Well, they’re mosaic knitted potholders (ask FairyChatMom, she has one) and I think they look pretty cool.
How does your mom work part time jobs if they don’t pay her? Isn’t that volunteering?
I’m glad this thread came back around - my sister had very good news. She had a second LEEP procedure done, and they think at this point it got all the cancer. She’s due to go in for a three-month checkup, and if that comes out clean, she’s good to get pregnant and have a hysterectomy after the birth. Fingers crossed for everything to work out okay.
Ladies, get your Paps. Catching cervical cancer early is hee-yuge.
I’m sure the potholders do look cool-- I just meant that a gift which doesn’t need dusting beats an expensive knicknack anyday.
One could call it volunteering. Actually, one of her “part-time jobs” is her involvment with an international non-profit organization. Um, think the Masons or Knights of Columbus, only different and only for women. And one really is a part-time job.
Sorry to join the party late. Another “survivor” checking in here. I probably have a somewhat different perspective to offer and very little useful information to anyone’s questions anyway. I was diagnosed close to twenty years ago with an unusual form of ovarian cancer. Unusual mostly because I was only ten years old. They weren’t sure how much it had spread until they operated about six days into the diagnosis. Luckily, it had not spread to any other organs and they called it stage two since the tumor had already latched on to one F. tube. I had a few hellatious months of chemo and that was (mostly) it. A few problems here and there, and doctors/nurses aplenty who accuse me of lying when I have to give medical history. Lol.
I didn’t have any obvious issues before either bout. I’m clumsy as hell, but I’m never sick, except for the cervical cancer. 
Twice, 10 years apart, caught early at stage I. Cryotherapy and frequent (every 3 months for 5 years, then scaled back to every 6 months) paps the first time. Last time (3 years ago - self employed and no insurance) was more aggressive cryotherapy, and a pap every three months forever or until this insurance will pay for a hysterectomy. Or until next time, when they’ll pay for almost everything. BTW – HPV is not the only cause, just the most common.
Ladies, please go get the girls squished and the bits swabbed every year. It’s important.
By a very wide margin - some sources say 99% of cervical cancers are caused by HPV. Not to pick a fight with you or anything; I just want anyone waffling on getting the HPV vaccination to understand the realities of HPV and cervical cancer.
Holy crap! 10 years old with ovarian cancer? :eek: Can you tell us more…how did you and your parents find out?
No disagreement here. I simply meant that it is still very important for every woman to have a pelvic and pap regularly, even if she’s virgin who is too old for the vaccine.
Tell her congrats from me!
Heartily seconded. That’s how mine was caught - I was totally asymptomatic and felt fine. If I’d skipped a year, the cancer may well have become invasive before it was caught, and it would have been much nastier than a LEEP - and the survival rate much poorer. (It was apparently progressing much more quickly than most - I’d always had clean Paps, every year without fail, and most people have years of abnormal Paps before progressing to actual cancer.)
Ultimately they found out when I was in a lot of pain one night, but there had been some symptoms before then. My parents were always really good about regular check-ups, and I had one where my urine came back that I had an infection. They thought it was weird that I hadn’t complained of anything. So I took the antibiotic, and had the follow-up test, which came back positive. Repeat several times. I also appeared to be gaining lots of weight, was very tired, and had a fever on some days. My mom thought I was coming down with something, but I woke up in the middle of the night with terrible abdominal pain. They took me to the doctor in the morning, who thought I had appendicitis. They ran some tests and it seemed to confirm it. At some point they must have gotten a red flag because they decided to do an ultrasound and then they weren’t really sure what was going on then. They sent me to the hospital where they did a CAT scan. They let my mom look at the results (she’s freakishly interested in medical stuff) and she said it was crazy, the tumor took up my whole abdomen and all my organs were smushed up against the outside. 
So they ran lots of tests and things for almost a week, then operated to remove the tumor, one ovary and one F. tube. The tumor ruptured as they were removing it, which has always made me feel particularly squeamish, but they told my parents that they “cleaned me out real good…” After that I was there for another week to recover, went home for a while, and then started chemo. The best thing I can say about chemo is that it was traumatic enough that I don’t remember most of it. (Sorry, that’s probably not what you needed to hear!) But, I understand why my parents consented to it and I still wouldn’t do any different if it had been me in charge of making the decision.
