MOULTRIE — Cynthia Hernandez, who has been “formally in remission” since August of 2008, believes that cancer survivors could give valuable tips to other cancer patients.

She said she would really like individuals to talk about, publicly, how they managed the system so that cancer patients who are currently in treatment can benefit from their knowledge.

“You really do need someone who is going to be your champion throughout this,” she said.

Hernandez said she found out six months into treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma that her insurance company had someone who could help her. The company had a “cancer care specialist” who helped her navigate and arrange things, she said.

“The bigger hospitals do have resources, too. ... People might not think they need a social worker but they do,” she added.

Hernandez was diagnosed with the disease on July 7, 2006. She said the only symptoms she had was that she was more tired than usual and then she noticed a hard point in her abdomen. She works at the Ellenton Clinic and told one of the nurse practitioners about the hard knot and let her feel it. At this point, her co-worker told her that she was taking her to the hospital because they thought it might be an aneurysm. When a CAT scan was done, it was discovered that it was a tumor that was bigger than a football, said Hernandez. It was wrapped around her aorta, adrenal gland and lymph gland, among other things. She was told that surgery was not an option and after a biopsy, she was told she was in the third stage of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“I remember asking the doctor how many stages there were and he told me four,” she said.

She said, basically, when she reached the fourth stage, she was told she would die.

It was affecting her liver, she said, but the interesting thing was that all of her blood-work would come back normal. She said she wanted people to realize that they can’t always rely on one diagnostic tool.

She took chemotherapy from July through December and, in January, her cancer care specialist sent her to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, where she had two weeks of tests and then was given recommendations on a plan of care.

“And the plan of care included a stem cell transplant,” she said.

She said on March 1, 2007, she went to the Emory Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta, Ga. and took another round of chemotherapy through July. She said at the end of that time, they harvested her stem cells.

“And on July 17, I got my stem cells back,” she said.

She said it looked like they were giving her a blood transfusion when they reintroduced the stem cells back into her system.

She also added, as a point of interest, that there was another woman from Moultrie getting a stem cell transplant, too.