On July 3, 2021, at the age of 33, I drove myself to the emergency room in the middle of the night. I hadn’t been able to poop for days and had severe stomach pain. They did a CT scan and identified a tumor in my sigmoid colon. The plan was to remove the tumor and put my intestines back together, which they did, but several days later my intestines came apart and I got septic and ended up on a ventilator for 11 days. I had an emergency colostomy surgery which saved my life, but that colostomy has been a problem for me ever since its creation. One by one, each of my surgical incision sites became infected and I had to get them debrided. Then my stoma fully retracted and I started developing fistulas. Because of all this, I remained hospitalized at a long term acute care hospital for 8 months and wasn’t able to receive chemo after surgery because I was in a chronic state of infection.
I came home to live with my parents in April of 2022 and had plans to have my colostomy reversed, but in August we found out that my cancer had spread to my liver, now classifying me as Stage 4. I transitioned my care to MD Anderson and finally began chemo in November of 2022. I am about to transition from chemo infusions to chemo pills.
Jean’s LifeList:
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Trip to Disneyland with her mom