In May of 2012, well-known radio personality Robin Quivers was out of town attending the wedding of a friend when she began experiencing feelings of extraordinary exhaustion and recalled having difficulty urinating.
“It was painful, it was scary, and it was bizarre,” the long-time co-host of The Howard Stern Show tells PEOPLE in this week’s edition of the magazine. “It was bizarre.”
Following her visit to the emergency hospital, the staff informed her that she had a lump the size of a grapefruit wedged in her pelvic region, and they advised her to consult a physician as soon as she returned home. A few days later, she traveled back to New York City to consult with a gynecologist as well as a gastroenterologist; however, the results of a series of CT scans, MRIs, and biopsies were all inconclusive.
“Nobody was able to diagnose it,” Quivers, who is now 71 years old, remembers. “They informed me, ‘We really don’t know what this is,'” We won’t be able to determine what it is without going in there and obtaining it.'”
Later, surgeons found that the tumor had been sitting on “every organ” in her pelvic region, which necessitated a full hysterectomy for the patient. According to her, “then it was hours of meticulously scraping off layers of tissue and not destroying whatever organ it had been touching,” and she claims that this process took a lot of time.
Before being diagnosed with a rare kind of stage 3C endometrial cancer, Quivers had to wait several weeks for the results of her tests and get opinions from a fresh group of medical professionals.
The American Cancer Society estimates that this year, 66,000 women in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer of the endometrium (the lining of the uterus). This makes endometrial cancer the most frequent kind of gynecological cancer in the United States.
Quivers underwent a tough treatment of radiation and chemotherapy that would continue for the next 15 months after her recuperation from surgery. She was able to draw on her close friends, such as Howard Stern, who she claims “just surrounded me and made this network to take care of me” while she was going through those difficult times. Never once was I required to make a request for anything. It was simply too much for me to handle.”
Quivers was able to complete her six-week session of radiation therapy with just a few minor challenges, and, as a result of the preventative drugs she took, her six rounds of chemotherapy went off without a hitch, with almost any adverse effects or nausea. “I was pretty tired, but I felt fine,” Quivers said of how she felt.
Surgery, radiation treatment, and chemotherapy are often used in conjunction with one another to treat endometrial cancer.
Since Quivers’ diagnosis, she has been cancer-free for almost three years. But in December of 2016, she had another recurrence. The cancer had returned to Quivers and had spread to her lymph nodes, the doctors noticed when Quivers was undergoing a regular scan. Quivers claims that it has “never been a significant problem.” “Once it has demonstrated some signs of growth, then we will need to manage that,”
According to Dr. Christina Annunziata, senior vice president of Extramural Discovery Science at the American Cancer Society, who did not treat Quivers but believes there was a greater than fifty percent probability that it would come back and most likely need chronic therapy: “Since she had stage 3, there was a greater than fifty percent chance that it would come back and most likely require chronic treatment.”
Now, Quivers receives immunotherapy treatments on an as-needed basis; yet, she does not let this setback her progress in any way.
“That’s a very hard thing to do, to describe my health these days,” she tells PEOPLE. “I just don’t know where to begin.” “When you’re going in and out of treatment, you’re always recovering and trying to get back to where you were.”
“I have no complaints. It’s been 11 years since I began dealing with this, and I’m still here,” says Quivers, who has made a number of adjustments to his lifestyle in order to make it healthier and has even begun to travel more. “I’m interested in everybody having a fuller life, having more options, and knowing what’s possible.”
