EDITOR’S NOTE: The following story is the first in a series on those affected by cancer, including survivors and those the Clarendon County community have lost to its various forms. The stories will be featured weekly leading up to Clarendon County Relay for Life 2016, which will be held 6 p.m. to midnight May 6 at Manning High School’s Ramsey Stadium. Kick-off for Relay will be held 6-8 p.m. Jan. 28 at the Cypress Center.
Kerrie Cribb spends each day “getting from minute to minute, sometimes second to second.”
“I try to just focus on the moment, and try to be in the present,” said Cribb, who was diagnosed in May 2015 with a rare and aggressive form of cervical cancer, specifically small-cell neuro-endocrine cancer.
“It’s less than 1 percent of all cervical cancer diagnoses,” Cribb said of the rare illness. “It’s very rare and very aggressive, and it has been devastating on me and my family in the last year.”
Cribb was working as an ER nurse at Palmetto Health Tuomey in Sumter last year when she noticed she was “bleeding and having a lot of back pain.”
Her brother, Kevin, had barely survived a wreck in January 2015; he was relearning basic functions and still resides most days in an assisted-living facility while he continues to recover.
“I didn’t think too much of the pain, because I was worried about my brother and was still trying to work,” Cribb said. “But the bleeding kept getting worse, and I knew I had to go to the doctor.”
Cribb saw her gynecologist; tests found something “abnormal,” and she was referred to specialists in Columbia.
Cribb’s first line of treatment involved two “very powerful chemotherapy drugs,” she said. “I went through four rounds of that,” she said of Cisplatin and Etopiside. “It was awful. I couldn’t even lift my head off the pillow.”
A walk to the bathroom was “the challenge of a lifetime,” Cribb said.
“That’s how much chemotherapy took out of me,” she said. “It hurt me worse than it helped the tumor. It didn’t work nearly as well as they planned.”
Cribb’s tumor was 6 centimeters when she was diagnosed. The four rounds of heavy chemotherapy drugs reduced it only by a half-centimeter.
“So, then they started me on a low dose of Cisplatin while I was also undergoing radiation,” Cribb said. “I was doing radiation every day and chemotherapy like once a week.”
That six-week treatment ended fairly recently, Cribb said.
“The radiation actually worked and shrank the tumor down to pretty much nothing,” Cribb said. “That was good news.”
Doctors advised a full hysterectomy, and Cribb went for a scan last week to confirm that the cancer had not spread anywhere. She wrote a letter in The Manning Times to thank the community for its support, outlining her hopeful outlook.
“They wanted to go ahead and do the hysterectomy since they didn’t think it had spread anywhere else, and then I would pretty much be cancer-free,” Cribb said. “I was already preparing for the surgery. I was ready for it. It was a big deal, but I was ready for it.”
But the scan showed the cancer had spread to Cribb’s liver and both of her lungs.
“They found multiple tumors all over,” she said. “The news was devastating.”
Cribb started talks with a physician in Texas, where she planned to fly to receive what she was told would be life-saving treatment.
“But because of insurance problems, I was unable to do that,” she said. Instead, she was told that a down payment of $27,000 would be needed before she could even step foot in the clinic.
“So the doctor from Texas, he’s been talking to me on the phone, and he’s said I can be treated in Columbia still, and he’s going to work with my doctors to make it work,” Cribb said.
They’re going to give Cribb what she called a “Texas cocktail,” three strong chemotherapy drugs that have had some success with the Texas doctor in which Cribb has put her hopes and faith.
“I couldn’t even tell you the names off the top of my head, but it has worked for people in my situation,” Cribb said. “This doctor specializes in this rare form of cancer. That’s why I reached out to him.”
The one thing that cannot be done in South Carolina is “molecular testing,” or targeted cancer therapy, and friends and family are hopeful that fundraising will allow Cribb to eventually get to Texas for that treatment.
They have set up a page at www.gofundme.com/kerriestrong2 to help in that quest.
“Everyone’s support has just meant so much to me,” Cribb said. “That was set up by some of my best friends. Everyone has just been so great.”
Cribb said she’s still in “total shock” after finding out her cancer has spread.
“We were all, including myself, my family, the community, we were all hoping and expecting good results,” she said. “Although I’m still in shock and can’t believe it, and I’m still frustrated, angry and let down, I’ve got to keep going. I do not give up. I keep God by my side. With all the support I’ve received, it’s amazing.”
“I know that everyone is in this fight with me,” she said.
