Genny Esterhuizen

I gave recognition to an amazing cancer survivor in Middelburg when I did my show for Middelburg Hospice in September - 450 women supported this cause - and we recognized this strong little lady who just won't give up fighting the cancer attacks in her life. She is such an example to so many.
Here she shares her situation in her life and her truths with us in her own words:

Hi, I'm Ginevra - or for short Genny - and this is my cancer survival story.

I've always been the one in a thousand or ten thousand to be diagnosed with a specific ailment. I had three holes in my right eardrum and now I don't even have an eardrum any more - after receiving grommets and two ear operations, I was told that I'm one in a thousand that will never get cured.

Now when I go through chemo - I become deafer and can hardly hear when people talk to me.

My thyroid was removed and only have 12% on my vocal chords as the goitre on my thyroid was bleeding and had an abscess the size of a tennisball. I had lumps under my right arm and left ear that was removed, but was benign - in December 1999.

In April 2003, I was in a horse riding accident, where the horse threw me off. After getting pains in my left leg, the doctors diagnosed it as either bladder infection or inflammation of the joints, and I was on antibiotics, voltaren injections and cortisone for almost two years. The gynecologist wanted to redo the sterilization, as he thought it caused the pain. The neurosurgeon suggested I live with the pain, until I cannot get out of bed anymore - and then to have a back operation.

I was going mad - nothing was working and the pain got worse and at night I could not sleep. I tried intense aerobics to relieve the pain, but it just got worse.

Thank God Hannes my husband got a transfer from Aggeneys where we lived for five years to Middelburg.
After arriving in Middelburg March 2005 - I went to see the the surgeon that had done my thyroid operation and was sent for a sonar to see the size of the lumps because it had to be removed. Upon looking at my groin area, they also looked at my liver, because I started complaining of chest pains, and they discovered a lump there too.

On the 11th of March, five days after my 36th birthday, I was told that I have cancer. The surgeon removed most of it, not all of it as I would have then bled to death. My left leg was paralysed from just above the knee - where they had pushed the nerve aside to remove the tumour - and is still paralysed.
I cannot run, but I can walk with God's grace. It feels like a wooden leg I'm dragging around and still sometimes pains.
The surgeon said he could not do anything more to help and that the oncologist might not be able to help me either. He phoned Hannes and said I had only 6 months to live - and it is now 4 years later.

The oncologist sent me for CT scans to determine the spread of cancer. I had stage 4 cancer - Malignant schwannoma. It was like an electric chord. The wire inside is the schwannoma and the plastic is the cancer. It is found all over the body and cannot be picked up in the blood stream as it is the colour of a see-through straw. I don't have a cancer count - it can only be picked up in scans where it has already become a tumour.

I had chemo every 3 weeks for 6 months at Middelburg Hospice and I lost my hair and my weight and was very sick. My three children and Hannes were my pillars of strength.

As the chemo pumps through your veins, it burns so I sang to God:

"Fighting soldiers of the cross - lift high your royal banner
You will not suffer loss from victory until to victory your army shall march
Till every thought is vanished and Christ is Lord indeed"

Because I believed and knew that I was already healed, as the Lord told me in two dreams, I just had to go through the process to understand to be able to help someone else.

I went through radiation 35 times and was hospitalized for a week because of dehydration and diarrhoea. I finished my treatment in October.
In May 2006 I had to go for another 10 sessions of radiation as a schwannoma had developed in my back. I developed osteoporosis as a result of the radiation and went into chemically induced menopause.

I was in remission from May 2006 to May 2009 and started to get pain in my right leg. I went earlier than my appointment in November and after having chemo the pain got worse, so I was sent for a pet scan.
With a pet scan you have to lie still for 90 min and they inject you with radiation and is more intense than the normal CT scans. They can see deeper into the nerve.
They picked up schwannomas in the right thigh and just above the right shoulder, a thumb thickness next to the neck. I was sent to a neurosurgeon and a schwannoma was found in the lower part of my spine and was touching the nerve and that was causing the pain.

I now go for chemo every four weeks at the Unita's Hospital from Monday to Thursday. It takes 5 hours for me to get the chemo every day.

While in hospital I discovered I could not see and they discovered through a MRI scan that a schwannoma had developed above the right eye near the optic nerve and they can't operate because of my immune system being weak - as the result of the chemo treatment.
They'll see if it has cleared - when the chemo treatment is done - if not - I will then have to go for radiation again.

I know that I'm in God's hands and I'm healed - I am only going through this treatment to help someone through God's grace - someone who needs reassurance, love and faith in God.
I am His instrument.
My faith grows stronger with every breath I take.

Hannes and my three children and JJ - I want to thank you for being there for me 24/7. And Mom and Antoinette who come to visit me in hospital every day from Johannesburg.

Everyone who is praying for me - may God bless you all - and thank you very much!

Genny