By MICHELLE FRIEDRICH
Staff Writer
Dayna Zoll Cookson is a planner, but nothing has gone as planned since she was diagnosed with uterine cancer last summer.
Doctors first told the Puxico woman her cancer was contained to her uterus. However, it somehow spread through her lymph node system into other organs, and she recently learned it's now in her brain.
The initial discovery was made in July as Cookson and her husband were pursuing fertility.
"I was having some problems, and my doctor said, 'I've got this new machine, let's get in there and take a look before we do a DNC or hysterectomy,'" explained Cookson.
After the procedure, "(the doctor) says everything looks good," said Cookson, who was told she needed to have a DNC, or removing part of the lining of the uterus.
"On Monday, (the doctor) calls me (saying), 'I need to speak with you as soon as possible,'" Cookson said. "Well, I know what that means."
Cookson said she was told she had cancer, something neither she nor her doctor expected.
"She told me it was absolutely the best kind to have, that (she) was 99.999999 percent that she could get it all," said Cookson, who had a hysterectomy.
The surgery went well, said Cookson, who was told her cancer was "stage 1, stage 2, just a small part of it (but) one of my lymph nodes looked funny."
The "weird thing," Cookson said, is her doctor told her with a stage 1/stage 2 diagnosis, "you shouldn't see it in the lymph nodes, so it didn't make sense to her."
Cookson was sent to a specialist at Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, Mo., and he told her the same thing.
"It doesn't make sense that (the cancer) would spread" outside the uterus, said Cookson, who was given a month to heal before a scan was done.
"When he came in, he said, 'I wish I was looking at someone else's scan,'" Cookson said as her voice cracked. "He said it's in your cervix, in your liver, your lungs, and it's just run up your lymph node system."
When the specialist gave her that news, "I couldn't take any more," Cookson said. "I had to read the report," something she did not do until two weeks later.
From the report, Cookson said, she learned "the spots in my lungs were too numerous to mention."
"When I came back, I told the doctor, '... just so you know, I'm going to survive this. God is going to heal me. ... I'm going to get through this,'" said Cookson, whose doctor told her he was going to "hit it" with hard-core chemotherapy.
Beginning in October, Cookson went to Saint Francis once every three weeks for her chemo.
"At first, it's not so bad," she said. "You're a little tired, but by the fifth treatment, 18 weeks, it was getting pretty rough."
Cookson had her last treatment on Feb. 28 and then had to wait a month before she could do another scan to check her progress.
On March 15, "I'm just waiting for the scan," said Cookson. "I woke up, I didn't even know my name.
" ... I mean I knew my name, but I can't say it."
Initially, Cookson said, she thought her blood sugar was low, and she was going into a diabetic coma.
"I was like this is how I'm going to die because I can't get to my husband (who) was in the garage," Cookson said. "I went to knock on the door, and I thought I was going to pass out (and) go into a coma before I can get to the orange juice."
An ambulance subsequently was called, and Cookson was taken to the hospital.
"I didn't know my name; I said was born in 1916, all kind of crazy" stuff, she said. "The doctor comes in, and he says, 'Before you came here today, did you know you had cancer?'
"I said yeah. Then he goes, 'Did you know you had it in your brain?'"
Cookson said both she and her husband, Tom, responded no.
Cookson subsequently was transferred to Saint Francis and was given steroids in an attempt to "shrink the swelling," which, she said, made it possible for her to speak again.
Without the steroids, she said, she had been unable to speak, write or text because of where the tumor was in her brain.
"Before I left (the hospital), they came in with some good news," Cookson said. "The chemo is working.
"The cancer is gone from my liver, praise God. Those numerous, numerous spots on my lungs, they are shrinking, and some of them are gone."
Cookson said her doctor, who had described the tumor on her cervix as being big, now told her "it's small."
The cancer, according to what Cookson was told, had "run up" her lymph nodes to her lungs and then entered her brain.
Why that happened, Cookson said, is something her doctor doesn't understand since the chemo worked on "one part, but not another. ... Nothing has been normal about this cancer."
Cookson spent six days in the hospital before her release on March 20, the same day as her first radiation treatment on her brain.
"I do (radiation) for 10 days, then I'm going to Texas to MD Anderson" Cancer Center in Houston, said Cookson.
"My doctor is from MD Anderson," Cookson explained. "He said, 'let's get another set of eyes on this. Let's get somebody smarter than me,' but I don't know if that's possible."
When she arrives at the cancer center on April 16, doctors will do testing, said Cookson, who expects her doctor will "biopsy something in my chest to see what we're dealing with."
Then, doctors will "come up with a gameplan," she said. "We'll see if I have to have something done down there or come up there" for further treatment.
People, she said, have asked whether she will need more surgery, chemo or radiation.
"I have no idea. We'll deal with it as it comes," said Cookson.
As for her prognosis, Cookson said, she refused to ask, but "I know I have stage 4 cancer."
Cookson said she is hanging on to the belief God is not done with her yet.
"I've heard that your attitude is everything ... I refuse to give up," she said. " ... I'm just going to keep fighting. ... It is hard some days (but) the Lord will give me strength."
According to Cookson, when she left the hospital March 20 she reminded her doctor of her earlier comments.
"I said, 'Just so you know, I'm not done yet,'" Cookson recalled. "'I'm going to survive this, and God is going to heal me.'
"The doctor said, 'Shoot, yeah. That's why we're sending you to Texas.'"
Cookson believes God has a plan for her life and further believes even her original cancer diagnosis was a "God thing."
Cookson said Dr. Carrie Carda, who did her surgery, told her she initially hadn't planned to do a biopsy as "there was no need, there was nothing in there that needed to be biopsied that (Carda) could see."
Carda, she said, told her she "biopsied this little bitty piece, and that just happened to be where" the cancer was.
"She said it's a miracle," Cookson said. "(Carda) said, 'I'm not that good. I would like to think I'm that good, but that had to be a higher power.'"
Since her diagnosis, Cookson said, she has quit her "day job" as a licensed professional counselor, but "I'm still preaching at the two churches here in town.
"I just keep praying and hoping that I can keep bringing the word and preaching for as long as I can," she said.
Cookson said she doesn't think about "the end or what is going to happen. I think about today, I think about tomorrow."
Cookson indicated she has an "incredible support system," especially her dad, Gary Zoll, and her husband.
"I'm never alone if I don't want to be," she said. "My church family, this community of Puxico, I can't tell you how much money, gifts, love, prayers that they have heaped on me."