An ovarian cancer diagnosis changes your life, Kristinna Abalos, a 30-year-old English teacher, writer, and survivor of stage 4 ovarian cancer, told Healthline.
Kristinna’s advice for getting through the process? Take it one day at a time.
“One of my great friends asked me, ‘Are you always going to describe yourself as a cancer patient?’ And I think what I learned through this is that looking at such a big time frame of ‘always’ is too much,” Kristinna said.
“I can only tell you how I feel today. Tomorrow may be different, and I think every day we wake up, we’re still just going to be at today,” she continued.
Kristinna learned that she had ovarian cancer about 4 years ago during an emergency cesarean delivery of her son, Shiloh.
The cancer had spread to other organs in her abdomen and required extensive surgery and chemotherapy to treat.
Support from loved ones helped Kristinna cope with the challenges she faced along the way.
“My whole family, they were praying for me. And you know, I come from a faithful family on both sides, my husband’s side and my family’s side. So they all prayed for me,” she recalled.
All of the survivors whom we spoke with talked about the importance of community support, as well as finding inner sources of resilience and determination.
