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Cancer and Jericho

My oncologist discussed hospice care but I still have hope

Shefali O'Hara
3 min readSep 5, 2024
A boy and his dog — original watercolor by Shefali O’Hara; to me it signifies hope and joy

As many of you may know, I am fighting cancer. I was originally diagnosed with inflammatory breast disease 20 years ago. I had a ductal carcinoma that led to a mastectomy 7 years ago, and then, 3 1/2 years ago I had metastatic cancer.

Because the metastatis showed up in my brain, liver, and lungs, the prognosis was dim. The surgeon who removed the lemon sized tumor from my brain gave me 6 months to live, with the last couple of months in hospice care.

Yet I’m still around.

Unfortunately I was recently getting really bad headaches. I also had what felt like a stroke 3 weeks ago while at Texas Oncology having a routine blood draw and visit with my nurse. I ended up in the ER.

It wasn’t a stroke (they did an EKG); however bloodwork revealed I was very dehydrated and I also had an edema in my brain according to a CT scan.

When I met with my oncologist after having an MRI of my brain, it was not a happy time.

She was concerned cancer was back in my brain. In addition, an earlier PET scan had revealed that the cancer was growing again in my lymph nodes. But my body was no longer responding to the chemo I was on. My options, after dealing with my brain, would be to…

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Shefali O'Hara
Shefali O'Hara

Written by Shefali O'Hara

Cancer survivor, Christian, writer, engineer. BSEE from MIT, MSEE, and MA in history. Love nature, animals, books, art, and interesting discussions.

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