MORE CANCER DISCOVERED TODAY

Thank you for being so sweet and available when I need someone. You are wonderful. I have such a great support group. I am back on steroids again. I have 5 very small tumors in my brain, apparently 4 of them are on the right side, and the largest one is only 2 cm. There is one on the other side but small. I start radiation Monday on my head and she said that my hair would all fall out again about the 3rd week. Radiation didin’t do that last time, but this time the radiation is directly on the head. She said that the radiation should kill the tumors completely, but this type of tumor comes back again and again. This is much harder to cure than the lung cancer also, for the same reason and that it’s all contained in this tight ‘box’ we call our skull. So they will be treating it like a brain injury like my son had. That’s what the steroids are, to reduce the swelling in my head from the tumors, and she said that my brain fog would go away also and I would feel fine again quickly. I bought a great book called “Your brain After Chemo” and read the whole thing last night. It’s perfect – tells you exactly everything about how you feel and what to do to make it better -



So we’re probably in for a long haul. So I will be fine for a while and then not fine again for a while. I am going to have a petscan next Friday I think because there is also something going on in my lower back. Dr Horadam said that I have major disc degeneration back there and that’s why my back is bothering me so much – it has been hurting for weeks. I have slept with an ice bag on my back every night.

What a pain in the a_ _ this is. I am trying to be positive as usual, so I know that my family (including you) are praying and God is watching over me again. I have lots of angels around me too, live ones like you guys and Pam, and my mom and all the rest who have passed on. The radiation she said is lots stronger than the ones for the lungs, she said she is “turning up the power”. They will make a mask for my head or face and the marks that they put on my chest that showed where the radiation machine would “point” every day will now be on the mask and I will just put the mask on every morning and they will know where to point the machine to radiate my head. She also said that later on there are other types of radiation that they can do if it comes back again, like the knife radiation and/or proton radiation that the do for specific spots like in testicular cancer or prostate cancer where it just zaps the one little spot.

Thanks again, love you all, keep praying.

It is 5 months since my last treatment now

Fall is in the air here in Dallas, and the temperature took a dive this week into the 80's during the day and 60's during the night, and even in the 50's a night or two. How nice it would be to go to New England during the coming month and see the wonderful fall foliage. We only get a few days of it here, and we don't get all the beautiful colors that they get up there.

I went in to the oncology center this morning to get an infusion of Reclast, which is a drug for treatment of bone density problems. Apparently one more side effect of chemo is some bone loss. Being in my 60's and already having osteopenia, I assume that I was destined to have more deterioration anyway. Sure enough. But this drug I got is going to slow down the bone loss, and it lasts for a year ! So I don't have to go back until this time next Fall to get it again. This is also the drug that they give bone cancer patients or people who have cancer that has spread to the bones. There are no particular side effects and it apparently works very well. My doctor said that there is evidence in some areas that it has helped cancer to not come back.

I also got my flu shot this morning. It's REALLY important this year to get those, even more than usual, for everyone. Especially for us older people whether we have been sick or not. So GO GET THE FLU SHOT.

Bring Potato Chips

BRING POTATO CHIPS

I love this story, and so I'm sharing it here. After being in cancer treatments, something like this means something different to you, so this touched my heart. I hope people in treatment will read it and appreciate the people around you even more.

A little boy wanted to meet God. He knew it was a long trip
to where God lived, so he packed his suitcase with a bag of potato chips
and a six-pack of root beer and started his journey.
When he had gone about three blocks, he met an old woman.
She was sitting in the park, just staring at some pigeons. The boy sat
down next to her and opened his suitcase. He was about to take a drink
from his root beer when he noticed that the old lady looked hungry, so
he offered her some chips. She gratefully accepted it and smiled at him. Her smile was so pretty that the boy wanted to see it again,
so he offered her a root beer. Again, she smiled at him. The boy was delighted! They sat there all afternoon eating and smiling, but they never said a word. As twilight approached, the boy realized how tired he was and he got up to leave; but before he had gone more than a few steps, he turned around, ran back to the old woman, and gave her a hug. She gave him her biggest smile ever. When the boy opened the door to his own
house a short time later, his mother was surprised by the look of joy on
his face. She asked him, "What did you do today that made you so happy?"
He replied, "I had lunch with God." But before his mother could respond, he
added, "You know what? She's got the most beautiful smile I've everseen!"
Meanwhile, the old woman, also radiant with joy, returned to her home. Her son was stunned by the look of peace on her face and he asked, "Mother, what did you do today that made you so happy?" She replied, "I ate potato chips in the park with God." However, before her son responded, she added, "You know, he's much younger than I expected."
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. People come into our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime! Embrace all equally! Have lunch with God.......bring chips. God still sits on the throne. You may be going through a tough time right now but God is getting ready to bless you in a way that only He can.

