THOMASVILLE- Thomasville local Katie Griffin said that she is finally in a good spot after years of dealing with immense stress, unemployment and a mental health crisis following a cervical cancer diagnosis. 

Griffin said that it all began in July 2020 when she underwent surgery for back pain after dealing with it for years. 

“I had a minor back surgery, laminectomy, discectomy,” she explained. “I had been in back pain for probably four years and it finally just got debilitating. I couldn’t work out anymore, I couldn’t pick up a basket of laundry without having to crawl back up.”

Going to a local surgeon, Griffin said that the procedure had gone swimmingly, but had provided little to no relief to the actual pain she felt in her back. 

“I saw a local back surgeon and had a minor thing and it went totally south, I don’t know what happened,” Griffin said. “I left the hospital good, like, no surgery pain, but I had the same back pain, it never went away. I was supposed to be relieved when I woke up; they said that nerve was relieved, but it never was.”

Three days after the surgery, she said that she couldn’t walk without a walker and started having irregular menstruation, the first signs of something more going on, according to Griffin.

“It got worse and worse, so I kept going in, complaining,” she said. “It just went bad. There was nothing else they could do for me, they said.”

In her follow ups, Griffin said that she started getting numb in her legs when she was walking, which she thought had to be nerve issues, but pap smears were difficult due to the irregular bleeding. 

According to Griffin, no answers seemed forthcoming until they found a cyst and scheduled a surgery in September 2020.

After all this time, Griffin believed they had found the answer.

“When they went into the surgery to remove the benign cyst, they realized there was cancer everywhere,” she said. 

Being referred to an oncologist in Tallahassee, Griffin said that she was unimpressed with the two-week wait she was put on and instead sent a self-referral to Mayo Clinic about what she believed to be at least stage 2 cervical cancer due to the size of the tumor after independent research.

Four days later, Griffin said that she was contacted with a message to come in the next day.

“That’s what I needed, not ‘come in two weeks, you’ll get a pap scan,’” she said. “That’s a joke, I’ve got two kids, we’re not doing that.”

By February, Griffin said that she was going through internal radiation to the destroy the cancer cells and shrink the tumors of her cervical cancer. 

“I did the brachytherapy,” she said. “It was torture, like giving birth basically once a day, once a week. It was like an 8-9 hour process, but it worked.”

Alongside her struggle with cancer, Griffin said that she began to have issues with her employment after beginning her treatment, starting with her back surgery and continuing as she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. 

“I was mid-career, I was a senior buyer for a manufacturing facility in Cairo, so I was always purchasing and buying,” she said. “I was working there, used sick time on my back surgery, but then the cancer thing happened and my friends tried to donate PTO and the company wouldn’t let it, I tried to do fundraisers and they wouldn’t let me.”

According to Griffin, after going through her treatment, she began to feel pressured by her employers to come back to work full-time, even as she worked from home while recovering, noting that radiation takes months to truly deal with cancer. Griffin said that she attempted to continue her responsibilities as much as possible during her recovery, but could feel her job being taken away from her slowly. 

“I got emails that were like, ‘when are you coming back,’ and I was like, guys, my white blood cell count is so low right now and there’s not a COVID vaccine yet? I can’t do that,” she said. “They told me the CEO is asking, and then they took my office, put me in a cubicle, and a week later I was gone.”

Griffin said that she is currently involved in legal proceedings with her previous employer over their elimination of her position and withholding of COBRA after refusing to sign an offered termination form.

“I had four different lawyer law firms that I had reached out to after I was terminated, because they said if you don’t sign the termination form, we’re not going to send you your COBRA paperwork,” she said. “And so they did not sign it and I ended up with no insurance for about 12 days and had to pay over $5000 in cash.”

Remission, Griffin said, was a very scary time, always wondering if every new lesion, no matter how benign, was a sign that it was coming back. Before she was terminated, Griffin said, she was even asked if it was going to return or not, something she wondered herself.

“I had one scare about six months before I was fired,” she said. “That’s when HR asked if it was going to come back or not.”

Dealing with unemployment and difficulty getting a full-time job after her old position was terminated in September 2021, Griffin said that she has gone through difficult times during the recovery, with mental health being a prime concern.

“Cancer is all in remission, but the recovery has been hell,” she said. “Like, it’s caused mental breakdowns, I got diagnosed as bipolar, went to Northside, and they just said I had hit my limit, I couldn’t take anymore.”

Having always been a fighter, Griffin said that she tried to keep her head up, but added that there is bittersweetness to remission, as it can be the happiest day of your life, but also the day that people around you stop caring. 

“I was just used to things being hard and having to fight for them and stuff,” she said. “But afterward, you find out that you’re in remission and it’s the happiest day of your life and then people stop caring.”

With her back pain still present during her recovery, Griffin said that her remission was going great, but that everything else had become increasingly worse until a change three months ago.

“My remission has been great, but everything has just been really, really bad,” she said. “Until three months ago when I went to an outpatient clinic at the Center for Change at Northside, and I told them what was going on.”

Properly diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, Griffin said that she began getting the proper medication and that it was like a switch had flipped in her head and she was finally able to work and smile again. 

“Within a day of being on Adderall, I could work,” she said. “Now that I took the pill, my god, I feel like I’m in remission every day, it’s incredible. I just didn’t realize how sad I was until that, because it’s been good, very great.” 

Since figuring out the source of her depressive mood, Griffin said that she has slowly been getting better and better, now dealing with the stress of her ongoing legal case and her oldest daughter graduating and leaving for college better than she could before.

“I’m stressed still, you know, my daughter is going off to college, she graduated yesterday, so she’s going off to college, but it’s just a lot,” she said. “Now that I’m not depressed anymore, and I’m normal because they brought me up with Adderall.”

Now an account manager at Pursuit Aerospace, Griffin said that she’ll soon be undergoing surgery for her back pain and hoped her story brought awareness to the struggle of those with cervical cancer and showed the impact it can have on a life even after remission and the beginning of recovery.

Additionally, she said she hopes that she can begin to take steps in raising awareness in Thomasville for the sake of those who don’t realize the possibility of them having it.

“My goal is to have teal ribbons tied around the Big Oak, teal ribbons tied around the courthouse, because teal is the color of cervical cancer and that would make people who have long periods in pain and doctors that won’t listen, go get a pap scan and live,” she said.