Tamar Burris was getting tired of friends asking her if she was pregnant. Especially since the answer was repeatedly “no”. Months of extreme bloating and sporadic pain in her lower abdomen told her that something was wrong, but fears of getting dreadful news about the cause of her symptoms kept Tamar from going to the doctor.
Eventually, Tamar became nauseated and unable to eat. Finally, she was writhing in pain and no longer able to postpone medical attention. A trip to urgent care yielded a painful exam, misdiagnosis of severe constipation, and a prescription for laxatives. Two days later, unexplained bleeding drove her to another doctor. This time, she was given the new misdiagnosis of miscarriage and was referred for an ultrasound.
Hours after the ultrasound, the phone rang and Tamar received the news that she had a tumor the size of a nalgene bottle on her ovary. It was likely to be cancerous and she was encouraged to get it removed as quickly as possible or, the doctor dryly said, she “would die”.
Tamar, a freelance writer, and her husband were living in Montana, a state that had no practicing gynecological oncologists. Tamar called her parents to give them the unbearable news that their 31 year old daughter had cancer and then packed her bags and headed to Los Angeles to stay with them while awaiting surgery.
The doctor who examined her in L.A. was unexpectedly confident that the enormous tumor was benign and let her know that she was lucky because, thanks to the impending surgery, she’d also “wind up with a tummy tuck”. At this point, Tamar remembers feeling “terrified and kind of in shock.” Now, though she was likely cancer-free, she still faced major surgery. Tamar had never had surgery of any kind and almost exclusively relied on holistic health care, so her sudden immersion in an unfamiliar medical world was uncomfortable.
“These visits were exhausting for her as doctor after doctor continued to try to convince her, and her worried mother, that she was sure to die without chemo and radiation.”
During her two weeks of waiting for the surgery, Tamar told no one about what she was going through because, as she says, “I didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.” “When it came time for surgery, it was the scariest moment. I had to put the hospital gown on and those varicose vein tights so you don’t get an embolism. Then I had to sit and wait behind a curtain by myself and that’s when it hit me… that’s when I lost it. I started bawling and thought, what is happening to me? I felt completely vulnerable,” she says. After some moments of comfort with her husband, Tamar was wheeled alone into the operating room by strangers who laughed and asked her what kind of music she wanted during the surgery. She began to answer as they started anesthesia and then next thing she remembers is waking up under the bright glare of big ceiling light with one less ovary and fallopian tube. For hours, she lay there feeling groggy and restless in the company of other half-conscious gurney-bound patients in the kind of reverse morgue of the post-op recovery room.
At some point during her two-day stay in the hospital after the surgery, she was given the news that the tumor was cancerous and highly invasive. Tamar, age 31, was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer.
The recommended course of treatment for her was intensive chemotherapy and radiation. “That’s when I said wait, it just doesn’t feel right. Up until then, I felt good about the surgery – I just wanted it out… I refused chemotherapy immediately… It was the strongest feeling I’d ever had about myself – that it was poison and I couldn’t put it in my body,” she explains. Because her tumor was completely encapsulated in healthy tissue, Tamar felt that her situation was unique.
Her unexpected departure from the prescribed trajectory of cancer treatment created an uproar both at the hospital and at home. “That’s when my doctor started turning up the heat and talking to my parents… he started saying stuff to my mom like if it were his daughter there was no way in hell he would let her refuse treatment. He told them I was offering up a death sentence for myself. My mom was freaking out. She was trying so hard to support me but she was terrified. We were having so many conversations about it. I was so tired and sore,” she recalls.
Not long after returning home from the hospital, Tamar was shuffling around and saw “ a brown liquid on the floor and I looked and saw blood dripping from the staples. There was a hole. I had an abscess.” This complication required daily cleaning and dressing of the wound and, due to insurance restrictions, an extended stay in Los Angeles when all Tamar wanted was to get back home to Montana. Her husband had to return to Bozeman for work and to care for their young Newfoundland puppy.
Tamar felt strongly that she needed to see her primary care provider, a holistic health practitioner she had trusted for many years. “He was the only person in the health care world who was on my side,” says Tamar. She desperately wanted a visit with him to get support for her decision and to work on healing from the surgery and the tumor. He was two hours away by car but Tamar was unable to drive with her festering abscess. This was a breaking point for her. Wanting to help, Tamar’s mother drove her to Santa Barbara for an appointment which focused on flushing out her system, therapeutic treatment for her scar, holistic healing from the trauma.
Back in L.A., Tamar faced weekly medical visits to check on her progress. These visits were exhausting for her as doctor after doctor continued to try to convince her, and her worried mother, that she was sure to die without chemo and radiation. Eventually, Tamar asked her mother to stay in the waiting room during these visits to avoid exacerbating her fears with the repeated messages from the doctors about malignancy and death.
9 months into what was supposed to be 2 years of regularly scheduled, cancer check-ups, Tamar stopped going. “Every time I went to that office I came into this place that was cancer. Every time, I got the same lecture about how I was going to die and it just wasn’t healthy….I realized I was putting myself into this place of death every time,” says Tamar.
After months of limbo in Los Angeles, Tamar was able to return home to Montana to heal and regroup. “I thought it would be a big change for me and this should be second life and I should be different… but I just kind of went back to being a normal person.”
She does not use the term remission when she talks about her experience. Clarifying why the idea of remission doesn’t fit for her, Tamar feels it implies that “you are just waiting for it to come back… like no one is ever really free of cancer…I just don’t feel like that is right for me.”
“I am not a cancer survivor,” states a healthy and cancer free Tamar. It has now been three years since the tumor was removed. Recently, she has found herself saying that she “had ovarian cancer” for the first time. “I guess I feel ok now. I feel healthy and healed and it’s an ok thing for me to say now. I feel almost proud that I’ve had some things happen to me and I’m fine,” she reflects.
Her courageous decision to diverge from the mainstream approach to her tumor was the right choice for her. Tamar is quick to remind that her situation was unique that her path would not necessarily be ideal for other women. Tamar encourages others facing cancer not to be “complacent… it’s your life and your body” and to do what is “right for you.”
Thank you Tamar, for sharing your Story with us!
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