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Community Corner

Survivor Uses Foundation to Help Colon Cancer Patients

Texas Hold-Em poker tournament Saturday is a fund-raiser.

Tammy Figg of St. Peters was 27 years old and six weeks away from getting married when the symptoms she thought were just hemorrhoids became too emphatic to ignore any longer.

She had lost some weight, but thought it was from exercising. She was tired all the time, but felt that was probably from working three jobs. But when the abdominal pain and rectal bleeding didn’t go away, Figg knew it was time to go to the emergency room at in St. Peters.

"The physicians there said ‘You are bleeding internally. We don’t really know from where, but you’ll get a colonoscopy tomorrow.’ I remember thinking to myself, ‘I don’t even know what that is,’" she said.

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The doctor who performed the colonoscopy asked Figg if her family was present.

"I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s surely not gonna show my family this hemorrhoid.’ That’s all I kept thinking to myself," she said. "He was like, ‘I’m gonna go get your family, all right?’ He got my family and he basically said, ‘I’m not a cancer doctor, but I will tell you that, in my profession, what this is, is cancer. And you need to get down to (Barnes-Jewish in St. Louis) tomorrow. Not three weeks from tomorrow – tomorrow.’ I remember walking out of there going, ‘He’s probably wrong – there’s no way.’ I’d just never heard of that (in a person so young). We had no family history of that kind of thing."

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While Figg was seeing one physician, her fiancé at the time, Bryan Figg, got the biopsy results from another doctor.

"When (Bryan) walked in, I kind of knew, because he was white in the face. I said, ‘What did he say?’ He said, ‘You have cancer.’ I just said, ‘What? Nooo.’ At that moment, I said, ‘Well, I’m getting married in six weeks. How’s that going to work out?’ Laughing, she added, "I remember that phrase coming out of my mouth."

It wasn’t all she was thinking.

"At that moment my world seemed to stop, my heart fell to the floor, and the thought of death came into my head," she said on her Figg Tree Foundation web site. "Bryan was speechless and motionless, like a deer in headlights. Here we were, about to get married, all of our hopes and dreams in our heads and then this."

She went home to consider the options, and Bryan said, "You gotta get this out of your body."

Neither of them considered postponing the wedding.

I just thought, ‘That’s the one thing I can control, is when I get married.’ Everything else is spiraling out of control, and all these decisions are coming at me," she said. "I just thought, ‘There’s no way I’m postponing it. If I have to be in a wheelchair – whatever.’ Initially, I don’t know that I had a lot of time to be scared, quite frankly, because all I kept thinking in my mind, and maybe it was a blessing, was I had a day to look forward to."

She had surgery on August 7, 2002. The infected part of the rectum was removed, but the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes, which meant chemotherapy and radiation treatment would be necessary.

The Figgs were married on Sept. 7, 2002, and immediately began looking into harvesting eggs for in vitro fertilization (IVF) to have a child, a process that would have to be done before the cancer treatments started.

Figg’s ovaries had been moved during surgery, making them inaccessible for harvesting. But in what she calls a "miracle," a CT scan done three days before the start of chemotherapy revealed one of the ovaries had moved back into a position where the eggs could be harvested. The fertility doctor was able to get 12 embryos. After a difficult pregnancy during which Figg was hospitalized nine times, Ayden Michael Figg was born Sept. 28, 2005. Ayden is now 5 and has an adopted sister, Makena, who is 2.

Their "wonderful little miracle" would not have been possible without the generous support of friends and co-workers, who started a foundation and organized a benefit dinner to raise money to help defray the cost of the expensive IVF procedure.

Insurance did not cover the IVF, so without the $15,000 raised by the benefit, the $24,000 total cost would have been prohibitive. After this incredible experience, the Figgs decided to change the Figg Tree Foundation’s mission in order to help colon cancer patients.

"I just thought to myself, ‘What if there are other people doing that? What if other people are making very poor decisions (based) on finances? What if someone says they can’t go to treatment and they need it, and they decide they’re not going to get it anymore because they can’t afford their $500 co-pay?’ That’s just not right."

After Figg recovered, she took over the Foundation and changed the mission.

"I think we have something bigger than us, that we have an opportunity to impact people," she said. "There are not a lot of resources out there for colon cancer. It would be a real impact if we could help patients going through (colon cancer), the second leading cancer killer in America."

Since taking over the Foundation, $140,000 has been raised to support colon cancer patients, Figg said. The Foundation has distributed $99,000 in grant money and has also established "entertainment centers" at several local hospitals where patients and their families can watch movies, listen to music and relax during treatment.

The Foundation organizes fund-raisers throughout the year, including a Texas Hold-Em Poker Tournament to be held starting at 5 p.m. Saturday at the Grand Opera House Banquet Center in St. Charles.

Part of the Foundation’s goal is to increase awareness about colon cancer.

"You don’t hear much about it," Figg said of colon cancer. "Our slogan is ‘Get Your Rear in the Clear.’ We want to make it comfortable. People are always embarrassed to talk about that. It’s so curable, and preventable, if people just go and get the screening."

They should also watch out for the symptoms of colon cancer, which include rectal bleeding, abdominal pain, sudden weight loss, change of bowel habits and extreme fatigue. Figg, now 36 and in remission, gets a yearly colonoscopy and has "a clean bill of health" except for colitis issues.

Figg’s experience as a colon cancer patient, plus her job working for an insurance company, has given her the experience to expertly guide patients through uncharted waters when they apply for a Foundation grant.

"When we take on their case, we take on the whole case," she said. "We work the case from start to finish – we set up their appointments. All they have to do is show up, and that’s how we want to make it for them. They supply us with their financial data. If they have insurance, we just take on whatever the insurance doesn’t pay, (like) iIf they couldn’t afford their co-pay, or they have a high deductible."

Patients are appreciative of the help.

"They’re very grateful," Figg said. "We get thank you notes. I always tell patients that’s not necessary. To me, sometimes God gives you a mission in life, and I think that’s what this is for me. I do it because I love it, and I have a passion behind it. And it means more. I’m able to therapeutically put into perspective what happened to me through helping others."

Currently, there is more need than there is money available to help.

"We have about 175 patients on the waiting list," Figg said. "There are days when I feel really defeated because I can’t help them all at one time. But I just have to keep it in perspective that it’s one patient, that I’m helping one family at a time."

Registration for the poker tournament starts at 3:30 p.m. Saturday at the Grand Opera House Banquet Center, 311 North Main Street, St. Charles.

For more information about the tournament or the Figg Tree Foundation, call 636-240-5949 or contact the Foundation via email.

A registration form for the poker tournament also is available.

Benefits from the poker tournament, which raised $7,500 last year, will go to fund grants and help patients.

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