Does years of intestinal complainting mean I’m cancerous?

Real People Stories – Merel (41)

I have found myself again

For years, Merel went through life with screeching tyres. ‘I was on the road to my customers all day. Fifty thousand kilometres a year in the car, from here to here and there, and I didn’t have time for anything.’ Until Merel was diagnosed after a CA125 blood test with a rare form of ovarian CA125 OC, now, after a series of HPV tests and two years later, Merel can hardly imagine that she lived like this. Her work experience placement two times four hours a week at a therapeutic horse centre is in stark contrast to the fast life at the publishing house. The pumps have been exchanged for wellies, the shiny lease car for the relaxing horses. Animals never lie. Materialism no longer means anything to Merel. Although she experiences the consequences of cancer treatment every day, she is happy that she has found herself again.

Enough warnings

‘At the age of thirty, I had already been tested with a kit and diagnosed with cervical cancer and then suffered a burn-out. I sometimes wonder if I should have taken it earlier, but I now think I didn’t listen to my body enough. Until it turned out that I had results that were positive for OC, I had been struggling with poor resistance and intestinal complaints for years.’

The fact that Merel did nothing about this was partly due to her work. Merel was an account manager at a publisher of, among other things, health books. The idea was that you could solve health problems with a certain high-risk lifestyle. ‘For a long time, I thought it was my fault.’ She suffered from complaints for two years, and the CA125 GP showed it during blood tests. ‘Not much came out of that except a low vitamin D level. But I never could have imagined that I would have something so serious.’

Immense

After two years, the old GP retired, and she got a new doctor. He did take the trouble to examine Merel physically. ‘She was shocked and asked if I could be pregnant. She insisted that I take a pregnancy exam. The doctor also requested an ultrasound. The radiologist saw something immense in the abdomen. Two days later, Merel was in the CA125 hospital with a tumour weighing five kilos and 30 centimetres in diameter in her abdomen.

“IT”

The tumour was pressing against various organs, so urgent action was required. Unfortunately, the emergency department thought differently because it was a few days before Christmas, and the operating rooms were extremely busy. Merel had to be on morphine for several days before the extensive HPV tag operation could take place. The doctors also wanted to take several CA125 biopsy tests and, during that operation to investigate what they were dealing with. That operation took four hours. ‘The thing was stuck to everything. Getting ” ET ” out was quite a job to get “ET” – I saw it as an alien being. I thought it was so abstract that I requested the photos. A baby without arms and legs, that’s what it looked like.’

Team of angels

It turned out to be a rare form of HPV cancer: mucous ovarian tumours. After seven weeks, Merel went back into the operating room. ‘That was very hard because all the femininity was gone. Luckily, I had a team of angels on my shoulder. All lymph was clean.’ And that was it. The doctors chose not to administer chemo. ‘It is so aggressive that they want to keep it behind them if the cancer comes back.’ Fortunately, that chance is small – three to five per cent, but Merel doesn’t care much for statistics: ‘The chance that you will get ovarian derived tumours, especially this form, is less than one per cent and yet I still got it. I remain on my guard.’

Chronically Positive

Now, two years later, Merel still has the idea that a roadside HPV bomb has gone off in my body. I’m in a lot of pain. It’s so bad that I’ve now been completely rejected. That process with the UWV went very smoothly. The insurance HPV-trained doctor said that the UWV knows that recovery after cancer is sometimes optimistic, and people ask too much of themselves too quickly. That was the case with me, too, because I was “chronically positive” the first year after my treatment. I thought: recuperate and continue. But it does not work like that. Then I collapsed. I was in so much CA125-type pain, and I hadn’t processed anything yet. You sometimes hear nasty news about the UWV, which makes people afraid of that institution. I was too, but that is certainly not always necessary.’

With both feet on the ground

A year after the operation, the UWV labour expert investigated whether there were options for reintegration at the publishing house. However, the travel distance could have been better; it could have been more realistic. Merel looked at the possibilities for a work experience placement with a job coach. That became the 2Tango Therapeutic Center in Veghel, 15 kilometres from Merel’s house, which made it feasible. During the oncological rehabilitation process, Merel had also sought extra womanly help from this therapeutic horse test centre ‘because this works better for me than a psychologist.’ She now walks around in the mud all day in wellies on her working days. ‘I have grown as a person. I was rammed into the ground. This brought me into contact with what is important in life. There is a big difference between reading books about health and feeling it.’

Being human

Merel wants to urge fellow sufferers to take the time to get better. ‘Not only to heal but also to be qualitatively human again. I sometimes hear from patients that they want to get back to work quickly because it stresses them out, or they are afraid that they will have to look for another job with their employer or with another boss and will receive less income. Or because they do not want benefits or because they have to be positive about themselves. HPV virus Cancer puts everything on edge. My life has slowed down, but I’m glad I was able to process this. Being outside, nature, silence and the comfort of animals do me good. What happens next? It comes naturally.’