Taking the reins Amber Dillard

After an unexpected diagnosis, support and a positive attitude got Amber Dillard through cancer treatment.

Last year, Amber Dillard was trying to find the source of severe back pain. She sought help from a chiropractor and visited a urologist, thinking a urinary tract infection could be causing the discomfort. To add to the confusion, she was suddenly unable to have a bowel movement for several days. After her primary care physician ordered diagnostic tests including an MRI and a colonoscopy, she learned that she had a tumor in her large intestine.

“I was completely in shock,” the Visalia resident says. “There is no history of cancer in my family, so I really didn’t think it would happen to me.”

Dillard’s care team recommended that she speak to Adventist Health general surgeon Kyle Ota, MD. Luckily, he was visiting patients in the hospital the day she got the news, and Dillard requested a consultation. “He was really on top of things,” she recalls. “He said, ‘I have a cancellation in three days. Let’s do surgery and try to take it out then.’”

Dillard says that support from her care team and her family got her through nine months of rigorous cancer treatment and multiple surgeries.

One step at a time

During Dillard’s first operation, Dr. Ota had hoped to remove the tumor, but he discovered that the cancer had spread to several neighboring organs. Before it could be fully removed, Dillard would need to undergo a course of chemotherapy to shrink the tumors. Four months later, Dr. Ota and urologist Joseph Ford, DO, did a joint procedure to remove the cancer in Dillard’s large and small intestines and her uterus.

“When you’ve been healthy your whole life, to suddenly be taken down and need so much medical treatment is hard to handle,” says Dillard, who was 45 at the time of her treatment. “But I had this nurse who told me to just focus on one thing at a time. She’d say, ‘You got through that, so what’s next?’ I tried not to get too worried about what was going to happen — I just got through each moment.”

Positively better

Dillard is now cancer free and says she has a lot of people to thank for that. “I know not everyone survives,” she says. “I was lucky — I had the right doctors, the right support system and the right outlook.”

Dr. Ota recommended walking, so Dillard and her husband went out regularly, even if their strolls were short and slow on days she wasn’t feeling well. And now that she’s in good health, she is back in the saddle — literally. “We own four horses, and when I got the go-ahead to ride, we went camping and I trail rode three days in a row,” she says. “It felt so good to be back to normal.”

Dillard says she is aware that the cancer could return, so she’s being screened often — and she refuses to stress about it. “I just take it one day at a time,” she says. “None of us are guaranteed tomorrow, so I’m going to live for today.”

Stay ahead of colorectal cancer

The third most common non-skin cancer among men and women in the United States, colorectal cancer is highly survivable when it is detected early, before the cancer has spread. Routine screening is a vital component to fighting this disease. Here’s what you need to know:

• People with average risk should be screened beginning at age 45.
• People with higher risk, including family or personal history of cancer, may need to be screened earlier or more often.
• Screening options include a stool-based DNA test or a colonoscopy, in which a physician uses a camera to examine the colon.