Vanessa Perez got more from her college advisor than academic leadership. In her time of medical instability, her advisor also urged her to advocate for her own health, push beyond the doctors and emergency rooms that fobbed her off, and find answers.

Combined with her faith and, finally, care through Mission Hope, Perez is on the mend today from stage 1 ovarian cancer.

“It’s definitely crazy,” the 26-year-old Santa Maria woman said.

For years, she’d had ovarian cysts which her regular gynecologist monitored annually, but last year, at the age of 25, she began having pain in her left side. It soon became unbearable.

“I’d go to the hospital, and they’d give me medication which calmed it down, so they’d send me home. But it was unbearable. I even threw up. So they sent me to the gynecolo

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