they noticed a tumor on my lung. It was biopsied and came back as lung cancer. It was a new cancer, not a recurrence, which the doctors said is more treatable. I had surgery to remove the tumor 1 year ago and continue to go for CT scans twice a year.

In a strange way we say that my cervical cancer saved my life. If I never had gone through that 10 years ago I would not have been checked so frequently and my lung cancer prognosis would be much different. It's bad enough to go through cancer once in a lifetime, never mind twice.