Talk Cancer

Question:

You must spend the long days or the short days of your life as *you* choose.  I know, I know, you didn’t choose to have cancer.  But, you do have it.  Now, however, the rest is up to you.  You can choose your treatments, choose what you do instead of or in addition to them.  But don’t spend your life dithering over how to spend your life.  Just Do It. Alice Whitfield Cancer Commando

I want to echo Alice’s comments – - the day after surgery last year when my ovarian cancer was found, my husband and I made a deal.  We were going to fight this with everything available – - AND we were going to make the time we have together count.  So, I did more in the way of chemo than the protocols say is necessary – but my oncologist believes in treating aggresively.  And for my family – - we started taking impromtu weekend trips  - ones without planning.  We visited my parents in the dessert in February  to show them I was doing okay.  I cried as my daughter graduated from high  school last week – - and celebrated with her her acceptance to college.  I’ve remodeled my kitchen, took out a new mortgage on the house and  accepted a new challenge at work.  Like Alice, I know that next month’s  CT-Scan could should a reoccurance – but I can’t sitting waiting for that –  I’ve got things to do and places to go for as long as I can.  Barb O’Keeffe

Response:

I was diagnosed with small cell adenocarcinoma of the cervix about a month ago. I have never had a bad Pap smear, had no symptoms except one irregular period, which sent me packing to the doctor in my paranoid fashion.  My mother died of cancer 10 years ago, and she waited to go to the doctor, so she was in an advanced stage by the time she started treatment.  Jeff, please be patient.  I need to give you all a context for what I’m going to say next.  I am still in total shock that I have cancer.  I have never smoked or taken birth control pills or done anything that has ever been remotely associated with risk for cancer because it is the thing I am most terrified to die of, having seen my mother go through a lot of suffering. Also, the diagnosis came 3 weeks before my wedding, which was then postponed so I could start chemotherapy.  I have a rare form of cervical cancer and a rare cell type which is particularly malignant, I am told.  The statistics just don’t exist on this one.  I am responding well to chemo but I am terrified.  Even if they eradicate it once, will it recur? So, Jeff, I admire the fighting spirit of the other people who responded to you, and I plan to fight, and I think you should fight now too, if you’re able to physically and emotionally.  I am trying to spend my time so that I have as few regrets as possible when I die, whether it is next year or next millenium. I want to see the year 2000.  I have read success stories about people with metastasis and recurrences; I am sure there are other stories we don’t hear because they don’t have happy endings.  I am trying to preserve my fighting spirit because I think it can make the difference if all other factors are close — and there seem to be so many factors, only a few of them within our control.  But please, everybody, don’t blame the people who can not make it.   Fighting spirit can take you a long way, but I am sure that there are cases in which there is genuinely not much anyone can do about cancer.  I sincerely hope that Jeff will have another remission and a lot more good quality time on this earth.  But let’s not blame ourselves if we can’t swing it. Actually, Lydia Temoshok (author of _The Type C Connection:  the Mind-Body Link in Cancer_ — or something like that) argues that people who are able to express anger are often the people who possess fighting spirit.  "Well-adjusted patients" often die of less lethal cancers, and Temoshok has done a study which shows that people who get angry, even rage, sometimes overcome the odds.  So I say more power to Jeff’s anger, and less blame for people with cancer. I’m sure my raw edges are showing.  I’m sure you all understand,  it has been one hell of a month here for me.  The toll of being terrified 24 hours a day is a huge one. Liz in Illinois

Response:

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –    I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t want to hear about your uncle or sister or grandmother. I don’t want to hear about shark cartilage or Onco-Link. I want to hear from any survivors in my position. How are you living? What are you doing? Have you quit your job, burnt your bridges, and taken up knitting in Papua, New Guinea? Are you trying to write the great American cancer novel/memoirs? Are you married? Do you have children? Do you want to? Is it really never too late? How are you interacting with family and friends? What do you talk about? Are you doing Things That Matter? Are you doing things that matter? Jeff   Nanis                  Surveillance Systems MIT Lincoln Lab          Radars’r'Us (No, I don’t speak for them or for DoD)