Post treatment update

As I plod through the weeks since my last treatments, every week is better and better and I am feeling pretty much like my old self again. I am still tired by the end of the day, and my old ADHD is not as prevelant as it once was.

My memory is still not too good (one of the side effects of chemo). I have a hard time remembering things that I have known instantly for years. Right now, I can't remember something that I couldn't remember this morning! But the doctor says that will come back. My toes are still numb, that's also a side effect. Doc says that that might or might not go away. (Try wearing flip flops with numb toes !) On the positive side, numb toes are a small price to pay for being cancer free, so that's a good thing. Neuropathy is the medical name for it. How I can remember that and not remember something I've known all my life such as my best friend's middle name or how much postage costs right now is beyond my comprehension.

I worked a trade show last weekend and was pretty proud of myself that I made it through the weekend pretty well. I did get short of breath a couple of times and had to stop and breathe a few minutes. It was over 100° outside and I was walking around the Alamo taking pictures, so that wasn't too bad. The first night after working all day I was really tired and fell into bed before 9:00pm. But the next night my body must have been getting used to standing all day and talking to people, and I was much less tired that night.

My hair is growing back now, it's about an inch long, completely different from the way it was before it fell out. It's very curly and wavy, and almost completely white. (I'm not sure how white it was before, since I colored it for the last 50 years.) Everyone I see has to come and feel my hair, it's very soft and I look like a little white duckling, they say. I went in the other day for my regular CT scan and there were about 4 other women who's hair was in various stages of being there and not being there. We had such fun comparing our hair or lack of it.


Your attitude changes a lot after cancer, I will never dye my hair again because I don't want those chemicals that might harm me so close to my brain any more. No more fake fingernails either. Some of that awful smelling stuff might seep into my blood stream and hurt my little soldiers (white blood cells) that fight the cancer cells off.

You are never the same again. The good thing is that it's a good thing. You wake up realizing that every day is precious and important. Things that you put off before need doing now. You need to tell people who have made a difference in your life that they are important to you, and the ones who you have harmed by your words or deeds ? You need to make amends to them. It's important for you, not them.

When I was young, my Dad left us for another woman, and we had a friend that helped us with carpentry work and plumbing and things women have a hard time doing. We paid him, but he was always just a phone call away. I remember asking him questions that a girl might ask her Dad, and he was always able to tell me the right answer, or at least an answer that satisfied my curiousity. (He had 12 kids, and he did yards in our small town, and he put all those 12 kids through college doing yards.) I didn't know it until later, but he was a preacher on the weekends. So I guess God sent me someone that He knew could help me.

He is in his 90's now, and I called him and told him that he meant a lot in my life and I just wanted to tell him that. I'm not even sure that he remembered what I was talking about. But it was important for me to tell him. I even wrote a note and sent pictures of my children and told him that I hoped that I had helped my kids as much as he had helped me. I never heard anything back, but that's ok. Everyone who passes through your life is important for one reason or another.

The folks at the cancer center are amazing and they are there mostly because they knew someone with cancer or took care of someone that had it. Most nurses and radiologists went to work there because of something like that happened in their life and I believe that is why the people who work with cancer patients have just a little special quality or understanding that maybe other people in that profession don't have. That makes them special to those of us who have the disease. I am so grateful to them. And to the other cancer patients who were there and the ones who are coming through the center now. We all look at each other with such a compassion and apathy.

Laughter is good medicine !

It is said that laughter is the best medicine. There's lots of evidence that this is true. It reduces pain and lets us tolerate discomfort. It reduces blood sugar levels, improves job performance, helps your blood vessels function better, so it's good for your brain and your heart. There's lots of scientific evidence to prove it. Hey, whatever helps us survive cancer, all the better. I believe in anything that helps. We are all grasping for that, aren't we? Basically it offsets mental stress, and what's more stressful than having the big "C" ??

