Sarcoma Patient Profile: Nada Couture

From M. D. Anderson Sarcoma: What Can You Expect, part 12
Date: February 11, 2008
Duration: 04:21

Narrator:
Nada Couture was a wife and the mother of two young children when she was diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma called carcino- sarcoma of the breast

Nada:
I bruised myself from here to there and noticed a knot in my left breast and made an appointment to see my GYN, and she did a regular annual exam and right away did a fine needle breast aspiration.

Narrator:
A week later, Nada saw a surgeon who did a core biopsy and, within a week, the pathology report came back with the diagnosis. Her life in Surfside Beach, South Carolina was uprooted, when she decided to move to Houston for life-saving treatment.

Nada:
Our children were 4 and 8 at the time, and basically I talked to them and told them ‘Mommy has cancer, and we have to find the best people that can help me, and it’s gonna be in Texas,’ and my sister came and brought her children and moved in at our home and took care of kids, and everybody’s sole goal was to keep their lives normal minus me… but I thought it was more important for me to be here with them five years from now, ten years from now that right now.

Narrator:
Nada soon began chemotherapy, but doctors were not satisfied with her initial response to the medications, so they changed her to a more potent drug combination.

Nada:
After the first four rounds of chemo we did surgery and followed that up with three more rounds of chemo and then six weeks of radiation...I had a modified semi radical where they removed my whole left breast and the 15 to 20 lymph nodes under my arms.

Doctor:
Hi, look at you!

Narrator:
Now, four months since she finished radiation therapy, Nada comes back to M. D. Anderson every two months for a check up. She has strong confidence in M. D. Anderson and her treatments here.

Nada:
I knew I was in the best capable hands…I had the top doctors, and they were wonderful at telling me straight aboard…’This is what we think we can do …can you give us a year of your life, and we’ll do our best to figure it out.'

Nada:
I just resigned myself that I was gonna fight. I was gonna do my best to get better. I just prayed to God and said, ‘Please give me the grace to deal with this, because I know my family and my friends love me immensely, and if I’m falling apart then how are they going to be able to comfort me?' I really truly believed I was just gonna do whatever I had to do to try to get better and along the way try to enjoy myself and do things and make friends and even if I had a bad prognosis what’s it gonna hurt to be happy about having today than to be depressed and sad about having today. I thought well I’m not going to give this cancer the satisfaction or taking away my happiness. There’s no reason why I can’t try to at least be happy.

Nada:
I was really excited to hear my two-month prognosis is good…I don’t have any signs of any cancer, and so I’m looking forward to planning to spend time with my family and my friends and enjoy life. I told someone they said I had a year to live last May, so I’m on borrowed time two months into it now… so I’m just gonna try to enjoy my life …before it just seemed like my life was consumed with worry and stuff, and I just really don’t worry about stuff the same way any more, because it really doesn’t matter in the face of it all. If you have faith and your family and your friends, and your life regardless if you have a million dollars or two dollars in the bank… if you have those things... that’s what matters the most. So plan to spend time with them and to see them and show them how much you care and love them.