“I felt like I was living again”: cancer survivors told stories of salvation

Cancer is a diagnosis that no one is immune from. The good news is that you can fight it. On the eve of World Cancer Day, which is celebrated on February 4, doctors told the stories of healed patients who eloquently say that cancer diagnosis is not a death sentence.

If not dead, there is a way out

As a teenager, Vladislav, a native of Saratov, as they say, went a crooked path: bad company, drugs. However, at some point he realized that he needed to save himself – he went through rehabilitation and even became a volunteer himself to help others. He worked for ten years in the center of social adaptation of drug and alcohol addicts.

I found out about positive tests for HIV and hepatitis C by chance, already being married, when I was passing a military commission. And a year ago, he went to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and at the same time decided to do an ultrasound of the liver with a doctor friend. During the study, it turned out that everything was in order with the liver, only the doctor found more than a liter of fluid in the pleura. Vladislav was sent for a CT scan, which resulted in a diagnosis of lung cancer at a very advanced stage.

At first he did not even believe: what kind of cancer if he feels great? Like any smoker, he coughed – nothing more. However, the doctors convinced him: there can be no mistake, there was very little time left to live – metastases even appeared in the brain. Having stood in line at the local dispensary, Vladislav heard the verdict: “Everything is in metastases – there is nothing to cut out. You also have HIV and hepatitis – you won’t survive chemo.”

But Vladislav decided not to give up: at first he was looking for options abroad. I found a clinic in Germany, where they asked me to transfer 3 million rubles in advance. The family sold the apartment and transferred the money. However, Vladislav was in for a new blow: when he arrived in Moscow to draw up documents for treatment, he was denied a passport. By that time, he was already breathing with difficulty, he could only sleep while sitting, and he could hardly climb the stairs even to the 2nd floor. “That office never returned the money to us – they threw it,” recalls Vladislav.

He began to frantically seek help in Moscow, he was refused everywhere. But he got an appointment with a chemotherapist, who said “we will still fight for you,” although Vyacheslav himself had already given up and did not believe in anything. “These words touched me to the core, tears are still welling up, as I remember,” says the patient.

After undergoing diagnostics, Vladislav was found to have a rare mutation in his tumor, which turned out to be a great luck: a modern targeted drug was specifically for this mutation.

“I start taking pills, a week and a half passes, and this feeling familiar to me, when you feel that you are dying, is gone. a month, one lung was cleared, and the tumor was halved,” says Vladislav.

Doctors say that the main cause that provoked Vladislav’s lung cancer was HIV, not smoking. With a normal level of immunity, this would not have happened to him. But in any case, modern treatment allows you to control his tumor, because it affects precisely the genetic disorder that caused it.

…Today Vladislav goes for a run every morning after taking pills. And he also decided to help people with oncological diagnoses – he organized a group of patients to help each other and is engaged in oncological support. He tells him where to go, meets him at the train station, advises on how to get treatment in federal centers, etc. And in the future he wants to provide psychological assistance to cancer patients. According to Vladislav, someone still does not believe that one can live with his diagnosis at all – for many, this is a sentence and that’s it. But he says: “if not dead, there is a way out.”

Break up with a 27 kilo tumor

Anna from Astrakhan is only 29 years old, but due to cancer, she had to undergo an operation, during which her tongue was completely removed. The first bell sounded in 2016, when she was 23 years old – then she had a small sore on her tongue. But doctors diagnosed a benign hemangioma, which never develops into a malignant process, and after its removal, she did not think about anything bad. But during the pandemic, in 2021, the girl was vaccinated – and after it the sore reappeared. The doctors, to whom the girl turned, only shrugged and said “just an infection, rinse with chamomile.” But the “infection” grew, and no rinses and ointments stopped it.

And only in Moscow she was nailed with a diagnosis: a total lesion of the tongue, cancer of the fourth stage, a complete removal of the tongue is required.

Doctors say that cancer of the mucous membrane of the tongue is an infrequent occurrence in young people, but, unfortunately, the incidence is growing, oral cancer is getting younger. And most often these are patients without bad habits.

When the doctor announced the treatment plan to Anna, she realized that this was her only option to survive, so she agreed. During the operation, doctors made her a new tongue from her own tissues, but she had to learn to speak and chew again.

“Before the operation, I had difficulty accepting myself: both externally and internally. After the operation, when I have already recovered, I look in the mirror and understand – I love myself! Yes, like this, with scars, with not quite the right speech – I love myself! After the operation, for the first time in my life, I am happy to be myself. Now I try to be as open as possible to any experience at all, I try to absorb everything. Because if not now, then when? I just might not be able to. It may sound cruel, but before my operation, I was clearly told that I need to live to be 35 years old, then the disease most likely will not return, and it will already be possible to exhale. In the meantime, I try to do something new every day, “feel” life, and not be afraid,” says Anna.

… Mikhail from Nizhny Novgorod is only 22 years old, he studies at a medical university. And for 15 of his 25 years, he lived with a tumor that grew steadily and eventually grew to 27 kilograms.

