Don't ever tell me there is no hope

DALZELL — You know there’s something medically wrong with you. You haven’t been feeling well for months, yet no doctor will listen to you.

It’s not a nightmare. It happened to Barb Fulara.

Three years ago Fulara, then 49, of Dalzell just didn’t feel right. She remembers being sick on Halloween in 2003 but thought it was just a bad case of the flu. She even chalked it up as symptoms of menopause.

After a test around Christmas 2003 was negative for a urinary tract infection, she waited two months before her symptoms became too severe to ignore.

At the end of February 2004, she finally asked her husband to take her to the hospital. Though tests were done and x-rays taken, nothing was found.

By that time, Fulara was in a lot of pain and had lost a great deal of weight but was so bloated she appeared pregnant. A few days went by and again she went to the emergency room, only at a different hospital.

The same tests were done, and Fulara was discharged with a prescription for a urinary tract infection.

“I knew I didn’t have a urinary tract infection. I remember this very clearly, I was bawling when I walked out of there. I thought, ‘God, you and I both know there’s something wrong with me, and they’re not seeing it.’ And that is a scary place to be. Because you’re falling through a crack, and nobody’s listening to you,” she said.

Two more days passed before she again went to the hospital and demanded to be admitted.

“I went right up to my doctor. I said, ‘I’m sick. You know I’m sick. I don’t care what tests you have to run; I don’t care what it’s going to cost. I do not care what the insurance company tells you.’ And then I yelled at him and said, ‘Put me in this hospital and find out what’s wrong with me!’” Fulara said.

The doctor immediately admitted Fulara and began running tests. The next day a test showed her right lung was nearly collapsed from two liters of fluid pressing down on it, completely obscuring her diaphragm. Then her CT scan results came back, but Fulara’s doctor had just stepped out.

“So another doctor was doing the rounds. He sat down and put his hand on my knee, and said I shouldn’t worry about it. They were going to send me to the very best gynecological oncologist,” she said.

At the word “oncologist,” Fulara sat up straight, surprise and worry in her eyes. She had not yet been told, but she was just diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer.

The CT scan picture had, in fact, not shown much at all. Her uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries were all black with cancer.

Soon after Fulara had surgery in Peoria and her chemotherapy was arranged. She met with the doctor at a local hospital.

“This is God’s truth. This doctor was in a hurry. He took things away from me; he wouldn’t let me finish filling out the paperwork. You know when you’re signing off on chemo that’s a big legal whoha, and I’m going to read it,” Fulara said.

“He stood there and said, ‘You have ovarian cancer Stage 4. We will try to put you into remission with chemotherapy, but you have no hope of ever being cured.’ Those were his exact words to me — You have no hope,” she said.

Fulara left the hospital distraught and never returned. Instead she received a recommendation from a friend for another oncologist.

“I told him, you are to never tell me I have no hope. If I’m sitting in a chair and I’m breathing, there’s hope. I want you to be honest with me, but you are never to tell me there’s no hope because you don’t know what God’s going to do,” she said.

Three years after surviving six months of chemotherapy, Fulara is in remission.

She believes she’s here today not to complain about her mistreatment but to encourage women to stand up for themselves and strive for early diagnosis.

Fulara suggests requesting a CA 125 test be conducted by their gynecologist during their annual pap smear. A number higher than 30 can indicate the presence of ovarian cancer, though it is not full proof.

When doctors first conducted the test on Fulara, her CA 125 was more than 800.

“If you have a baseline when you have a pap test and if you see it’s rising, there should be something you need to explore. I say, give the woman the choice,” she said. “I don’t think about what could have happened. It went this way, and I’m still here.”

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