Cervical Cancer Support Group
Cervical cancer is a malignancy of the cervix. Worldwide, it is the second most common cancer of women. It may present with vaginal bleeding but symptoms may be absent until the cancer is in advanced stages, which has made cervical cancer the focus of intense screening efforts utilizing the Pap smear. This is the place to talk about your experience with the cancer.
I have cervical cancer. Ib1 with regional lymphatic metastasis. 4 positive lymph nodes found. I have four kids and I'm 38. It's adenocarcinoma. I quit radiation and chemo this week. Suddenly. I don't have a good support system. Divorced. Cheating boyfriend. Alone and isolated most of the time. Would be more active but the treatments don't let me, so I'm alone. Diarrhea keeps me by the toilet. I hate it. Nausea is effing terrible. And I am on Medicaid! Medi-cal. It's the worst!!!
I can promise you that your situation is not hopeless. I'm friends with a woman who has stage 4 cervical cancer, with distant mets to lungs and brain. She has been on 7 different chemos and had lots of ups and downs, but it has been ten years and she is still here! She's currently on an immunotherapy clinical trial and doing better than she has in years. At stage 1b1, I know many women who have finished treatment and are doing well with no evidence of disease.
Did your doc give you some statistics about how much benefit you could expect to receive from the treatment? Often at stage 1b1 the radical hysterectomy is considered the primary treatment, and the chemo/radiation is there to provide "extra insurance" - making your chance of recurrence somewhat lower. But even without the chemo/radiation your odds may still be quite good.
Another possibility would be to have a long talk with your doc about your nausea and diarrhea. Those can be awful but there are other medicines that can help, sometimes it just takes some experimenting to find the right combo that keeps them under control.
Regardless, the decision to have or to stop treatment is always yours. Even if you decide to stick with your decision to stop treatment early, you still deserve to have access to support and to help with your feelings - cancer and depression very often go together. You can reach out to your hospital social worker or call the American Cancer Society for suggestions.
Please let us know how you're doing, and sending lots of supportive thoughts and (((hugs))).