It was December 2018. Amy Kerschbaum, Wheelhouse’s Director of Business Development & Cancer Coaching Program Director, was doing what she loved doing: shopping. While wandering the aisles of Costco, fatigue overwhelmed her.
“I almost felt like I had to crawl out of there,” Amy says as she remembers the feeling when she was only halfway through the store. She told her husband that she needed to sit down. They were both alarmed by the fatigue while doing something the couple routinely enjoyed together.
A few weeks after experiencing this unusual fatigue, Amy started experiencing bleeding that became more persistent. At the time, Amy worked at a hospital and some of the doctors were her friends. She called her gynecologist who came into the hospital on her day off (not a good sign, Amy added) to do a uterine biopsy.
An Answer for the Symptoms
Two days after the biopsy, her gynecologist gave her a word for the unexplained fatigue and bleeding: carcinosarcoma. Carcinosarcoma is a blend of carcinomas and sarcomas. A tumor was growing on the outside of her uterus.
“My reaction was shock and ‘How do you spell it?’” Amy recalls. “I think this is true of all cancers. Intuitively, you know they’re dangerous, and you know, cancer’s life-threatening, but until you hear the words ‘You have cancer,’ you don’t realize how dangerous and frightening it really is.”
While sarcomas can grow in a lot of places in the body because they originate from bones and soft tissue, Amy’s diagnosis was very rare. She did not have the risks and predispositions associated with sarcomas, either. “It’s still a mystery,” Amy says.
After removing Amy’s tumor, it was sent to the University of Michigan, the Cleveland Clinic, and the Mayo Clinic. Her tumor board evaluated the extent of her cancer and developed a care plan to treat this aggressive cancer.
Amy received intense chemotherapy and radiation therapy. It made her very ill and it was extremely difficult. “On the other side of the coin, I’m sitting here today alive, which is, you know, what the whole goal of it was,” Amy says.
What about Wheelhouse?
What Amy thinks about often is how her experience working in healthcare for close to 40 years helped her to navigate herself through the hoops of diagnosis, treatment, and recovery from her carcinosarcoma diagnosis.
“This was the beginning of my recognition that people can’t navigate themselves in this highly complex system,” Amy says, “because I could barely do it and I knew everybody.”
When Amy returned to her position at the hospital, coworkers came to her with questions about how she navigated cancer and her experience in the workplace. They were lost in knowing what to do with work while walking through the cancer journey and struggling with getting the time off they needed for follow-up appointments.
From her own experience and in witnessing her coworkers’ experiences, Amy sees Wheelhouse working alongside human resource professionals to help employees rediscover who they are as cancer survivors. Developing return-to-work plans is a benefit for the employer and the employee to find the best value for each other.
Amy’s Message: Pay Attention to Your Body
“It would have been easy for me to say, ‘Oh, wait a month and see what happens,” says Amy about responding to the unusual symptoms she experienced with fatigue, bleeding, and minor pain associated with her carcinosarcoma diagnosis.
“If you’re experiencing something that is unusual – if you feel a new lump, if you are bleeding like I was, if you have some pain that’s persistent and it never goes away – don’t ignore it,” Amy shares. “Call your doctor… you could save your life by doing that and literally, paying attention to that saved my life. There’s no doubt about it. Had I waited any longer than I did, that sarcoma was growing. It’s a fast-growing, aggressive cancer. So, my message to people is to be in tune and don’t ignore oddities. It’s okay to go to the doctor.”
Whether you are a human resources professional who wants to offer solutions and a path forward for cancer patients at your company or organization, or you are a cancer survivor who wishes they had support returning to work as Amy shared in her story, Wheelhouse wants to hear your story and share how we can help. We are passionate about improving cancer patients’ lives.
