Author: teter2

You know it’s cold outside when your puppy doesn’t even want to step foot outside!

I LOVE pickle ball! Anyone else play? I am obsessed and proud of it 🙂 I could be having a bad day and I see my pickle ball friends, step on the court, and everything is better!

Loved ringing in the new year at the Edison Disney Springs with my family – so much fun! On this warm, sunny day I feel hopeful that change is in my future – change the medication to shrink the desmoid, to allow me to live pain-free – yay!

Thanks for joining us!

I’m thankful for the battle. If I weren’t battling, then I would have given up. I never thought of myself as a fighter until I had something tremendously important to fight for – my life. 

Denise teter

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Sharing Our Story

October 24, 2011.  A warm, sunny autumn day filled with infinite possibilities. A bike ride, a walk in the woods with my dog, Charlie. Instead, at a regular checkup, I was told I had FAP Colorectal Cancer (Familial Adenomatous Polyposis).  That night, I sat in the living room, just staring out the window, Charlie never leaving my side. Eventually I slept.  The sun rose and for a moment I thought, “What a horrible nightmare.”  During the brief sliver between moonlight and daylight, when all was quiet, I thought I was ok.  It wasn’t until I told my daughters and mother that the truth was no longer escapable.  There were oceans of tears but I didn’t cry and that helped settle everyone.  I knew this diagnosis was a life changer. This detour would give the girls a new sense of self and an independence that can only come from within, when faced with an unwanted challenge that they have to face, not skirt around.

It wasn’t the diagnosis of FAP Colorectal Cancer that was life changing.  Although it was.  It wasn’t the fact that at 47, I was 17 years beyond the oldest patient diagnosed with this cancer. Although it was.  The unavoidable shift that forever changed my life was the fact that the cancer was genetic and aggressive and there was a 66% chance that the gene had been passed onto each of my three daughters.  Genetic testing revealed my eldest daughter, Victoria, had the gene. She would definitely develop FAP Colorectal Cancer.  A colonoscopy revealed as many polyps at her tender age of 17 as I had at 47.  Her twin sisters, Olivia and Julia (14 at the time) were clean, no FAP, ever. Victoria was relieved that her sisters were safe.  She said she knew it would be her, that it would have been too cruel a fate for both to inherit the gene, or worse, one twin to be clean, the other not.  She was the sensible choice.  As if cancer cares who it chooses.

I started on a whirlwind course of chemo right after Thanksgiving, completing 6 rounds by the end of January 2012. Daily chemo and radiation took place beginning February 1 and ended in early March. A 6-week resting period came next, leading up to the surgery that would remove my colon. Of course, my surgery needed to be done in May and was scheduled 2 weeks before Victoria’s senior prom. I wasn’t happy but there was nothing I could do about the timing of the surgery. Surgery was a success and I was discharged a week before prom. I was able to be there for pictures with friends before coming home to crash!

This May, I’ll be 8 years cancer-free! I did develop some inoperable desmoid tumors (a common syndrome with FAP survivors) in my mesentery along with fistulas (unnatural connections made between organs) and have been on oral chemo for 2.5 years in an effort to shrink the tumors. If the major tumor would shrink significantly, there would be a small possibility of correcting the fistulas, which would make me very, very happy! I’m still optimistic that I will be tumor- and fistula-free in the not so distant future 🙂