Patient Stories

Live with Sinus Cancer - Lymphoma

11 July 2011

Even telling her story now still brings tears to my eyes, because Catherine was such a beautiful person. It has been more than 10 years now since she passed away from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, but the memory remains the same. And it did not start with that form of cancer either.

The first signs of health problems came about in 1980, during a time that she had two young children. Catherine complained of headaches and changes in her forehead, but the doctors seemed to brush it off as changes she was going through. I remember Catherine getting upset, because the doctors just were not getting it.

Eventually, Catherine went in for a biopsy, where the doctors made a small incision right above her eyebrow; however, once inside, they closed up the incision fairly quickly and told her to get to the hospital immediately because what they saw was the bone deteriorating. It turns out that deterioration was a very rare form of cancer in the upper sinuses and what it does is eat away the bone, leaving damage. Catherine was lucky nonetheless, because even though it was quite a procedure she went through, the doctors were able to take all the bone out, rid her of cancer, and make an eventual permanent prosthesis of the sinus bone area. Those doctors did such a good job, you would have never known she had a prosthesis because she never lost any of her beauty.

After that, Catherine was in remission for 13 years. She started her own business counseling the elderly, she volunteered for the American Cancer Society, and she raised her children with love and compassion; she was something, all right. It wasn't until those 13 fateful years later that cancer hit her again, and this time with a vengeance, in the form of non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma.

From there she endured doses of chemotherapy and radiation treatments; you could not believe what she went through. Catherine was in and out of the hospital, but even through it all, her tough persona never complained or let the pain show to her five children, because to them, their mother was everything. But her luck faded fast, and in 1998, at age 61, she passed away.

I would tell others do not give up, keep up the fight, because Catherine was in remission for 13 years; that is a very long time and that makes it hard, but it also makes it better too.

Today, Catherine would be 73 years old. At the time of her illness, I remember her telling me that she just wanted to live long enough to see her youngest son get his driver's license, and she did.

Source/Publication: Patientstories.com

Catherine Bear's husband