She was discovered when he was 7 years old – then she was very tiny. But at a transitional age, hormonal restructuring of the body began – and it began to increase sharply. I had to constantly update my wardrobe, but after the 11th grade, the young man could no longer wear jeans – there were simply no such sizes. He already had the 68th size – in stores you could pick up only tights.

“Neurofibromatosis is a genetic disease, which is determined by the growth of connective tissue and a large number of neurofibromas of both subcutaneous tissue and internal organs,” says the head of the Department of Bone, Skin and Soft Tissue Tumors of the Cancer Center named after. Blokhin Renat Valiev. “The disease is dangerous because the tumor can become malignant during life.”

In Nizhny Mikhail they were told that his tumor was inoperable, and his destiny was to come to terms with it. But when he began to study as a doctor, he realized that this was not entirely true. In addition, the realization came that by the age of 30 the tumor could simply swallow him up – living with it became more and more unbearable. He could no longer sit, it was hard to study. Even doing an MRI was a problem – the tumor did not fit into any machine.

They categorically refused to operate at his place of residence. And he began to seek a referral to some major federal center, and finally got it.

The doctors who performed the operation measured the volume of the removed formation – its weight turned out to be 27 kilograms, and the tumor was up to one and a half meters long! The vessels that fed her were as thick as a finger, which increased the risk of massive bleeding. But everything went well – Mikhail is undergoing rehabilitation, dreams of returning to his studies and plans to go in for sports.

cancer during pregnancy

38-year-old Elena from Moscow dreamed of a child for many years, but for a long time she could not get pregnant. Several times, she and her husband resorted to ART (assisted reproductive technologies), and only on the seventh IVF attempt everything finally worked out. She heard the cherished words “You are pregnant” – and literally flew with happiness. And at the 18th week of pregnancy, she was told the terrible news – you have cancer.

She discovered the tumor in her breast herself, at the 12th week of pregnancy. She was sent for examination, but the doctors decided that this was due to the emerging lactation, which happens in pregnant women. They diagnosed me with a cyst and gave my grandmother’s advice. “Everyone said: it’s okay. But I felt: something was wrong,” Elena recalls.

When nothing resolved after a month, Elena went to another clinic, where they immediately did an ultrasound with a puncture. And the puncture showed that the process is malignant.

“When they told me this, I literally lost the power of speech, I could not speak, I could not accept the fact that I was pregnant, I had cancer,” the patient recalls.

During her pregnancy, she underwent five courses of “chemistry”, then she gave birth to a daughter – and received targeted therapy for another year. Doctors say that chemotherapy in pregnant women is safe for children, the only thing that threatens them is a lack of birth weight.

Today, Lena’s daughter is three years old, and Elena works as a psychologist in a center for psychological support for women who have experienced reproductive difficulties. By her first education, she is an economist, but, faced with difficulties in life, she decided to master the profession of a psychologist and even defended her dissertation at Moscow State University during her treatment. She dreams of creating a center for psychological assistance to doctors: after all, they also burn out, faced with torment, other people’s grief and death in their practice.

Cancer is no longer a death sentence

If twenty years ago, cases of recovery of patients with many types of cancer were quite rare, today, with 80% of tumor varieties, if not a complete cure, then a stable remission can be achieved. A huge number of breakthroughs have occurred in the field of diagnosis and treatment. Targeted and immunotherapy have appeared, the use of nuclear medicine is being introduced, reference centers for immunohistochemical, pathomorphological and radiation research methods are being created, and proton beam therapy is being used.

As the deputy director of the National Medical Research Center of Oncology named after N.I. N.N. Blokhin on medical work Konstantin Laktionov, the number of recovered is measured in tens of thousands, which was not the case before: “We have learned a lot about the biology of malignant processes and can identify weak points of tumors in order to effectively act on them with chemo-, targeted or immunotherapy. Yes, in some cases it is possible to completely cure cancer even at stage 4. But early diagnosis remains the key to successful treatment. It has also become better now: out of 5 detected cases of cancer, 3 are detected in the early stages.”

New treatments are also emerging. For example, the method of boron-neutron capture therapy – the impact on a tumor with neutron accelerators – is currently being studied. A drug molecule is delivered to the tumor, and when it interacts with a neutron beam, it is locally destroyed.

Surgical technologies do not stand still. In oncology, methods of anemia operations, that is, endosurgical techniques, are increasingly being used. They allow to reduce the rehabilitation period and terms of hospitalization. And reconstructive plastic surgery minimizes disabling interventions for pathologies of bones and joints. For example, earlier, after surgery on the pelvic bones, a person was doomed to a recumbent lifestyle, today they can print an individual prosthesis on a printer, then implant it – and in a few days they will start walking again. In addition, complex maxillofacial operations are performed, which return patients to their former appearance after removal of head and neck tumors.

The main thing, doctors say to patients, is to monitor your health, to be examined regularly. And don’t give up.