Staying Strong During Cancer
- Country Ever After star Criscilla Anderson, 40, is not letting chemotherapy for stage 4 colon cancer stop her from enjoying life, as she vacations in Mexico and also returns to her love of dance. “Thankful for such an amazing few days in Cancun with friends to enjoy being adults and celebrate mine and Coffeys anniversary. And I technically just finished my first round of chemo.”
- The hip hop dancer, who stars in the Netflix reality show with her country artist husband Coffey Anderson, 42, just recently started chemotherapy for a second time. After an initial diagnosis of stage 3 in 2018, the cancer advanced.
- A leading oncologist tells SurvivorNet what the goal of treatment is for stage 4 colon cancer fighters: “The primary goal of therapy, and we discuss this in great detail with patients and their families, is to manage the cancer, is to try to control the cancer, to turn it into what we call a chronic disease, so to prevent it from growing, spreading, and causing problems.”
Last May, Criscilla said that she planned to stop chemotherapy since her “tumors were shrinking" and wanted to try alternative routes to treating her disease. Luckily, Anderson appears to be staying positive.
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Dancing Through Chemo
Not only is Anderson vacationing with her husband and friends, but the choreographer is even back in dance class. “First class in a YEAR,” she wrote last week next to a video of her busting a move with an instructor and another dancer. “And first class since I moved to Dallas. So fun. Thankful! Thanku Cordell! Your gifted.”
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Anderson has danced in music videos for mega stars like Rihanna, Katy Perry and Britney Spears, and says that her husband actually first spotted her in Rihanna’s music video for SOS.
“Coffey saw me in this video b4 he met me and said he wanted me as his wife… that's how god worked us out!”
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The husband-and-wife team collaborated on one of Coffey’s videos for the song She’s Famous.
A Protective Husband
As a caregiver and spouse to someone battling cancer, especially someone so young, it can be painful to see the affects from the disease, and Coffey shared in a November interview that it was initially hard for him to allow the cameras in when he saw his wife in pain.
“The first day they were filming, she had come from chemo and was in and out, groggy, nauseous and in pain. A lot was happening. I asked the crew to leave,” the singer-songwriter said. “They cleared out my house. Lights, producers, camerasall out. When she woke up, she said, ‘You got to let them see it. You got to let them in. People have to see the whole story.’ It really put me at ease. I thought at that point I would let my guard down, but my family was more open than I was.”
Season 1 of Country Ever After aired in November, and shows the couple “juggling family life, career goals and tests of faith.”
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Living With Cancer
Anderson’s bravery to share her battle with the world and to keep her life activities going is inspiring. People living with cancer are encouraged to do just that. Keep on living. Experts say that keeping up activities (within reason) keeps the focus on beating the disease and not letting it take away the things you love.
Survivor Lydie Roth has been battling cancer since she was a teenager. Even though she says the disease has kept her from becoming a fitness model, Roth still gets up every day and works out despite being in physical pain.
"You never know what will happen in your life, so it's better to spend time doing your favorite activities,” Roth says.
Do What You Love Even if Cancer Gets in the Way of Your Dreams
Another survivor, Heather Maloney, says that she wants to do whatever she can to make her chances of a long life better. “It’s important to me to be very active and to be moving,” she tells SurvivorNet. Maloney is on a boat team, which is her livelihood and passion like Anderson’s dancing. “When we come together, it’s about the boat. And it’s about all the things around the boat. It’s about competing. It’s about practicing. It’s about eating. It’s about losing weight. Getting in better shape, which everyone struggles with at different levels.”
The health-enthusiast says that she wants to talk about cancer and how it’s affected her. “When you look at how many people are surviving now, there’s a huge community. And some people want to pretend it never happened and life goes back exactly the same. I am not like that. I’m going to take this experience and I want to bring it to the next level.”
Staying Active After a Cancer Diagnosis
Understanding Treatment for Stage 4 Colon Cancer
Every cancer is different and every person’s battle is uniquely their own, but it’s important to understand treatment for stage 4 colon cancer, and what it means in most cases.
“When someone comes in with cancer that has spread outside the colon, it’s called stage 4 colon cancer or metastatic colon cancer,” Dr. Paul Oberstein from NYU Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center tells SurvivorNet. “The primary goal of therapy, and we discuss this in great detail with patients and their families, is to manage the cancer, is to try to control the cancer, to turn it into what we call a chronic disease, so to prevent it from growing, spreading, and causing problems.”
Dr. Oberstein says that options for treatment are complicated and unique to each person. There are different surgery, chemotherapy and immunotherapy treatments depending on where the tumor is in the body.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.