My dad died in the 80s of brain cancer. It all started when he had a backache that would not go away. Doctors couldn’t figure it out until a few years later they did a scan on him and found a huge tumor on his pancreas that was pressing against his spine. So he had that removed and was fine for a year or two. Then they found out he had lung cancer. So took out his lung. Then it moved to his brain, and that was all she wrote. He was 54.
My younger brother died when he was 43. Started with his back (just like my dad) and they couldn’t find anything. They thought maybe something in his backbone was pinching the spinal cord so they were going to operate and look around. Well, the morning before the surgery he woke up and couldn’t move his entire right side. First thought was stroke and they rushed him to the hospital.
They did the CT scan and MRIs and found out he had brain cancer. Seems his skull was full of tiny tumors. One of the specialists said the inside of his head looked like a bubble gum machine. He started radiation and died 2 months later.
My twin sister died at age 53. She had breast cancer at age 46 and had a double mastectomy and went through radiation and chemo. At the time they caught it, it was stage 2 so they were confident all would be well. And for a little over five years she was fine. And her blood work was perfect. Then two months after that blood work, her back started hurting her and she could barely stand up. And she had lost her appetite.Doctors thought it was arthritis and that’s what a CT scan looked like. So they had her go to physical therapy. But after a month or so of that, her boyfriend got rushed to the hospital. She was up there visiting him and she suddenly fainted and smacked her head on the floor.
The hospital, due to rules, had to check her out and did blood work on her and did a head scan to make sure she was okay. Blood work came back and all her levels were screwed up, and they found a small mass on her brain. Did a CT scan of her entire body, and the “arthritis” was actually bone cancer.
Apparently she had breast cancer again (this time stage 4) (not the same kind as the first time, but a different kind), which had metastasized to her spine and to her brain. She died three or four months later.
I always thought I’d be the one dying of cancer as all the men in the family had died by age 54 of cancer. But instead my twin died from it. I guess she got my cancer gene or something instead of me.
My wife is a survivor of 2 different cancers. The first one was revealed in a routine mammogram. Docs took out the cancerous lump, along with some lymph node. She had chemo and radiation, without losing her hair or getting nauseous once. No recurrence, but her arm on that side has mild lymphedema (swelling due to missing lymph ducts.)
The colon cancer announced itself with bad abdominal cramps, bad enough to go to the ER on a Sunday night. It was right at the start of the large intestine. The surgeon took out half her colon (now she has a semi-colon) and re-attached the small intestine to what was left. It all works pretty well, though it now takes her longer to poop.
One thing about cancer: it’s not fair. If you want fairness, find something else. Find another illness.
Smoke and damage your lungs? That’s one you.
Eat a shit diet and damage your heart? That’s on you.
Walk around 100 pounds overweight and shove sugar down your throat? On you.
Not that people deserve to die, but people know the hazards of living a hazardous life.
But cancer doesn’t give a shit about your life. People get it and often have no control over how it started.
I’m sorry you, your family, and your son were cheated - cheated of years. OTOH, it’s a disease that reminds you what life is. On the headstone, there’s day you were born, and the day you died - and that line in the middle - that line in the middle is your life. It’s your friends, your hobbies, your hopes, fears, joys, dreams, coffee breaks, and everything that made it all what it was.
My mother was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer last spring. Routine mammogram spotted it. She went through surgery, chemo, and radiation and by December was done. When she started the docs gave her an 85% 5-year survival chance. The docs said there was “no sign” of the cancer 6 weeks after treatment but of course they can’t say she’s “cured.” She has had many side effects from the treatment, including CHF, which has taken just as much treatment and more hospitalization than the cancer ever did. She was 65 when she was diagnosed.
My FIL was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue about 4 weeks ago. He originally had a sore throat and some ear pain, the doc diagnosed it as strep and gave him some antibiotics. When that didn’t clear it up they did a CT scan and found the tumor. He’s one of those “I can’t figger out what the doctors are saying so I’ll just do what they tell me to do” types. He doesn’t understand, or has made no effort to understand, anything about his cancer but it seems obvious to me its at least at stage 2, as the biopsy of the tonsil showed cancer as well. He has yet to start radiation, but the doctors say (according to him) he has a good prognosis. He’s 71. He’s had several bouts with skin cancer in the past but his docs say they arent related.
