Surviving Cancer

I imagine I will have a great many posts to write on this topic, and I am hoping to get comments from people who have had similar experiences and are like-minded.

The truth….Cancer SUCKS

But there IS life after cancer. You CAN get through chemo or rad therapy or surgery[s]. Obviously this isn’t meant for anyone who has been told they are terminal…but I DO have something to say to those of you who may have been handed a ‘death sentence’ from your Oncologist or clinic…get 2nd, 3rd and even 4th opinions before you pack your bags and prepare to die.

Call around to ALL the major cancer treatment centers [no matter WHERE you live] find out if they are doing any cancer trials [for your specific type of cancer] are they using any new or experimental treatments [again, for your specific cancer] Ask them this…can they help YOU.

I watched my mother-in-law succumb to colon cancer. She was diagnosed in April 2004 and died the following December. She was 66 years old. We had less than 8 months to prepare to say goodbye. [terminal]Colon cancer is a NASTY thing to die from. It is painful and demeaning. It drains you of your life essence until your organs shut down and you die. It was extremely difficult to go through this process with her, and as hard as it was for me, it was 10,000 times harder for her son, Gregory [my life partner].

The last week was probably the most difficult. We had promised her she could die in her own home, in her own bed. And we had every intention of keeping that promise we made. But in her last 7-10 days she exhausted us, we had no energy reserves left…she was up and down from her bed to the toilet, bed to toilet, bed to toilet 24 hours a day. She didn’t sleep, she napped or passed out from the morphine every 20 minutes or so for about 5 minutes then she’d be up and down, back and forth, it was relentless. One of us would spend the night at her house [luckily she lived just 3 doors down] while the other tried to also take care of our own household. We finally hired some nurses to come in and stay overnight to give us some much needed rest.

But we had to break our word, we couldn’t manage her pain at home anymore and we had to go to hospice care. All I can really say is this; I am thankful that she only had to spend 7 days in hospice and not several months, because she truly would have hated that. It was so sad to see her fighting against restraints to get to the bathroom…she had long since stopped eating but because of the location and size of her tumor she constantly had the urge to move her bowels, even though they were empty. In the end the cancer had also spread to her lungs so she had to be on oxygen, which she also hated. She struggled so hard against this disease, she so wanted to continue living, she wasn’t ready to die, she didn’t want to let go…eventually, she lost and cancer won that battle and she died at 7:30 AM on December, 16th 2004.

Living with cancer. Please continue reading about my personal fight with cancer.