Jessica

I was diagnosed in June of 2009 at the age of 26! I had been complaining for over ten years of extremely bad back pain. They had told me it was because I was overweight. Finally, in March of 2009, I found a doctor that would do an MRI and not just give me some pills. By April I was having back surgery because they thought I had a blown disc. When an amazing doctor went in and did surgery, he came back and said in his 40 years of practicing he had never seen gunk like that! They sent it off to the lab and in June I got the call that I had chordoma. They told me there was nothing they could do and no cures so just go home and live every day like it was my last. Well, being a single mom of a 5-year-old that just wasn’t acceptable! In September of 2010, after lots of blood, sweat, and tears, I learned about a treatment called proton beam radiation at Loma Linda University. In January of 2011, after fighting with insurance companies, I finally got an appointment. In February I was seeing another surgeon to see if they could remove more of the cancer. By March I was having another surgery and in May I started proton beam radiation. It was 40 session, 5 sessions a week. That meant raising money, moving to a big city for 3 months, leaving my daughter with my parents, and going through it alone! Thankfully, I made lots of friends at Loma Linda that were having proton treatment for prostate cancer. It wasn’t the same cancer but they knew what I going through. I am now stable. The cancer is still there but it hasn’t spread thank God! Just try to remember if you are down everyone around you is going to be down, so if you stay positive through your fight, you will be an inspiration for everyone else!