I know chemo 20 years ago was a crapload more debilitating than it is now…no wonder you blocked it out! How much school did you miss, and did stupid kids tease you, or were people understanding?
I’m thinking you could be one of those people on Mystery Diagnosis on the Discovery Channels.
And if it’s not too personal (and feel free to smack me down if I overstep) were there any adverse affects on your fertility?
How did you guys deal with the loss of taste buds? My mouth has felt coated the last couple of weeks*, and eating is starting to be more of a chore rather than something I enjoy. My oncologist cheerfully admitted he was destroying my taste buds, but said they would come back. How long does that take after chemo is over?
I MUST get more protein into my diet…I’m going to try mixing up tuna fish with spicy pickles and some rice wine vinegar. I’ve also picked up some lemon drops…I heard sour was the way to go.
*I do have both Biotene mouthwash and some wash my oncologist gave me. No mouth sores yet, thank Og, but I hate feeling like I have kitty litter mouth all day long.
I don’t have any advice, but I can offer support. I hate the thought of not having working taste buds - I love tasting stuff. Your mouth does heal very fast, though, so I’d expect them to come back fairly quickly.
While taking the Prednizone, I ate nothing using metal utensils and drank nothing from a can.
As for the taste buds in general, I started eating more spicy foods and foods with strong tastes. I don’t remember how long it took for my taste buds to go back to normal, but it couldn’t have been longer than a few months.
Eat dill pickles. It corrodes the coating off, or something. And your taste buds do come back. Something to look forward to!
(my 2 cents on the “survivor” thing) I hate saying anything about being a cancer survivor, because my cancer (follicular non-Hodgkins lymphoma) is not curable. I take chemo every six months, and they hope that they can stave off re-occurence at least five years, because each time it comes back, it will come back stronger. The only chance of cure I have is to have a stem cell transplant from a blood relative. My mother died of breast cancer, my dad died of diabetes complications, my sister was in prison last time I tracked her down, and my brother is bipolar and Og knows where most of the time. Not a great chance of any help there. But I don’t want to go through that downer of a story for any casual conversation. :rolleyes:
I didn’t have “loss of taste buds” exactly, but everything tasted WEIRD, and several things I usually love made me nauseous. By trial and error I found a few ultra-reliable standbys, though: very garlicky lentil soup from a nearby Greek restaurant, and tom kha (coconut milk-based soup with lemongrass, cilantro, mushrooms, chilis, etc.) with lots of tofu from a Thai place six blocks from my apartment. I didn’t have a car at the time, so proximity was important - nonetheless I barfed into a hedge on the walk home from picking up some Thai soup to go, once. Not pretty. Fortunately it was before I’d et any of the soup, so it didn’t go to waste…
Things I can’t stand now also tasted good: plain Spaghettios in particular. :eek:
How do you feel about ginger?
I was lucky enough not to have to deal with that too much. I had a lot of heartburn, so I avoided spicy stuff, and I couldn’t stand alcohol during that period (not a drinker, anyway, so no loss). I do remember asking people if what we were eating tasted particularly bland to them, and getting a negative response. Mostly, though, I just waited it out.
There was a Cafe Society thread on Miracle Fruit once - you may want to try it out to see if it will make currently weird-tasting stuff taste good again.
BTW, keep up with whatever anti-nausea drugs work for you. You run the risk of hating food you used to love because you tried to eat it while feeling sick. F’rinstance, I can’t stand popsicles anymore, because they offered them to me during the infusion to prevent mouth sores.
I like ginger. Altoids had some ginger candies…I don’t know if they still make them.
I was told when I start the Taxol I won’t need the Emend (anti nausea pill) anymore. I still have plenty of Compazine left, so I will pop those as needed.
I lost the ability to taste salt every time I took chemo. I could taste every other flavor, sweet, sour, bitter, etc, but not salt. This ruined a lot of foods for me. Soda is absolutely awful if you can’t taste the salt in it. Peppers and other hot spices though I could still taste, and seasoned accordingly. When my taste buds grew back, I had to back off on the spices though. The new taste buds were super sensitive.