Just tonight – yes, tonight – I found out my 93yo grandfather likely has bile duct cancer. When my grandmother passed away a couple of years ago she had an in-home caregiver for the final months of her life. That caregiver has remained friends with my grandfather and when she was visiting earlier this week she commented that he looked a bit yellow. He went to the ER and, following some abnormal lab work numbers, had a scan done and found the cancer. It looks like it’s already spread to nearby lymph nodes. Already we know his prognosis is very poor.
A family friend died of cancer. I’m blanking on where the cancer started, but I remember hearing that his first symptom was a sore shoulder after it had metastasized to his bones. That fact continues to upset me. How can we rest easy when any random ache could be the first sign that we’re already dying?
Back in January I was at my girlfriend’s helping her move. I gave my mother a call to just give a quick check in. She didn’t sound right. She told me she was out of breath and couldn’t walk more than a few feet without stopping. The quickness she agreed to go to urgent care made me realize things were bad. Once I got there I knew it was worse than she let on. I knew from going on many medical calls that urgent care was not good enough I was taking her to the emergency room.
I was sure It was going to be pneumonia. I was always on her about respiratory infections. I told her at her age she couldn’t screw around and she had to go to the doctor when she was sick. I thought that’s what happened, she let things go too long and now she had pneumonia. They were able to determine pretty quickly she had a pleural effusion. Fluid was in her pleural cavity and the fluid was constricting her breathing. They took over a liter of fluid out. That’s a hell of a lot. A day or so later a doctor who’s bedside manner will earn him a punch in the nose if I ever see him again told us it was cancer. A tumor in the lung broke through into the pleural cavity. The asshole doctor wanted her to stay in the hospital and wait for their oncologists to show up in a day or two but we broke her out. We put together a team for her and started her on out patient treatment.
She’s been doing chemo and immunotherapy ever since. She’s 86. I did now how long it will give her but it has improved her quality of life. She had to have fluid drained a couple more times but since then the tumor has shrunk which meant her breathing problems went away and her last lung tap was more than 6 months ago. Her mother lived to be 104 so I’m hoping to have her here a while longer.
She was a smoker but quit 40-50 years ago and was never a heavy smoker. My sister the nurse thinks it’s as likely or more likely that it might be from all the talcum powder she used all her life.
A couple days ago I was talking with another pilot at work. Her husband, also a pilot for my employer, is 48. About 18 months ago he went from the picture of health to weak and worthless in the space of about a month. They went to the doc who ordered a full batch of tests & such. Scan reveals an orange-sized lump of something in the lower abdomen. Biopsy confirms colorectal tumor. Surprise!
Fast forward 18 months to now. He’s been surgeried, irradiated, and chemo’d twice. Equipped with a permanent ostomy he’s now getting ready to go back to work. Of course with the FAA’s knowledge and blessing. But that was a real gut-punch for both of them. It’s unclear to me, and probably to them, what the ongoing risk of recurrence is. But it isn’t zero.
I volunteer at the local cancer clinic. Or did pre-COVID. I’ve got stories and stories. Plus living in a condo in FL I’ve got lots of elderly friends & neighbors. More stories.
It doesn’t just happen to the elderly. It doesn’t just happen to somebody else’s family. For most folks, much as @TRC4941 said up-thread about her young step-son, the early signs are generic and ambiguous. Then something changes and you decide to go see the doc.
My bro found lump in his throat when shaving…he was 55 or so at the time. It turns out it was Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Doctor was a bit on the fence. He said it was slow growing, it was very treatable and when they find it in an older person, they often decide the side effects don’t merit treatment. Bro decided to have it treated. I think it was all chemo (outpatient), no surgery. All went well. To this day no recurrence and he’s still with us.
Doctors should provide statistics on the likelihood of recurrence, remission, and cure to every patient.
A guy I knew had most of his urinary bladder removed due to cancer. He had several rounds of horrible chemotherapy and a follow up surgery, all over the course of a year. He had very few “good” days during that year.
I was reading online about his specific cancer and found plenty of evidence that it was never cured, death was merely delayed. When I gave him some of the papers, he was gobsmacked. Had he known he wouldn’t have endured anything beyond the original biopsy.
There certainly are many docs who are not good at explaining the reality. And there are docs who are themselves uncomfortable with the reality. There are also many patients who are in no mood to hear the “odds” and focus only on “hope”. As a result, overtreatment that reduces quality of life more than it extends quantity of life is commonplace. To the industry’s credit, that situation is improving. Albeit not everywhere and not at what the more forward thinkers consider to be a quick enough pace.
