Patient E. E’s life before her acquisition of cancer proved to be one filled with jubilance and promise, as she had a dream to open a salon, supported fully by her husband and her two young children. She worked long hours, working toward this aspiration until the symptoms of cancer began to take over the life she once knew. It began with her loss of appetite, she could hardly keep any food down, and she became utterly fatigued and exhausted. As a result of this E made her way to the emergency room in which the doctors on duty admitted her due to her low hemoglobin levels of 6.4, and so began the various tests to see what the immediate issue was. E was 27 at this point.
Her career and her family life suffered, as would be expected as she was spending the vast majority of her time sequestered into hospital rooms. She slept a large amount and strived to handle business as well as her children simultaneously- a difficult feat as such a young mother. Eventually, she began to miss more and more work, stuck within the abyss of the hospital. The doctors eventually took her gallbladder out. Yet no one was aware of what exactly was wrong yet. She was forced to get blood transfusions and they did a biopsy after the gallbladder was removed. They isolated pieces from E’s lung as well as removed her lymph nodes and found that her white blood count was very high. At this point, her oncologist at the time recommended her to a rheumatologist, and she began seeing both simultaneously.
She spent most of her time at the rheumatology department, as she began to wonder if she had acquired an autoimmune disease due to a large amount of joint pain she was experiencing. Her rheumatologist began treating her for Lupus. However shortly after treatment, she developed underarm lymph nodes that grew to the size of a baseball under each of her arms. At this point, the rheumatologist announced that it could not be Lupus and that she simply could not figure it out. E continued to lose weight as she remained unable to keep her food down. She contained no appetite, no strength, and no motivation.
Eventually, E came to a point where she could barely walk she was so weak. She continued to lose weight and could not even manage to climb the stairs within her home. The night before Thanksgiving dinner, E announced that she needed to go to the hospital. She needed nutrients. So she returned to the hospital and the doctors performed another biopsy from under her left arm and removed the entire lymph node which came back positive.
E’s parents and her aunt felt as if the doctors in Butler, Pennsylvania where she was at this point being treated were not doing enough, and so E was sent all the way to Pittsburgh in adamant hopes that whatever was occurring within E’s body could be mended. She was sent to Allegheny General Hospital to begin, and they performed some testing there, but in the same week she was transferred to West Penn Hospital, and then ended up at last at UPMC Shadyside.
At Shadyside, E received three treatments altogether and beforehand had gotten a treatment at West Penn. E was misdiagnosed for an entire year. For this year she could not walk. She could not sit up to feed herself she was so weak. E was 98 pounds. She needed to get her heart stronger and receive more nutrition and get moving again. And this was where Dr. Islam came in. He got E started with nutrients that showed improvements and shrinkage of her lymph nodes. And he diagnosed her with stage four lymphoma.
E started an AVBD treatment once her heart reached 60% for her cardiomyopathy, and at this point, her doctors believed it was necessary to start treating her cancer. Once she began chemotherapy, she began feeling much better, “which is weird because usually, you feel worse.” Nausea medicine helped her, and of course, she still became ill from the therapy. She was told that if she did not eat she would require a feeding tube, which got her much more motivated to retain these nutrients the natural way. E slowly started coming back to life. At first, it was difficult for E to eat or to swallow, and she would even need to water down her food in order to make it down her throughout.
Once she began treatment she was in the hospital for three months. Her children were at the ages of 5 and 7 at the time. Her aunt served as her “power of attorney” because she could not make any decisions for herself. She was not married yet, but her fiance was simultaneously working and caring for her children. Her last treatment to this date was in September of 2016. She received a PET scan that showed that she was at last clear of cancer. Dr. Islam gave E the go-ahead to get pregnant, and so E became pregnant with her third child six months after being free from cancer- they were expecting their first girl.
Her pregnancy went flawlessly, other than the onset of diabetes during this time. She carried her to full term. “She was fine, I was fine.” Every six months E gets scanned and continues to keep up with her check-ups. E is expecting another child oy at the end of the summer.
However, the aftershocks of cancer continue to affect E, as they do with any individual diagnosed with such a fatal and terrifying disease. She continues to struggle from time to time with her energy levels, which she believes have not come back 100%. She gets tired very easily, and the chemotherapy has caused her ears to still ring every now and then.
The struggles that she faced in terms of her relationships have mended as she has recovered, but the years of being cancer-ridden will always have their hold on her. Her two boys truly struggled with her diagnosis, though they did not show their trauma directly: things such as school or grades as well as speaking to teachers demonstrated it instead. For a long while, they were frightened every time she went to the doctor, asking “Why are you going?”. At the beginning of E’s journey, they were with their mother a lot, because she was being treated in Butler, where her fiance and her children resided. However, when she moved to Pittsburgh, it was much more difficult for them to make their way over towards the city. E states that she had a lot of family members come to see her throughout her time in Pittsburgh and “we’ve grown closer from everything.”
E says that at first she had such a feeling of gratitude during her time of chemotherapy treatment, simply so grateful that she was diagnosed and that something was improving. She was “high on gratitude”. But once that wore away, E found herself riddled with an onset of anxiety, constantly frightened that her cancer will return, that she will find herself immersed in bad news all over again. E states that this is her biggest struggle to date.
Throughout all of E’s struggles through cancer, her father as well was struggling. He was diagnosed two months before E’s diagnosis, with lung cancer. The two of them began with the same oncologist in Butler. Eventually, his health had gone downhill very quickly, and he could barely breathe, a fact that his doctor did not acknowledge. The doctors listened to his lungs and did not give him any valid information, and E’s father found himself venturing to Pittsburgh, right alongside his daughter for different treatment methods. He also began to see Dr. Islam.
E’s finances suffered throughout her journey through cancer as well. She was forced to close her end of the salon business, as she had quite a few employees leave: a couple fled the area, one quit practicing hair, and one received a manager position. Not only did they all leave, but E herself was out of practice for more than a year and this crumbled the business she ran. She ended up selling all of the furniture, and the business remained there under a different name. She works there part time now.
Many individuals when diagnosed with cancer lose hope completely and lose the sense of religious ties that they may have grasped tightly previously. And some do the opposite, as E did. E believed that the most peace she ever felt throughout her life was during the times when she was most sick. She continued to stay positive, “trying to keep my faith up”. She believed that this itself got her through her diagnosis and treatment mentally; it made her closer to god. “That’s the only thing you have left at that point, the strength of your mind. Your body can’t do anything so that’s all that you have”. And with a mindset built off of these words, E made it through. She made it through successfully.
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