Jeff, your anger here is palpable, but *not to be rude* we here in the newsgroup can only report on our own experience, and it will never, ever be identical to yours.  I’m a 3.5 year lung cancer survivor.  When I was diagnosed with stage 3A adenocarcinoma in Dec.’90, my surgeon told me to recuperate from surgery and to get busy doing anything I’d always wanted to do, because there probably would not be time for it if I waited.  I refused to believe him, and instead went with the hope and positive attitudes of my medical and radiation oncologists, not so much because I needed something to cling to but because they better expressed my own fighting spirit and my own absolutely unswerving will to live.  I never considered alternative medications or treatments, but I have never had a recurrence.  I could have a recurrence next month and immediately take a diametrical view from that of today. So, Jeff, to answer your question, I try to do only the things-that-matter in my life — some with capital letters such as Graduating From OSU yesterday, and some with little letters such as planting a flower, writing a letter or mending a skirt I love to wear.  Sometimes, it’s simply allowing myself to do Nothing, which goes against the grain of Everything I Was Taught.  But I do it anyway! You must spend the long days or the short days of your life as *you* choose.  I know, I know, you didn’t choose to have cancer.  But, you do have it.  Now, however, the rest is up to you.  You can choose your treatments, choose what you do instead of or in addition to them.  But don’t spend your life dithering over how to spend your life.  Just Do It. Alice Whitfield Cancer Commando

Response:

    Well, folks, this looks like it. Not the six-month "it", mind you, closer  to the one- to two-year "it", but "it" nonetheless. It’s been ten years now and after finishing chemo for my fourth met (again in the liver) in December, I just got diagnosed with my fifth recurrence (liver and biliary duct). I’m getting some of the best care in the world (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute — there’s a reason Boston has the highest health care costs in the country), but the bottom line is: it keeps coming back sooner and sooner, it’s inoperable, and BMT is not an option, given all the prior chemo I’ve had.     I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t want to hear about your uncle or sister or grandmother. I’m in a support group and seeing two therapists. I don’t want to hear about shark cartilage or Onco-Link. I want to hear from any survivors in my position. How are you living? What are you doing? Have you quit your job, burnt your bridges, and taken up knitting in Papua, New Guinea? Are you trying to write the great American cancer novel/memoirs? Are you married? Do you have children? Do you want to? Is it really never too late? How are you interacting with family and friends? What do you talk about? Are you doing Things That Matter? Are you doing things that matter? Jeff   Nanis                  Surveillance Systems MIT Lincoln Lab          Radars’r'Us (No, I don’t speak for them or for DoD)

Response:

    Well, folks, this looks like it. Not the six-month "it", mind you, closer  to the one- to two-year "it", but "it" nonetheless. It’s been ten years now and after finishing chemo for my fourth met (again in the liver) in December, I just got diagnosed with my fifth recurrence (liver and biliary duct). I’m getting some of the best care in the world (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute — there’s a reason Boston has the highest health care costs in the country), but the bottom line is: it keeps coming back sooner and sooner, it’s inoperable, and BMT is not an option, given all the prior chemo I’ve had.     I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t want to hear about your uncle or sister or grandmother. I don’t want to hear about shark cartilage or Onco-Link. I want to hear from any survivors in my position. How are you living? What are you doing? Have you quit your job, burnt your bridges, and taken up knitting in Papua, New Guinea? Are you trying to write the great American cancer novel/memoirs? Are you married? Do you have children? Do you want to? Is it really never too late? How are you interacting with family and friends? What do you talk about? Are you doing Things That Matter? Are you doing things that matter? Jeff   Nanis                  Surveillance Systems MIT Lincoln Lab          Radars’r'Us (No, I don’t speak for them or for DoD)

Response: