 When I started not feeling well to the point where, you know, an Advil wouldn't take care of it, I knew that I had to look deeper. At first I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, lung cancer. It was really hard to figure out, but when that last test was done, which was an endoscopy, he said bingo, I found it. Most doctors said, you know, we're really sorry to tell you that this is not the cancer you want. We recognize that you haven't smoked, you're not a drinker, you're not a 65-year-old man, but you have stage 4 esophageal cancer, and that usually equals about 12 months from the point of diagnosis. And what we're looking at is palliative care, and that was just not something that I was okay with, but I was at a stage in my life where I needed much more than that, and I was really willing to undergo whatever it took to get better results than 12 months. My family quickly started looking for treatment solutions at the different institutions up and down the East Coast, and I went to all of them, and I tried to ask the right questions and explain how important it was to me to have options that were better than palliative care, and I just didn't feel like I was being heard, and that just wasn't okay with me. When I was introduced to the University of Maryland Medical Center I knew from the very first phone call that I had that this place was different, and in fact when Dr. Sunta spoke to me that evening the first time on the phone he spent more time with me in that conversation than any physician had spent in an exam room to date, and I knew that that was the right fit for me. Usually when you're stage 4 there aren't many options, but at the University of Maryland they saw more life in me than cancer, and I really appreciated that because I knew I could get through it with a little help, and they really were on my team. They really are willing to look outside the box, and that is what made the difference for me because if I had been kept in the box and kept on a treatment plan that other institutions use for other people I really don't think I'd be sitting here speaking today.