We keep hearing about endorphins in connection with exercise and how the stimulation of them takes away stress and that's a great reason to exercise. We all read that exercise is the best thing to keep cancer away, that and a good diet. I know that's important, so I think that the laughter goes right along with that. I watched those crazy blue collar guys on TV the other night talk about rednecks and even though the show was pretty gross language-wise, it made me laugh like crazy. I try to watch that show Who's Line is It ? when I need a laugh, it's a very funny show. There are lots of shows on TV that can make us laugh, no matter what kind of personality we have or what we think is funny, there is probably something on there that you can find to make you laugh. My husband, stepson and daughter spend half their time teasing each other until it sometimes gets rediculous. But it is funny, and they keep me going. Keeping that positive attitude is the best cure for cancer and we have to practice that every minute of every day.

Laugh with your spouse, your kids, your friends. Go see a funny movie. Get those endorphins going !

How to Stop Smoking and Get Lung Cancer

I am 63 years old and I quit smoking 10 years ago. If you think you are invincible and that it's never going to happen to you, guess what? I felt the exact same way. I have no family history, I had been eating right, exercising, and had just gotten the best physical report I had gotten in 20 years. My cholesterol was great, the blood tests and other tests were great. I was happy. But was about to have a bomb dropped right in my lap. I had a nasty group of cancer cells in my body and I was about to be in for the fight of my life.

If you are at least a little bit curious about what exactly happens to you if you are diagnosed with cancer, just read this and maybe you might think twice about continuing to smoke. Only 15% of people who get lung cancer survive 5 years. PLEASE READ ON, IT WON'T HURT TO FIND OUT WHAT LUNG CANCER TREATMENTS ARE LIKE.

YOU HAVE LUNG CANCER - FINDING OUT

Cancer diagnoses and treatment is a NIGHTMARE, HORROR STORY, the scariest thing you will ever go through in your life. You don't want to think about it, do you? Ok, fine, just avoid reading about it, keep on deluding yourself that it can't happen to you. I told you I would describe it, so here goes.

You would think that the symptoms of lung cancer would be breathing problems, coughing more than your usual smokers cough (don't even try to tell me you don't cough sometimes when you smoke). I always blamed my cough on allergies, or pollution or something I was doing like painting the house or cutting wood for a project, or spraying the yard with bug killer.

I was going to my 45th high school reunion. I had a low grade fever and my voice would be a little hoarse sometimes. And I couldn't sing any more - not that I can sing anyway, but I couldn't even sing in the car or in the shower. I just figured I was getting older and having some kind of allergy or something. It was that time of year, I thought. In the Fall. After the reunion, I was feeling tired and listless and was getting tired earlier in the evening than usual. Finally I made an appointment at the doctor for a physical; it was that time of year anyway. They did the usual urine test, blood tests and nothing showed up. I went back about a week later and I had developed a little nerve pain in my left cheek, between my nose and my ear. It was kind of painful, so I thought that my sinus cavity on that side was packed up and maybe a sinus infection. They did an exray of my sinusus. Nothing. I went back a third time and my cheek was feeling worse and my chest felt like I had pressure in it. I'm thinking maybe a heart problem. So they scheduled a visit to the cardialogist the next week. Two days later, I went back to the doctor, the pain pills they had given me for my cheek weren't helping. I just looked the PA (physician's assistant) in the eye and said "there is something wrong with me". She looked back at me and said "ok we are going to find out what's going on with you".

She ordered a chest xray. I went over to another building and did that, and the next morning the phone rings. I was to go to see a pulmonary specialist that day. It's a Friday. I walked in over there, and 10 minutes later I was told that I had Stage IIIB Lung Cancer. There is a tumor in my left lung about the size of a tennis ball, and another place in my right lung.

I can't even tell you what it was like to have those words coming at you from some guy you just met. It's terrifying. The next thing that happened was that I went to another place and got a CT Scan, and then an MRI, and then a PetScan. Then I went to see a pulmonary surgeon who told me that my tumor in my left lung was inoperable. I also had a lymph node in my other lung that was cancerous, which meant that the cancer cells had travelled into the right lung.

By the way, every single place I went within that 4 days took blood out of my arm. I was bruised from my wrist to my elbow. That means at least 6 people took 3 tubes of blood from me...I'm not crazy about needles either. It is November 11th. I am scheduled to start radiation and chemotherapy the week after Thanksgiving. O MY GOSH...

That's what made it Stage IIIB. It had travelled. There are 2 kinds of lung cancer. Small cell and non small cell. It's better to have the non small cell carcinoma. I learned that on the internet. I also learned that only 14% of people survive lung cancer and only 4% of those live 5 years. ONE OUT OF 4 WOMEN WILL HAVE LUNG CANCER.

