Cancer After a New Heart

Thanks to Cindy Scinto for today's post. Cindy's incredible story has been published in her book "A Heart Like Mine".

From Cindy's website:

"I am passionate and intent on sharing my story of perseverance and how God has sustained my family and I during many years of turmoil and tragedy. Regardless of what comes my way, I am happy to be alive and trust that God will be with me every step of every hurdle. "

Thank you Cindy for sharing a small part of your story with us today.

Cancer After a New Heart

My body curled into a tight ball on the bunched up hospital sheets. They smelled like the sheets in a cheap hotel room; pungent bleach mixed with sanitizer. The chemotherapy treatment was done when the last drop of poison dripped into long tubing connected to the intrusive catheter in my chest. The second hand on the clocked ticked towards 1:00 pm. After four hours, the morning treatment was complete.

But the evening treatment would begin at 5:00 pm. Right when I started feeling like I might survive, the next bottle of rusty colored medicine would hang and begin dripping for hours of infiltration into my blood stream.

“It’s like pouring gasoline into your veins,” Dr. Nogle stated after a nurse rushed to rinse her hands at the sink. A few drops of chemo had splattered on top of her left hand and immediately singed her skin, leaving red blisters behind. I witnessed the burn. That’s going into my veins. How can they do this? Isn’t it burning me up inside?

Four months prior, I survived a dangerous heart transplant resulting from countless heart attacks, 30 angioplasties, an experimental thoracotomy, double bypass, open heart surgery, and dying twice in the ER. All this occurred like an ambush on my health in less than three years with no plausible reason for heart disease. The donor heart I received came a day after Dr. Nogle told me there was no hope. But this heart only became available because no other surgeon wanted to risk transplanting it. It needed extensive repair and came with a viral type cancer.

The cancer manifested four months later and after conventional chemo failed, a stronger, more lethal one had to be used. The doctors in my home town hospital exclaimed how that hadn’t used it in 20 years and it took that patient a year to recover from three weeks of treatment. I would have to endure 60 days of two treatments a day, seven days a week in an isolation room at the hospital. When I was released, a regimen of six months, everyday of the week, with home nursing care continued.

I lost most of my hair. Early on I prayed, “Lord, please don’t let me lose all my hair and be a pudgy Italian with a turban.” He extended grace to me. >smile<>

But I survived and recovered well. I kept my sense of humor and my hair grew back as curly and thick as it was before. Today, I do everything I can to avoid a recurrence. The virus that brought on this cancerous malignancy is permanent.

I am grateful for Cec’s book, When Someone You Love Has Cancer. I wish the people around me had read it when I was in need of care. He writes about the absolute needs instead of the perceived needs people conjure up. It’s like tradition to make meals or send flowers. When those gifts arrive for someone and their family suffering with cancer, their hearts sigh with disappointment. Read Cec’s book. He offers the practical gifts of true ministering when someone you know has cancer.

Has cancer attacked your life? Then keep your attitude on “…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8 NIV)

By Cindy Valenti-Scinto, author, A Heart Like Mine, Finding God’s Will for Your Life, book one of the Heart Like Mine Trilogy, with book two, A Heart Like Yours, Understanding God’s Will for Your Life, to release later in 2011.

Online:

http://www.aheartlikemine.com/
http://www.cindyscinto.com/
http://cindyscinto.blogspot.com/

Find Cindy’s book at: https://www.winepressbooks.com/product.asp?pid=2751&search=a+heart+like+mine&select=Keywords&ss=1

Also available as an e-book compatible with all e-book readers.