Cancer Survivors share your story

70's Rockfan

Rough N Ready
In the year 2000 I was 41 and diagnosed with
squamous cell carcinoma in the lymph nods in my neck.
we have a very talented surgeon here who was able to remove
most of the nods in the area the cancer was in. a huge scar and
63 staples later that part was over. now they tell me you need
to go see this oncologist. they also gave me a bio on him before
my first appointment. I was quite impressed as he had been
a professor at the university of Chicago in the cancer department.
he had recently moved to this are because his parents lived here
and they were getting old and having health problems.
so I go see this croaker and he tells me he's going to cure me
with chemo and radiation treatments. I don't even like needles so
none of this was sounding to good to me. so I ask him what my chances
were that the treatment would work or not kill me.
he looked me in the eye and said I give you a 95% chance that
I will cure you. that sounded good but I still really didn't like the idea.
I wasn't going to go through but every time I told my wife I wasn't
going to go through it she just fell apart. they did give me a 50/50
chance of being ok without the treatment. well I finally gave in and
went back to see the doc. he said come back in a week and check
into the hospital and we'll start the treatments. so here we go a week
later and I start his treatment program thats 12 weeks long.
a full week in the hospital with chemo 24/7 and 2 radiation treatments
each day. then home a week then repeat 5 more times.
6 full weeks of 24/7 chemo and 60 radiation treatments and went
from 185lbs when I started down to 110lbs at the end. I'm 6'2" tall.
I looked like a skeleton with some skin stretched on it.
my first visit with him when he told me what they were going
to do to me. he said we used to do it this way but it didn't work.
and we tried it this way and that didn't work either. he said this
treatment program works. and he was right. I really believe
that if had gone to a different doctor I would not be here today.
I don't think they would have been as aggressive as he was in his
treatment. so I guess what I'm trying to say is there is a difference
in the way treatments are administered that does make a difference
weather you live or die.
cancer surgery.jpg
 
as Paul Harvey use to say , and now for the rest of the story.
I finished the treatments a week before thanksgiving.
the 60 radiation treatments to my neck burned my throat
up so bad I couldn't even swallow water. so they tell me they
are going to start a IV feeding program. my first day home the home
health care nurse shows up at noon. he say's I'm going to start
your IV feeding and give you your shots to start building you back up.
Huh shots ? he say's yes I have 6 shots to give you everyday with your
feeding. Oh great. the only flesh I had left was in my belly so here
go the shots. by the way Procrit burns like fire going in. Yippee.
he say's I'll go get your IV out of the car. he comes back in with a 2 gallon
IV bag. he hangs on the pump and plugs it into my chemo port.
I said how long is this going to take to pump in. he say's 20 hours.
great , the pump and stand is bigger and heavier than me right now.
he says every morning around 8:00 am when the bag goes empty
you can turn off the pump and unhook the IV. he showed me how to
flush my port with heparin so it wouldn't get clogged up. that lives
in the fridge and feels like ice water going though you. so I'm basically
trapped in the living room for 20 hours at a time. daytime tv sucks...lol
I didn't think about it at first but a constant IV makes you pee about once
a hour so I was sleeping on the couch and using a pee bottle from the hospital.
I didn't want to sleep in the bed and wake my wife every hour getting up
to pee. she was just about as wore out as me by this point. so the next day
the nurse comes at noon and we start again. 6 shots , hook up IV.
I said how long is this going to go on. he said until you can swallow anything and get
some weight on you. the shape your in probably 2 months. Oh goody.
he was right. it was almost 2 months. after about 2 weeks I was feeling a little better
and one morning after I unhooked my IV I thought I'm going down to the basement
to my shop. I went down and messed around with one of my boats for awhile.
I went to go back upstairs and could not get up the stairs. I had lost almost all
my muscle and was just to weak. I have a phone in the basement and called my
wife to come help me up the stairs. no more shop for a while....lol
winter is starting now and I'm sitting in the house in a sweat suit with the furnace
set at 80 degrees and I'm still cold. I'm just skin and bone yet. my poor nurse (great guy)
he would be sweating like crazy by the time he would finish with me.
so 6 days a week we continued. every couple days or so I would go out to lowes
or home depot and just wander around trying to build some muscles in my legs.
after 2 or 3 times in each store I noticed employees discreetly watching me.
I thought oh boy we can have some fun. I started looking around a lot and
sticking my hands in my pockets a lot. sometimes I could get 4 or 5 watching me.
I was having a ball...lol. one day in lowes a employee came up to me and said
sir are you ok. I looked like a corpse. I said yea I'm ok and told him the whole story.
he chuckled and said have fun I wont tell anybody. we always had a little laugh
when we met. and the home heath care finally ended. I was feeling a lot better.
now get more active and get some muscle back. that took another month.
I had now been down for 6 months. I stopped in to see my boss and said
I'm coming back Monday but I don't know how many hours a day I can work.
he visited me many times in the hospital and saw me dwindle to almost nothing.
he said come in and work till you cant take any more and go home.
so it began. 2 hrs a day was all I could manage for the first 2 weeks. 3hrs
a day for a while and so on. took a month until I could work 8hrs a day.
it took almost a year to get all my strength back.
total cost start to finish $800 thousand.
we had great insurance $3000.00 out of pocket.
 
Props to you, keep the positive thoughts and keep winning. While I cannot personally relate by experience I have witnessed the very worst. Truly horrific things that haunt my dreams to this day.

My father has been battling the big "C" for nearly 25years and is currently cancer free. He has more scars than anyone I have ever seen.....even on fictional TV/movies. With his shirt off he would scare Frankenstein's monster. He's had more surgery, chemo, ration than any of his docs have ever seen. He has laid in bed for months at a time unable to even lift a finger. They have no clue how he is able to bounce back as many times as he has. Much of it was hail-Mary shot in the dark treatments with little of to no odds of winning. But he keeps winning. He has become somewhat of a celebrity at the top teaching Hospital in the world (not mentioning the name) and gets studied a lot by students when he is there (he a walking talking teaching tool). Without getting into details his internal physiology is no longer human. Of all the things he has endured he has more fear of having chemo again than any surgery they could ever do to him. He told me they could "gut me like a fish......no problem, just don't give me chemo again".

I'll pass on some advise, well not really advise but something my dad said when my wife asked him what he thought about during his ordeals. She asked what kept you going, did you pray, feel sorrow, despair? He said no, he simply thought about getting better.
 
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And here I thought I had problems...you sir, are an inspiration!
I need to bookmark this thread so I can bring it up everytime I feel like or think I have a problem.
Thank you for sharing and sincere hopes that the worst is behind you and you get better everyday.
 
Well 70's Rockfan you suggested I check out this thread.

I went to the emergency room in November of 2011 because I was having trouble breathing. I woke up three days later having had a full laryngectomy and breathing through a hole in my neck..

It seems they got it all. Visiting my ENT specialist every six months is a routine where my TEP (allows me to talk) is replaced. I'd gladly trade "whatever" to have a scar and the ability to use my own vocal cords.
 
Three years ago, some fellow turned left immediately in front of me. Probably texting, but I can't prove it. Totaled out my restored 1947 Plymouth P15 Coupe. Spent the night and next day in the emergency room/hospital.
And in the process of body scans, MRIs, found a spot on my lung.
Monitored the lung for about a year and ultimately had the top half of my left lung removed. Recovered completely from that, and have no symptoms.
At the expense of sounding "religious" I attribute this to God's intervention. Had I not had the accident I would never have know about the lung problem. Praise God!
 
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