Ann Flintoff

Enjoying closer relationships with family, including grandson Sean and husband Michael, is the silver lining in Flintoff's survival story.

When Jacksonville, Fla., resident Ann Flintoff was told she had vaginal cancer in 1998, she thought about her 3-month-old grandson Sean and hoped she'd live long enough for him to remember her. She didn't know much about the disease and couldn't foresee the long ordeal battling this rare gynecologic cancer.

"I just thought that I would need a hysterectomy, and that would take care of it," says Flintoff. "I didn't realize it wasn't treated that way."

She and her husband, Michael, researched everything they could about the disease. Flintoff read about clinical trials that incorporated chemotherapy into treatment. When her gynecologist referred her to Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville for treatment, she asked her medical oncologist, Gerardo Colon, M.D., about research studies.

"I said, 'I want all the treatments I can get to fight this,'" she recalls. "People say, 'You're so brave to go through this.' I don't find it's bravery. It's not brave to die from cancer when you have the possibility of living."

Flintoff received six weeks of external pelvic radiation, followed by 48 hours of internal radiation delivered directly to the tumor, and chemotherapy. Her team included specialists from medical, radiation and gynecologic oncology, specialty and research nurses and pathologists.

Flintoff spends as much time as she can with grandson Sean, grateful to have the opportunity to explore exciting places together.

"You want to bring the expertise of different specialists into treatment planning, monitoring of treatment effects and managing possible complications," says Bernd-Uwe Sevin, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic gynecologic oncologist.

In 2001, three years after the intensive therapy, a scan showed that Flintoff's cancer had returned. She had a tumor that involved the wall between the vagina and bladder. Surgery was her only option. Dr. Sevin removed all of her pelvic organs in a complex surgical procedure called pelvic exenteration.

Developed in the 1940s, pelvic exenteration has become the primary means to treat advanced and recurrent gynecologic cancers. The ability to offer this extensive but potentially life saving surgery depended in part on successfully creating a urinary diversion system for the patient who no longer had a bladder.

Refinements to the procedure centered on creating an artificial, continent bladder so that patients would not need to wear an external urine collection bag. Dr. Sevin is a pioneer in this area. The surgical technique he helped develop, called the Miami pouch, is widely used today. The technique transforms sections of the patient's own intestine into an internal bladder she empties using a tube through her abdomen.

Three years out from her surgery, Flintoff remains cancer-free, and she volunteers with two cancer hot-line organizations.

"This woman in Kansas City had vulvar cancer," Flintoff says, recalling the first time she called a hot line to connect with another women battling cancer. "I was very, very uplifted when I spoke to her. She was a very good mentor. After all I went through, I decided that I wanted to do the same for other women."

Ann Flintoff says that many marriages break up when the woman is diagnosed with gynecologic cancer, but her disease brought her and her husband closer together.

"I'd put our relationship up against anybody's in the world," says Michael Flintoff.

Flintoff also draws strength from closeness with her two children, who've been there for her during her ordeal. And now that she's survived cancer, there's another special person in her life.

"My grandson is now 6," she says proudly. "I spend as much time with him as I can. It's just great, because he's my buddy, and he feels I'm his friend too."

(This story first appeared in the October 2004 issue of The Mayo Clinic Checkup, a complimentary newsletter available to anyone interested in the latest news from Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla.)