Cancer sucks. All of it.

Here’s the bad news. Endometrial cancer sucks. Especially when you’re diagnosed as stage-four, grade three. That’s as bad as a diagnosis gets. Here’s the good news. I am an eight-plus year survivor.

Coming up with a diagnosis took nearly three torturous weeks. But doctors said they hoped to cure me. After a total hysterectomy, radiation and chemo, thank God they did. At least so far. Once you’ve been treated for cancer, you become very familiar with the phrase: So far, so good. The story of my struggle with adenocarcinoma of the uterus is gripping, scary and ultimately encouraging. As a long time journalist, I believed my story would help encourage others suffering with cancer or caring for cancer patients. And so I wrote it. GODSIGNS: Health, Hope and Miracles, My Journey to Survival is published by Read The Spirit and available as an ebook. It tells the tale not only of the physical battle I went through, but of the amazing events that occurred in the process. Events that brought me hope. Events I came to see as, and to call, Godsigns.

I hope the following excerpt inspires you to read the whole book, to draw strength from my struggle, and to know that healing is possible.

I am meeting with Dr. Ruckdeschel, then the head of Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit. He is helping my husband and me to figure out my diagnosis.

…Two masses in my pelvis surrounded and pressed on my uterus and bladder, he said. Two expanding black holes had taken over my pelvic bones. …They had ruled out cancer of the lung, breast, pancreas, kidney, liver, colon and rectum, he said. I silently thanked each organ he named.

How tied we are to our bodies, I thought. When they work, we are blissfully unaware of them. Now, a large stranger in a white coat knew more about my insides than I did. I wished I could separate myself from my body, withdraw my soul or essence or whatever it was that made me, me, and keep it somewhere safe, in some celestial vault, while doctors put the rest back in order, returned me to health, so I could go on hugging my husband, smelling my granddaughter’s hair, improving my putting stroke—ordinary things that had never seemed so extraordinary.

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