But …
One of my favorite oncologists says it like this: “Every cancer patient is an experiment with an n of 1 and no control”. There is a decently understood curve of survival, maybe even a bell curve of survival, for most types of cancer. But somebody gets to be the unlucky soul at the left = short end of the curve. And somebody else gets to be the right = long end of the curve.
The shape of the curve says a lot about how the doc’s lifetime box score will look when he/she finally retires. But it says remarkably little about how the poor scared schlub sitting in exam room C right now will come out of this. That doesn’t argue for keeping the curve a secret from the patient. But it does argue that the average, or even the central standard deviations’-worth, isn’t that particular patient’s destiny.
Anyone in or near this situation should read this book.
How you choose to handle severe potentially fatal disease, be it cancer or something else, is one of the most important decisions you will make in your life, or the life of someone else you’re responsible for. Yet most of us spend a lifetime with our eyes scrunched shut and our fingers in our ears shouting “La la la I can’t hear you!!” until reality comes crashing into your room like a velociraptor.
Nobody does good work while surprised and scared. Some prior study and a bunch of quiet thought in a quiet moment ups your game a bunch. It’s worth it. Truly it is.
It’s your life. It’s your end-of-life. And, … it’s your death. Don’t blow it.
I sometimes wondered at what point a person says “I gotta get this checked out.” I found out, and I wish I had acted sooner. I had to urinate often, and desperately. The doc gave me meds for an enlarged prostate but didn’t do any any tests. Months later routine blood work showed a high PSA level. Greatly shortening the story, it took another years’ worth of painful tests before I was told I had prostate cancer, a 5 on a scale of 1 to 5. Fortunately, it had not metasticised. I had the surgery and everything looked good until blood work six months later showed my PSA had gone back up. Apparently, something escaped, but it’s microscopic and they can’t find it. I was put on hormone therapy and the numbers went down again. So now I’m in a holding pattern, getting regular blood tests to make sure it stays that way. I was taken off the therapy in August to see what may happen. I’ll have another blood test in a couple of weeks and I’m hoping it stays where it is. They told me, however, that this therapy isn’t a cure, and that eventually, something will show on a Cat/Pet scan that is treatable by radiation or chemo. I try to be positive and optimistic, even joke about it, but sometimes I feel like a dead man walking.
Birth is a death sentence. We are all dying. I don’t mean that to be morbid. How fast you are dying is just a question of degree. Live the life you have now.
Yeah, I had that problem on Thursday. I was trying to get my mom out of the hospital, and the doctor wanted us to wait for a test (that had already been conducted) to be read. He said we should wait for it to be negative. I said, “even if it’s positive, I think we want to leave”.
Fortunately, he got the radiologist to read the test early, so we could both be satisfied. He got to get the negative test result (my mom hadn’t had a heart attack) and we got my mom out of the hospital, and back to rehab.
But there’s no way we were going to give consent for an invasive heart procedure, no matter how bad the stress test came out.
Unlike XOldiesJock, I had no symptoms so the first hint was a sudden and significant increase in PSA*. This was followed by two rounds of antibiotics (to rule out infection), biopsy, evaluation of options, and eventually (robotic) surgery. Ten years later my PSA level is below the detection threshold, but at least as far as cancer is concerned I’ve disengaged my chicken-counter.
*I know that PSA screening has been the target of a lot of criticism of late, and in some cases deservedly so: it’s a tool, and like any tool it can be misused. But I’m an exception to the maxim that “while most men die with prostate cancer, very few die from it” — post-surgery pathology identified a “high-grade” tumor, meaning that I’d most likely be dead by now. And according to the urologist, the first symptom would have been intense and intractable lower back pain, with things going downhill from there. So it literally saved both my life and the quality thereof.
Yes, congestive heart failure. Apologies for using the acronym.
She has had several hospitalizations since March. She had a heart valve replaced (the same procedure Mick Jagger had), and there were several complications from that, all stemming from what was essentially a weak hear exacerbated by the chemo treatment. She also had several hospitalizations related to fluid retention around the heart, and her diuretic regimen is constantly changing. Its been a battle – admittedly, one not as severe as her chemo treatments – and from the sound of it it will be with her for the rest of her life.
