JAY – Amanda Oliver doesn’t know what to expect. She’s heard so many things about chemotherapy. And after what she’s been through, she doesn’t know what to think, either.

She’s 20 years old and she starts a regimen of chemotherapy treatments June 7.

Oliver, a 2003 Livermore Falls High School graduate, had complained of stomach pain to doctors for two years.

“It was real bad pain,” said the dark, short-haired woman sitting at her kitchen table.

She was going to the doctor two or three times a week. Her mother, Cynthia Oliver of Livermore, said her daughter was eventually treated for a feminine disorder.

In January, the pain became worse. She had to quit college, where she had been studying graphic arts. She had to give up work.

Amanda and companion Marissa Ritchey had to give up their Lewiston apartment. Her mother took off work for six weeks to help her daughter.

“She got so big she couldn’t move,” her mother said. “She couldn’t bend over.”

At night, Amanda could hear the fluid in her abdomen and feel something moving. By then, she was calling to doctors’ offices in tears looking for help.

In February, she had an ultrasound scan. She was told she had a cyst.

After another scan and more consultation, she was told she had a tumor that started at her ovaries and extended to her rib cage.

Doctors were concerned it was attached to vital organs.

She was put on painkillers. She said she couldn’t eat; she drank water and ginger ale and slept.

Surgery was scheduled for Feb. 18.

The doctor explained the growth was like a big frying pan or big pancake, she said.

“I was not prepared for a 20-pound tumor.”

Amanda lost 50 pounds after the surgery, including 10 pounds of fluid. She also had one ovary and part of the other one removed during the operation.

Initially she was told the tumor wasn’t cancerous, her mother said. But on May 3, a Portland doctor told her it was indeed cancerous, very rare and very serious form of the disease.

A trip to Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston confirmed it. Two doctors there recommended chemotherapy.

Amanda begins her first five-day, six-hours-per-day treatment regimen June 7. The next day, a port will be inserted into her chest for continued treatment until August.

“I’m taking it the best as I can,” she said. “I’m nervous, scared – a little bit of both. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ve heard so many things about chemotherapy, that you get really sick.”

Her optimism is tempered because of what has already happened, and the possibility the cancer could grow back in the other ovary, she said.

“What I try to do is basically not let it bother me,” Amanda said. “I’m trying to do things to keep my mind busy.”

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