Allison’s Story: Focus on the Things You Can Do

Imag­ine one of the hap­pi­est times of your life also being the worst. For Alli­son Stults, that’s what hap­pened. In Feb­ru­ary of 2021, at 15 weeks preg­nant, she was diag­nosed with ovar­i­an cancer.

As a young mom of three, Stults and her hus­band entered 2021 with the news they were expect­ing their fourth child. In a mat­ter of weeks, their excite­ment turned to con­cern when ear­ly in her sec­ond trimester, Stults began to feel like some­thing was wrong.

“At the time I was real­ly healthy. I was run­ning ultra-marathons. I had trained for a 50-mile marathon, but only ran 30 because I was in a lot of pain and just chalked it all up to being preg­nant in my 30s,” she shared. ​“Our fourth was a sur­prise, so my oth­er chil­dren are 10, 8, and 6, so I had three by 25. I just thought being preg­nant in your 30s was hard. It was so much eas­i­er in my 20s.”

Some­thing told her what she was feel­ing was more than that and she was right. An ultra­sound showed a mass that extend­ed from her diaphragm to the bot­tom of her pelvis. She was sent to HSHS St. John’s Hos­pi­tal in Spring­field, IL, where she would under­go two surg­eries in 72 hours.

“At the time, they said there was no way it was can­cer. Even after they removed it they said there was still no way it was can­cer, but the pathol­o­gy report came back and it was can­cer,” she said. ​“They told me I was one in 10 women world­wide in 20 years to have this type of can­cer while preg­nant. It was just so rare that they couldn’t even spec­u­late the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cancer.”

Her sec­ond surgery showed the stage of her can­cer — stage 1, grade 3. If she had wait­ed, her can­cer could have pro­gressed to stage 4 in a mat­ter of weeks.

“I had a lot of ques­tions and a lot of fears. I’m’ very lucky, in the sense that they said surgery and chemo can hap­pen in the sec­ond trimester, but that’s not some­thing a baby can sur­vive in the first trimester, and in the third trimester it’s too late,” she said. ​“They said the uterus would have been too large to oper­ate and you can’t do chemo in the third trimester. So as far as being diag­nosed with the worst, I was lucky when I got diagnosed.”

After five weeks of recov­ery, Stults, at 20 weeks preg­nant, began chemother­a­py at the Quin­cy Med­ical Group (QMG) Can­cer Insti­tute. For the next sev­en weeks, she would under­go 15 chemo infusions.

“It was very dif­fi­cult. There was noth­ing relat­able because no one else was preg­nant and no one else was young. I’m glad there was not; we’re a small com­mu­ni­ty. There’s just not a large pop­u­la­tion of young adults with can­cer,” she shared. ​“Just in gen­er­al, the fears that you have to over­come when you have can­cer are dif­fer­ent than they are when you are 70 or 80.”

The ​“per­son­al, won­der­ful” rela­tion­ships she formed with the QMG team helped see her through. On April 23, 2021, she had her last treat­ment and in July of 2021, she wel­comed a healthy baby boy.

“Emo­tion­al­ly, I was dif­fer­ent with this deliv­ery than with my first three deliv­er­ies. I had a lot of fear and con­cern. Some days, those thoughts can be all-con­sum­ing, like am I going to make the five-year sur­vival rate. The emo­tion­al post-par­tum was much dif­fer­ent than my oth­er three,” she said.

Stults is doing well today and keep­ing busy with her now 10-month-old along and three old­er chil­dren. She remains under the care of QMG Med­ical Oncol­o­gist Dr. M. Amjad Ali and has a CAT lab and phys­i­cal exam every three months. Today, she is one year and one-month cancer-free.

Although she’s hap­py about this mile­stone, like oth­er can­cer sur­vivors, the emo­tion­al impact remains. Her heart goes out to oth­ers expe­ri­enc­ing their own can­cer jour­neys and she offers words of inspi­ra­tion that helped her through.

“The say­ing ​‘one day at a time’ is so true and if that’s too much, then one hour at a time or one minute at a time. Try just to take it moment by moment. A win can be just get­ting your­self there. There were some days, I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go to the place where I was diag­nosed with can­cer and have treat­ment. So there were days, I was like I just need to get there, now I need to walk through the door, and now I need to go sit in the chair. If that’s what you need to do to get through it, then just take it moment by moment,” she said.

In the QMG Can­cer Insti­tute is a wall filled with mes­sages of hope and inspi­ra­tion from patients, fam­i­ly, and friends. She added her own message.

“I wrote, ​‘There are a bil­lion things I can’t do, but a mil­lion things I can do,’” she said. ​“My advice to oth­ers is to focus on the things you can do. It’s real­ly hard to focus on all the things you used to do and now can’t. Focus on what you can do, even if it’s hard.”

On Sun­day, June 5, QMG will host ​“Hope Grows Here,” at the QMG Can­cer Insti­tute, locat­ed at 3301 Broad­way St in Quin­cy at the Quin­cy Town Cen­ter, from 1 – 3 p.m. The com­mu­ni­ty is invit­ed to hon­or local can­cer patients and sur­vivors. A short pro­gram will begin at 1:45 p.m. To learn more, click here.