ONE NSU MAGAZINE New York a few months later. Fate, however, had other ideas. TOO RARE TO CARE Throughout 2018, Naomi had been experiencing puzzling changes in her body, including a seemingly endless menstrual cycle. “Every doctor I visited kept telling me, ‘You just have an irregular period.’ ‘These are normal womanly body functions.’ ‘It’s likely just hormones.’ But that didn’t make sense to me,” she said. Ricci had already relocated to New York when a mentor/ friend at Upper Iowa University suggested Naomi contact the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota—a two-hour drive from northeast Iowa—to get another opinion. “They reviewed my medical reports, which indicated I had endometriosis, so they immediately scheduled me for laparoscopic surgery, and Matthew flew in from New York to be by my side,” she recalled. After the surgical results were evaluated, Naomi was surprised to learn she didn’t have endometriosis. “I was shocked, because I was experiencing all these horrible symptoms and had become anemic,” she explained. “My doctor then said, ‘As a protocol, we need to test to see if you have cancer, but I don’t think you do, because you don’t fit the age group of someone who would have uterine cancer, at least not according to the books and statistics.” On that fateful Friday in November 2018, Naomi learned the cause of her troubling symptoms. “I’m so sorry to tell you this, but you have stage 4B uterine cancer,” her doctor revealed. FROM ESCAPE HATCH TO NEVER LOOKING BACK Although they spoke on the phone daily and wholeheartedly supported each other, Naomi knew their lives would be forever altered, so she offered her life mate an escape hatch. “When I received the diagnosis, I told Matthew he had an option,” she confessed. “I told him he could leave, because things were not going to get easier.” Not surprisingly, Ricci was in it for the long haul. Initially, Naomi was given hormone treatments for three months to stop her menstrual cycle. Unfortunately, the treatments fed the cancer, allowing it to grow. “When I went in for a checkup in early 2019, they did a biopsy and were surprised by how fast the cancer had grown,” she explained. Immediate surgery was required, so Ricci flew to Iowa on the first available flight. Unfortunately, the news wasn’t good, as the surgical procedure revealed the cancer had metastasized. “The surgeons had to keep cutting, because they kept finding more areas affected by the cancer,” Ricci explained. “It went all the way to her second or third rib. During the week of June 11, 2024, the Riccis traveled to Washington, D.C., to share their story and advocate for enhanced patient care. 21
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