About Me & Before Diagnosis

Selfie
June 2016

Alright so--Here's me

My Name is Nichole Wouters. I was born and raised in South Eastern Michigan, about 35 minutes outside of Detroit. I am the second born of four children. 

I have three beautiful & hardworking sisters and the two most supportive parents a girl could ever ask for. My dad is a retired Police officer, my mom is a middle school teacher, and all three of my sisters are registered nurses. I have two brother in laws, one soon to be brother in law, and now a BEAUTIFUL NIECE!!! We are a tight group and we like it that way!!!

Family Photo
December 2015 

Family Photo
December 2016

As for the rest of my life up to cancer....

I graduated from Dakota High School in 2007, I then went to St. Clair County Community College (SC4) in Port Huron to play Volleyball and continue my education. Once I finished my two years of eligibility at SC4, I transferred to Macomb Community College to be closer to home and finish my prerequisites. From there I transferred to Wayne State University to obtain my Bachelor's of Science in Secondary Education Mathematics with a Minor in History in 2012.

Before/After Working out

Once I received my degree I began teaching mathematics at the WONDERFUL Chippewa Valley High School, began coaching volleyball, undertook the task of getting my Master's in Education Technology from Central Michigan University, and was loving every minute of the career I chose for my life. I made great friends, I was making an impact in the lives of young adults, and I loved the community that surrounded Chippewa Valley.

During 2015 I had been unhappy with my body shape, and being a previous athlete I knew that things needed to change. I started to work out! It wasn't until the summer of the following year that I went hardcore with this. I lost about 35lbs, was 17% Body Fat, I was strong, fit, beautiful and confident.

Abs
October 2016

Back Muscles
October 2016

Leg Muscles
October 2016

So I guess you could say that by the fall of 2016 I felt like I had everything I could want in life.....I had a great family, I had a perfect job in teaching and coaching, I looked reaaallyy freaking good, and my life was absolutely amazing. I had made plans to start looking for a house in the coming months so I could keep making my life better day by day. I was going out and having fun...I loved being me.

Then EVERYTHING started to change....

For a while I was getting in this awesome shape...I developed a cough. Just a dry cough and I didn't think much of it. Reasons being: 1) I'm a teacher...we get sick all the time and a cough is not something major, 2) It was the fall...weather changes happen and everyone has a cough. 3) I was coughing more when I would exert myself (AKA workout) so I just thought I was not pushing myself hard enough. I kept pushing through and pushing through...I avoided going to the doctor because I didn't want to spend money on going to the doctor. I actually told someone "I'd rather buy a new pair of shoes than spend my money at the doctor...the cough will figure itself out". Weeks and weeks went by until the cough got really bad and I started feeling tired.

The night before Thanksgiving I was playing board games with my girlfriends (yeaaa I know--I'm super exciting) and I wasn't feeling well so I left early.....that doesn't happen. Then on Thanksgiving I woke up vomiting...weird. I don't get sick. After I started to feel better I decided to go workout (duh!) I got to the gym and began to do my workout...and collapsed. I couldn't do it...I went home to get some rest...slept through the entire day, and then slept through the next day. So by Saturday I was somewhat feeling better, and Sunday I felt recovered enough to go to work the next day! During all of this my family wanted me to go to the doctor. It was the holiday--the office wasn't open so we tried urgent care....which had a 2.5 hour wait. YEAAAAAA RIGHT am I waiting in that. I felt better so I could continue on with my life.

I showed up to work on Monday and felt like GARBAGE. Coworkers telling me I looked like death and needed to see a doctor. I finally went to the doctor. JUST looking at me my doctor said I had pneumonia and needed to take a few days off of work. Sent me for a chest X-ray, put my on steroids and strong antibiotics. You can see in the picture of how I looked the day after I went to the doctor...YIKES!

Me
November 29, 2016

The next morning I got a call from my doctor saying that they needed me to come back into the office to get another round of steroids and for immediate follow up. Turned out that the x-ray showed bilateral pneumonia in 3 of my 5 lobes of my lungs....AKA I should be hospitalized but we were going to attempt to not do that and treat it outside the hospital...that meant more time off work.

I continued to try to recover, but on a repeat chest x-ray it didn't just show the pneumonia...it showed that these "nodules" or markings were appearing all over my lungs. The worded it as "an innumerable amount of nodules"....aka more than they could count...There were so many unanswered questions. What were these nodules? Why were they there? Were they new? More tests, more scans, more time off work...and eventually I met with a Pulmonologist who very....not nicely put it that we needed to rule out cancer. Luckily because of my sisters, I was able to get with an AMAZING oncologist quickly and get all the testing done even faster. I had a CT of my Chest, abdomen and pelvis (showed the abnormalities in my lungs), had an echocardiogram (showed that I was in heart failure because of the issues with my lungs), had a PET scan (lungs lit up like a Christmas tree), and finally a lung biopsy of the questionable tissue. Doctors had been saying that it was potentially an autoimmune disease so I would have to work with a pulmonologist. I had made plans the following week to meet with one recommended by the oncologist.

The next week on my way to meet the pulmonologist...there was a really bad snow storm. It took my dad and I almost 2 hours to get to the appointment. While on the way there--my phone rang. It was the oncologist office, saying that they had a cancellation and wanted to move my appointment up to today. I thought that was so convenient! I didn't have to come back another day to meet with the doctor. About 10 minutes after that my older sister sent me a text saying that she got switched to her other office location today and she would be able to attend my appointment today too! Everything seemed to be going really well...optimism!!

My dad and I made our way to the office of the Pulmonologist, we were waiting in the room to speak with the doctor and my dad looked anxious...and I wasn't sure why. A few minutes later the doctor came in, SUPER friendly and talked about what he had heard about me and then his tone changed as he said "I'm not sure if you knew or not but your biopsy results came back today...and unfortunately it is cancer."

umm....WHAT?!

And just like in the movies when you see someone receive bad news....I zoned out everything in the room....