In the meantime, I don't understand much of what they are telling me. I am in a sort of fog, and there's lots of technical terms and stuff being thrown at me. My husband is a wreck, which doesn't help. You never think of how it will effect the people who love you when something like this happens. My always strong, rock of my life, was a basket case. The most positive thing is that you have no idea what's really going on unless your job is in oncology. Oncology? What is that? What are they doing to do to me? Am I going to die ? What kind of stuff are they going to give me in chemotherapy? What does radiation do? Are there side effects ? I think it must be time to pray once an hour. Will I be able to work ? Will I lose my job? Who is going to take care of the house and the cooking and cleaning and paying the bills ? I was about to find out about all that, the hard way.

At this point, and for the entire treatment time, the doctors won't tell you if you are going to die or not. They aren't going to tell you that your prognosis is that you are going to die, because they don't know either. I suspect that they really don't know until after the treatments are far along.

THE TREATMENTS BEGAN

Radiation starts the Monday after Thanksgiving and I'm doing it every week day and once a week I have a chemo treatment. The first thing that happens is that you put on a hospital gown and the radiologists get some black and purple markers and make all sorts of maps on your chest while you lie naked from the waist up on the cold table. You can't wash off these marks, so forget taking showers from now on unless you tape plastic sheets on your chest. And, it's very cold in the treatment rooms. Always.

The radiation itself doesn't hurt, and it doesn't take but about 10 minutes every day for the actual radiating. It's like an xray, but a little longer. The machine radiates each lung from the front, and then it swings around under your body and radiates your back as well. (It is also sending rays right through your spinal column as well.) For me, the radiation was the worst part. It caused me to feel like I had terrible influenza (flu) 24/7. I could barely drag myself out of bed to get dressed to go in to the oncology center every morning. I couldn't do much of anything, and I tried to go to work, but I couldn't work more than 3 or 4 hours 3 or 4 days a week. I had a lawn chair in my office so I could rest in between phone calls. I couldn't even drive myself to the treatments most of the time. You know how you feel when you have a bad flu. You can't do much of anything, your brain isn't functioning properly, and the fever makes you dead tired and you really don't care about what's going on.

The chemo was every Wednesday. You take steroid pills the night before, 12 hours before the chemo and 6 hours before the chemo. The steroids make you feel pretty good for 2 days. Then the crash you get after the steroids start wearing off is even worse than the way you felt before. I didn't work a single Monday for the whole 7 weeks that I was getting the treatments. That was the longest 7 weeks of my life. I never felt any better from the first day until the last one, and for months after I didn't think I would ever be normal again.

After the first 7 weeks of treatments, the radiation was over. The radiation had burned my lung tissue worse than any sunburn you could ever get. I had a tan/burn area that was exactly a duplication of the "map" of the radiated area both on my chest and on my back. Mine wasn't nearly as bad as some of the people I talked to that had breast cancer. Some of them lost 12 layers of skin during their treatments and had 3rd degree burns from the radiation.

A note about the radiation treatment. Your lung tissue in your body is very precious. It is elastic and pliable. Until you have radiation. The tissue that is left is scar tissue, like you get from any scar. It is not pliable and elastic any more. So your lungs are never the same again. Same thing with any kind of cancer. The radiation ruins the tissue so it becomes thick scar tissue and sometimes can cause you to have to have surgery later on because it's so thick that it causes problems with your organs.

Some of the side effects of the chemotherapy are dizzyness, nausea, sleeplessness, lithargy and along with the steroids, you get neuropathy. That means you have nerve pain or loss of feeling somewhere in your extrematies usually. In my case, I have no feeling in my toes. Try walking around in flip flops with no feeling in your toes. Try cutting your own toenails when you can't feel anything.

Also you can't get around young kids, grandkids, public places, stores, theaters, restaurants, etc, because your immune system is trashed. You have to wash your hands all the time, carry a mask with you so you don't get germs, and make sure you take vitamins like magnesium and potassium because the therapy gets rid of what you usually have. I had to increase my intake of those two at least 3 times during my treatments.

The worse side effect I had from the chemo was (((SHINGLES))). Look it up on the internet. The pain is unbelievable. You have open sores around half of the trunk of your body. You can't even stand to wear a t-shirt that is 4 sizes too big. There is medicine that helps it go away in a shorter amount of time, but I still had it for 3 weeks. If you have ever had chicken pox and/or have had fever blisters, you are very likely going to have shingles.

