I know some of you know my story, but I thought that I would tell everyone my story of when I got cancer.  In 2003 I was having a lot of lower back and lower abdominal pain, kind of like how I felt when I would be getting my monthly, but all the time.  My mom told me that I should get it checked out because endometriosis runs in our family.  So I made an appointment with my doc and she sent me for an ultrasound.  When I got the ultra sound done the technician only did the upper part of my belly, and I told her that she did the wrong part and she said that is what my doc ordered.  I was so mad!!  A couple days later my doc asked me to come in and see her she wanted to talk to me about what she saw on my u/s.  I was so scared, I sat in her office waiting for her and I started to pray, "please God don't let it be cancer", but something stopped me from praying those words and instead I said "God if this is cancer, it is too late to ask for it not to be, so just please help me and my family get through this!"  She came in and told me that they found something on my kidney, and she wanted me to go see a urologist. 

So I did, and he said that he wanted me to get a CAT scan done to see it a little better.  So I had it done and he had me come back in and he said we needed to get a biopsy of what ever it is on my kidney.  So I had a biopsy done, wide awake while they made a hole in my back about the size of a pencil, and went in it with a claw thing and pulled pieces of it out until they had enough to do the biopsy.  The technician, urologist, and my doc kept telling me don't worry about it, it most likely isn't cancer, it is only 2 cm.  Two days after the biopsy the urologist called me and told me on the phone that it was in fact cancer, and he was going to call a doc in Rochester and set up an appointment for me to go and see him.  A few days later I went to him (Jean Joseph) and he told me what we were going to do, remove part of the kidney laparoscopically.

So 2 days before thanksgiving, we had the operation done.  Then Dr.Joseph came in and told me exactly what had happened.  OK, you know how a kidney looks just like a kidney bean, well the cancer cells had attached to the tip of the kidney and instead of surrounding the whole kidney, it attached and then grew away from the kidney!!  So all he had to do was scrape the tip of the kidney to get the cancer and then he burned the tip to make sure that if there was any cancer cells left it wouldn't attached to the same spot!!  It has been 4 years and I am now going every 8 months and I am still Cancer FREE!!!  And I thank God for it all!!

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