Deena Coplin

A few people have told me about this website over the past few weeks. Before now I never started one for myself because I didn't want to bring on more attention. 

Laying here tonight with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company, I decided that this may be a good idea. A way for me to communicate with my closest friends and family. Sometimes I don't want to have long conversations about how I'm feeling. Most of the time I don't feel like repeating the latest news over and over again. So here is a good way to keep you all updated.

Hopefully it will become a therapeutic tool for myself as well. 



Earlier this year I felt like I had a bruise on my right shin, but couldn't see an actual black and blue mark. I ignored it and thought I simply hit my leg on something. This tenderness never went away, but I continued to ignore it. In June I participated in a team building exercise at work. During this exercise we were running down a hallway. Afterwards I had horrible pains going down my right shin and decided to go to a emergency walk in clinic. The doctor there told me I had a shin splint, wrote out a script for pain medications and sent me on my way. I had a feeling it wasn't a shin splint, but at that point I didn't care. I just wanted to pain to stop. Eventually the pain did stop, but then the swelling appeared. After some urging from family I went to see a orthopedic doctor who did a x-ray. Originally we thought it was a bone cyst. Something easy to treat. No big deal! To be certain he did an MRI. That's when the doctor saw something bigger than a simple bone cyst. I was sent to a doctor at Yale New Haven Hospital. After doing some research I quickly discovered that I was going to see a orthopedic oncologist. Why was I going to see a cancer doctor? Why would they think I had cancer? Well 2 biopsies later it was confirmed that I have stage 2 Malignant Fibros Histiocytoma of the Bone. Easier put, I have bone cancer. I remember laying on the stretcher after the 2nd biopsy, listening to the doctor tell me he believed it was not the "Giant Cell Tumor" he originally thought it was, but that it was a sarcoma. That was the first cancer word I had ever heard that had anything to do with me. Sarcoma. Even saying it now sounds strange and unreal. After that moment my life took a sharp turn down a road that I, nor my family, ever thought we would have to travel. After all, things like this always happens to other people.