MY FIGHT AGAINST CANCER 1
MY FIGHT AGAINST CANCER
TAMMY WARREN
POST UNIVERSITY
MY FIGHT AGAINST CANCER 2
Two years ago this winter I found myself with debilitating back pain for no apparent reason. My fiance
was so worried that he drove me to our local emergency room to have an X-Ray done. The doctor
didn't find anything conclusive with the scan but could see the pain I was in and decided to send me for
a Cat Scan, little did I know this would be the first of many scans. There was no radiologist on duty in
our small emergency room that late at night so my doctor told me that he didn't see anything himself
and more than likely I had just pulled a muscle but if the radiologist saw anything the next day that
someone would call me. I left the hospital satisfied with the care I had been given and the next morning
I filled my prescriptions for pain medication and muscle relaxers which seemed to help some. A few
days after my ER visit I received a call from the radiology department telling me that I needed to make
an appointment with my primary care physician as soon as possible but they would not tell me the
reason why over the phone. I did as I was told and at this point I was petrified as to what was going on.
When I arrived at my doctors appointment he took me into his office rather than his normal patient
exam room and told me that they had found a large mass on the base of my spine and I needed to be
referred to an oncologist as soon as possible. The tumor was approximately 7 cm in mass and wrapped
around my spinal cord. there was no chance for surgery. A few days later I met the first of many
oncologist's that I would eventually have. Dr. Kruter seemed very nice at first and told me that he was
going to treat this cancer aggressively. The first step would be a biopsy which...