MORE TREATMENTS

It ain't over yet folks. At the end of the 7 weeks of treatment, there were 3 more giant doses of chemotherapy. They pump that into you for 5 hours once every 3 weeks. The deal is, they give you the big dose, then over the next 3 weeks the poison kills every growing cell in your body. The idea is that the chemo cocktails kill the bad cancer cells that are growing . Then after the 3 weeks, the growing cells are being killed, the cancer cells are dying, but at the end of the time, they start growing again, so then they give you another big dose at the beginning of the 4th week. ( The cells that grow are your hair and your fingernails. So along with the bad cancer cells, a lot of good cells die as well. So you lose your hair. Everywhere. Head, eyebrows and eyelashes, legs, arms, pubic, etc. Great, so you don't have to shave for months and months. You get to wear pretty scarves, cute hats, and try different color wigs.) I talked to one lady who lost all her fingernails and toenails. They just fell out. I was lucky that didn't happen to me.

I believe that there are several reasons that I am alive today. It is 9 months since my diagnosis. It feels like years. I am now cancer free. It may come back and it may not. It might be in my lungs or somewhere else. I am not going to worry about that because I have CT scans to keep watch on that every few months for the next few years. I have great doctors at a great treatment center. My oncologist says he won't say I'm in remission for 5 years. So be it.

THINGS TO KNOW

The doctor I have is great. He told me not to believe everything I read on the internet and all the things other people tell me about their cancer. This is my cancer, it belongs to just me, and it's not the same as anyone else's cancer. Believe it or not, that was probably the best advise anyone could have given me. The stuff you hear and read will scare you silly. I did get a book though that was wonderful. And there was lots of information at the cancer center - again, if you made sure you didn't get all caught up in the information and get too much for you. You have to guard against that - it would be like being a hypochondriac. Not good. It is hard enough to get through this.

You have to have your support system. That means a higher power, your family and/or friends, and most of all, your own faith in yourself and your higher power. If you need a support group, by all means get one. They are there for you. If you are reading this to learn to help a family member or friend, find a support group for yourself and for them, even the same one, and take them with you. No matter how strong they think they are or try to make you think they are, they need you and all the help they can get. It's a lonely thing, having cancer. Yeah, it's all yours, but that's not easy.

CARE AND FEEDING DURING TREATMENT

One of the things that happen to people when they get this is that they start losing weight. I'm sure that part of it is fear. Part of it is because you don't feel like eating. Part of it is because your taste buds change and all of a sudden everything tastes like metal. That's the chemo. So you could care less about eating. If you are overweight, you are thinking that this is fine, I am losing weight. Nope, bad idea. I think that your own body is such a miracle. It is working very hard to fight the cancer. It is burning calories trying to fight, and it needs fuel. So it needs carbs and proteins and all that stuff. My family was great about that. No matter how much I fussed and griped at them and tried to refuse to eat because it tasted like aluminum and I didn't feel good enough to eat, they fed me every 2 hours, day and night. I ate pudding, fruit cocktail, ice cream, and even some fried food if that was all they could get down me. I was probably pretty nasty to them at times when they woke me up at 3 in the morning shoving tapioca pudding down me. But I really think that is what kept my body fighting the cancer cells. My own little soldiers were in there fighting the bad old cancers.

I have learned so much about myself, my family, and about life. I know that things happen for a reason. Last year 6 months before I was diagnosed, my daughter moved home from another city, and she was there with me to take me to treatments and feed me and take care of the house and her Dad when I needed her. She has been my angel all this time. She made me go to the gym every day because I was 60 pounds overweight, and got me to eat better, which was why I was in good health before all this started. I had lost 45 pounds by the time I was diagnosed. I am convinced that there is a God that has been with me all this time, and that I have some purpose in being spared from death at least for now. Maybe it's just to write things that might help someone else in some way. Be it someone who wants to quit smoking, or someone who has just been diagnosed with cancer, or someone who is a family member to someone who just got diagnosed. I have had several people call me or email me and ask my advice about what happens and what to do, or how to help a wife or daughter or son or husband or other family member through this process. Maybe that's what my purpose is.

I know that God has me in the place he wants me to be right this minute. I know that when it's time for me to die, He will know that time. I figure I could walk around the corner and get hit by a bus tomorrow but only He knows for sure when that is. That's all we can do. Give God the keys to the bus and let Him drive. It's too scary to worry about tomorrow anyway.