Throughout Anita Robinson’s entire life, she always suffered during her menstrual cycle. Then, at age 15, an ovarian cyst the size of a grapefruit burst inside of her body— and this was only the beginning of her journey to an ovarian cancer diagnosis.
After her first child was born, she was diagnosed—and then undiagnosed—with endometriosis, by two different doctors. Despite getting regular PAP smears and multiple different medicines and tests, no one could ever tell her what was going on.
She couldn’t take the pain any longer, and on her son’s 21st birthday, she finally went to a doctor’s appointment that she had planned to cancel. She knew she was sick. She couldn’t even make it through a workout without being in immense abdominal pain. Her doctor felt her abdomen and knew something was wrong, but had a feeling it could be diverticulitis. She was later called and told they believed it was colon cancer. Then, five days later, Anita was finally diagnosed with Stage 3C High Grade Ovarian Cancer at age 55, 46 years after her first ovarian cyst.
“A 46-year journey that, you know, maybe could have been much shorter if someone knew what was going on,” Anita shared tearfully. Despite her regular PAP smears, there are no routine screening tests for ovarian cancer, nor are there for five of the seven types of gynecological cancers. Anita began her treatment at AdventHealth Orlando and went through 24 treatments of 4 different kinds of chemotherapy over a 35-month period; during this time, she had 2 recurrences. Unfortunately, cancer remained in 1 lymph node, so she underwent an additional 28 rounds of radiation over 5 weeks. Treatment was horrific, Anita said, but she tried to be grateful and kind every day: “I felt like I had to get through this—cancer was stealing enough. I wasn’t going to let it steal my joy.”
Despite all of this, Anita humbly shared that cancer made her learn how to love and respect her body, mind, and soul again. After nearly dying twice within the first two months of her diagnosis, she made drastic lifestyle changes: “My spiritual foundation grew, my perspective changed, and through survivorship I met the girl I lost along life’s busy path. I’ve been running my entire life, and until I stopped in my tracks with my cancer diagnosis, I forgot who that girl was—and I fell in love with that girl again. I live in gratitude for all that I have and do not focus on what I lost. That’s what I’ve learned.”
Now, 6 years out from her diagnosis— where she faced a 20% survival rate of 5 years post-diagnosis— Anita is passionate about the survivorship community and raising awareness for all types of gynecological cancers; she often found that those around her were completely unaware of gynecological cancers, let alone that there are seven different types. Anita takes part in a gynecological cancer survivorship group called ToTeally Sisters, and she hopes to be a voice of education and awareness, working to ensure that nobody has to search for answers the way she did: “If I can spare someone the suffering that I experienced and that all of us experienced, it's important to me to share my testimony.”
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