Cherise Evans Saunders

Every day we wake with a view of hope and faith. On March 15th 2015, scheduled for a routine hysterectomy, a surgery that took 8 hours with life changing results. During the post-surgery discussions she was informed by the surgical team that they had found unexpected complications and unfortunately she was experiencing Stage 3 Ovarian Cancer. Like any bad news she felt as if the Doctor was advising her about someone else’s diagnosis, this was not supposed to be the outcome of her surgery. Her Doctor realized that she was not coping well with the discussion and asked her to gather up her family so that he could explain what they discovered and the options available to treat Ovarian Cancer. Chemotherapy was scheduled to start 3 months after surgery, followed by a PET Scan to review tumor behavior and possible shrinkage.

Unfortunately, she was not responding to the initial rounds of chemotherapy and a second surgery was scheduled for September 2015. This surgery would remove lymph nodes that were highlighted during the PET CT and to place an additional port into the stomach in order to receive targeted Chemotherapy treatment. In December of 2015 after a PET CT and routine blood testing the results indicated that the Cancer had gone into remission…that was probably the best Christmas present I had ever received in my life. However, Cancer was not done with her as yet although in remission her Doctor recommended taking a supplemental drug for an additional 12 months. The side effects of this drug was not good and halfway thru the treatment she made the decision to stop and seek alternative options at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Tulsa. During her review with CTCA she found out that she tested positive for the BRCA1 gene which predisposed her to contracting Breast cancer. After results every physician recommended that because she had already battled ovarian cancer she should consider proactive measurements and get a double mastectomy. A very tough decision and one she struggled with for the better part of a year. In October of 2017 she made the decision to move forward with the double mastectomy, without reconstruction, a decision although hard was made easier by the grace of the almighty God.