Cindy Glenn has been the epitome of health since she was 13 years old. She’s a woman who hikes, bikes, or runs nearly every day. In fact, the month before she was diagnosed with colon cancer, she had taken a 100-mile bike ride.

“I had gone to see my doctor for some problems in 2006,” Cindy says. “I had a colonoscopy, and was diagnosed with irritable bowl syndrome or diverticulitis.”

For a year and a half, Cindy sought the advice of naturopaths, nutritionists, and other doctors, but still her symptoms worsened. She began to experience terrible pains.

“I went to my mother’s in Washington for Thanksgiving in November 2007 and ended up going to the emergency room at Wenatchee Valley Medical Center (an SCCA Network Member) where they told me I had a perforated colon. I was 51 years old at the time. I would have died had I just driven home to Idaho. Instead, I had an emergency colostomy and was in the hospital for five days,” she says.

Diagnosed a year late

It was then that Cindy learned she had stage IV colon cancer. Her tumor had perforated and the tumor had spread significantly to the liver. Her doctor told her she had a 12 percent chance of living and Cindy told him to go away – she didn’t want to hear anything that would suggest she might not fully recover.

“I was in such denial,” Cindy says. “This couldn’t be happening to me. Then I got mad and looked for someone to blame.”

"It is important for people over 50 years of age to have a screening colonoscopy every five years,” says Dr. Edward Lin, associate professor of oncology at University of Washington School of Medicine. “However, this is not a perfect test and may, on occasion, miss an indication of cancer. But this is not a common occurrence and the importance and value of colonoscopy far outweighs the risk of not having one."

Cindy stayed with her mother in Wenatchee to recover and became depressed. She had to start chemotherapy in January and decided to start walking, “to find myself and to get myself back,” she says. “But , I was still boiling mad inside.”

Treatment to kill the cancer

With a prescription for a particular chemotherapy treatment in hand, Cindy decided to get a second opinion before she started treatment. On the recommendation of her cousin who works for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Cindy contacted Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. She saw Dr. Lin, who had a totally different idea to the approach to chemotherapy that Cindy should use.

“I saw Dr. Lin and he gave me a completely different plan of attack,” Cindy says. “And I was as able to stay with my mother in Wenatchee and receive my chemotherapy treatment there instead of Seattle.”

The first time she went to receive chemotherapy, her friend went with her and Cindy couldn’t believe that the disease she was treating was actually her own.

By February, Cindy was able to go back home to Idaho for the remainder of her treatment with Dr. Lin’s directions to the doctors there. “I immediately started to get better,” she says. Which she attributes to being home with her dogs, fresh snow, and cross country skiing everyday. “I even went skiing with my chemo-ball I had to carry around,” Cindy says.

Innovative remission treatment

She had 16 sessions of chemotherapy and went to visit Dr. Lin every two and a half months for the first two years or so. Now she sees him every four months and is currently on a maintenance therapy that Lin has had great success with.

Lin has found that in a select group of patients who have been treated with combination therapy for metastatic colon cancer, like surgery and chemotherapy in Cindy’s case, taking capecitabine and celecoxib (an arthritis medication) has lead to prolonged complete remission.

Capecitabine seems to prevent new tumors from forming and celecoxib seems to reduce at least half of the malignant polyps that start from aberrant cells. The idea is that Cindy will continue on this course of treatment for another year or two, unless she experiences side effects from the medication that would warrant otherwise. At the moment she is happy with the treatment because she is exercising without knee pain and the like, which could be attributed to the celecoxib.

“SCCA is such a positive place for treatment,” Cindy says. “There has never been a negative word spoken. Just ‘we’re going to do this and your attitude is going to help us.’”

Although health conscious before her cancer, Cindy takes special care to make sure she eats plenty of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and not as many carbohydrates. “I try to follow the five-a-day rule,” she says. She also tries to drink plenty of water and get enough sleep.

“People always want a reason or deep meaning to their cancer diagnosis, but there isn’t any. It just is and you just deal with it and find the right people to help you,” she says.

“I do have more depressed days than I used to before cancer, since I’m wearing a colostomy bag and all, but after cancer treatment, you’re reborn,” she says. “I’m not the same person I was before cancer. It gives you a swift kick in the ass.”

Despite a few side effects from her maintenance treatment to keep cancer at bay, Cindy is extremely active and spends hours every day outside hiking the hills around her home in Sun Valley, with her dogs and healing fresh air. Sometime in 2009, Cindy will have a resection of her colon at UW Medical Center and will no longer need to wear a colostomy bag. She just has to find a six-week section of time where she thinks she can be still to recover—which is hard for this otherwise healthy woman to come by, cancer or not.