jacqueline janaszak

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting.




In spring on 2016, Jackie was diagnosed with stage III 1C Endometrial Cancer.  After a full hysterectomy, triple hernia repair, clean PET scan, and 5 1/2 weeks of radiation that ended Thanksgiving week, she was ready to start the heeling process and put this chapter of her life behind her.

Unfortunately, her pain started increasing instead of going away.  She was told by her radiologist that sometimes it takes a long period of time to heel after radiation and to keep taking her meds and things would get better.  So for the months of December and January that is exactly what she did.

In February 2017,  at her follow up appointment with her Oncologist, she told them about her pain and they told her pain was not something she should still be experiencing and tests were ordered that same day. 

The results of these tests showed that there were areas in her lung and surrounding lymph nodes that were of concern and with the help of some family members and friends, Jackie soon found herself getting a 2nd opinion at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN. They agreed there was some areas of concern and they were pretty certain her cancer was back but wanted to perform a lung biopsy to confirm that diagnosis.  While this was obviously not the news any of us wanted to hear, we were relieved to finally be getting somewhere.

March 2017, we finally received a confirmed diagnosis.  Her endometrial cancer was back and had spread to lung and lymph nodes.  Unfortunately, this type of cancer, once it has spread outside the pelvic and abdominal region, is not curable.  The good news is it can be treated and hopefully will go into remission..

Wednesday, March 29, 2017 she will begin her biggest fight to date, her Chemotherapy treatments.   Jackie is so thankful to finally have a diagnosis and be moving forward with a treatment plan.  She will go in once every three weeks for a 5 hour treatment.   Once she has completed 3 sessions of Chemo, they will re-scan her to see how she is responding.    She will have at least 6 sessions of Chemo but that can change depending on how her cancer responds.  Her Oncologist team says that her type of cancer is usually very sensitive to these Chemotherapy drugs and they are very optimistic that they can get this to go into remission for a period of time.  This is definitely the goal!

Throughout this process the biggest obstacle facing Jackie is the pain she has been in and continues to deal with every single day.  This pain is debilitating and keeps her from enjoying a quality of life she should be able to have.  Doctors and the Paliative Care team at the Mayo have not been able to diagnose what is causing this pain and they have not been able to come up with any combination of medications to stop it.  It could be caused by damaged nerve endings from radiation treatments she had but they don't know for sure.  We are all hoping they can get this under control prior to her Chemo starting so all she has to focus on is this next fight she is so ready to fight!

Thank you for visiting Jackie's page.  We will keep this updated as she moves through this process.