No Guarantees in Life or Cancer

Editor’s Note: This piece was submitted by a contributing writer and does not represent the views of CURE Media Group.

I am the luckiest girl in the world being that I was the last patient in the world to receive Bexxar radioimmunotherapy before it was removed from the marketplace at the beginning of 2014. I was told that if I remained symptom-free for a year after treatment, I would have a 50/50 chance of beating follicular non-Hodgkin lymphoma. As the journey had been underway for over 10 years, I aimed for the gold and currently remain symptom-free.

However, since this life-saving treatment, I've had two very close brushes with death, which highlights the fact that there are no guarantees in life. Within the first year post-treatment, I survived a nearly fatal auto accident where a woman ran a continuous red light (while on her cell phone and turning around to check on her children) while I was crossing a 12 lane highway. The second brush with death involved an adverse reaction to an injection of a radioisotope Technetium during a nuclear cardiac stress test which unexpectedly landed me in the hospital this past June for two days.

So what have I learned from all this? Never take any day for granted.