Tina

The following story is from an interview with Tina Thomas, a patient at PSCC.

"Dr. McGee told me to toss the statistics out the window. We were going to take this day by day. That was 23 years ago."

Tina was a 16 year-old junior in high school when she became very anemic. At the beginning of her senior year she ended up in the hospital and within a week, 95% of her stomach had been removed due to a cancerous tumor. This is when she met Dr. Richard McGee, her oncologist with Puget Sound Cancer Centers. He would play an important part of her life for the next 23 years and beyond. "From the first day my family has adored Dr. McGee. He's very caring, but he will also be very straight with you. And he understands the importance of family in the healing process," Tina explained.

What was originally thought to be gastric sarcoma, Dr. McGee later discovered that Tina had what was then called Leiomyosarcoma — a cancer too rare to have any protocol — and it had spread to her lymph nodes. He also knew that he had one chance to cure her then, or lose her forever. The chemotherapy he chose, Adriamycian, showed success in other cancers, was still fairly new and aggressive, and risks were involved. But he explained to Tina that the statistics are based on groups of people, not the individual. "Dr. McGee told me that I had no odds, no guarantees, but that was okay. He told me you can just throw those statistics out the window. I've learned that you can read statistics and be depressed or you can throw them out and take it one day at a time and live your life."

The Adriamycian worked. Dr. McGee knew however, that this was one of the cancers in a new and very rare disease called Carney's Triad, or three specific cancers that follow each other in the same patient. Knowing this, Dr. McGee researched everything and kept a watchful eye out for the other cancers so they could be detected early. Tina added, "When I was 19 and then again at 35, I had Enchondroma — the lung cancer in Carney's Triad. He was also watching for the third, and I got that, too — Pheochromocytoma, a rare tumor of the abdominal cavity, at 35."

"Going through this hasn't been easy, but I've always had a sense that Dr. McGee feels the pain with me." Tina went on, "When he told me the lung cancer was back I knew it really, really hurt him. This is why PSCC feels like home to me, like family"

Tina explains, "I feel safe with PSCC, I know they'll be there for me. In fact some of the same nurses have been with Dr. McGee all these years, too. I know there are other places where you can get good care. But I don't think there's any place that gives better care. The people at PSCC are constantly looking for new treatments and doing the research to keep pushing for better outcomes. They are very much at the forefront of everything, and the advances since I was first diagnosed are amazing."

"I've been dealing with cancer for more than half my life, but I'll never consider myself cured," Tina says. "The possibility of reoccurrence is so high for me that I look at it as a chronic illness. It's something that I live with. I could spend every day in fear. But we all have a choice. Every morning I wake up knowing I have the gift of another day."

"I had cancer at 17 and it became the focus of my life. Then at 23 I realized that I needed to figure out what I was going to do with my life, because it looked like I was going to have one. The respect, acceptance and love I feel from Dr. McGee and the people at PSCC are helping make that happen."

Tina has been successfully treated at the Edmonds PSCC for over 23 years.