My heart goes out to everyone posting who has suffered or suffered loss. It’s an awful disease and a very frightening thing.
I’ve had a cancer and a precancer, and I’m good; so I’m not sure whether I should describe myself as lucky or unlucky.
The (skin) precancer was during a period of immunosuppression (for UC). They tell you to be very careful about exposure to sun, so when I found a dry, flaky patch on my face I had it checked out - caught it at the precancerous stage when they can just whiz it off with a liquid nitrogen spray. So I guess I was looking out for that one, because of the immunosuppression.
The bladder cancer story I detailed in this thread. I pissed blood - once. If you have UC, it gets you into the habit of looking, if you know what I mean, and so that’s how I noticed. Turns out that pissing blood gets you into the system fast-tracked. (As a follow up to the earlier thread, I had my second follow-up on Thursday, and I’m still clear. One more follow-up to go.)
Went to the doctor for something else, it was time for the regular prostate check, doctor went “hmm,” sent me off to the specialist, had biopsy, yup, cancer, prostatectomy in April, now now PSA tests every 3 months, likely having radiation therapy in the spring.
Q: “what about incontinence?”
A” “Depends!” (rimshot)
My best friend going back two decades was driving back to work from lunch one day when he felt a distinct pain in his crotch. He told me he had never felt that particular type of pain there before and, I guess to his credit, decided to schedule an appointment with the doctor.
It was testicular cancer and he ultimately had to get an orchiectomy followed by chemotherapy. He was especially stressed out because his wife was pregnant with their first child.
It’s been about 10 years or so and he seems to be doing fine. He’s still on edge about any possible symptoms and takes pains to avoid as many known carcinogens as he can. Can’t say I blame him.
My SIL felt a lump in her breast and panicked, electing to either ignore it or watch its growth — all without telling anyone. Fortunately she eventually did see a doctor and underwent treatment including a mastectomy, radiation(?) and chemo.
They gave her an average of only five years but she’s beaten the odds so far. This was 14 years ago.
I wasn’t there when my father discovered his leukemia, but I guess he got pretty sick suddenly. It was aggressive and the treatment was tough. I was back by then and decided that it wouldn’t be worth it for me for that much pain for just a few more months.
It’s worth mentioning that there are many aspects of cancer treatment that have made significant advances in the last 5, 10, 20 years. Especially so in side-effect management.
So for those of us of an age to have watched our parents, etc., suffer and die with 1990s cancer treatment, bear in mind the same fate does not necessarily await you if you end up with a similar diagnosis.
And for darn sure whatever problem you do have, the sooner it gets addressed the less intense the treatment will be.
In my volunteering I spent many hours in a large chemo infusion suite with a couple dozen patients getting treatment at any time. The folks don’t look like nearly dead walking corpses. They don’t come in looking like lambs led to slaughter facing another week of torture. Heck, most of them have all or at least most of their hair.
Bottom line:
Don’t let your legitimate but possibly misplaced fear of going through your parent’s chemo deter you from seeking care. You can still say “no” if the treatment tradeoff doesn’t make sense to you. But don’t dismiss it out of hand before you’re in possession of all the actual facts about current treatments.
Thanks for the kind words from those who replied to my post. I could write volumes on the unfairness of my son’s diagnosis, death and everything in between. It’s probably one of the main things that has happened to me that will shape my life for the rest of my days.
Oh, I will, and apologies if I gave the wrong impression. It’s kind of like living near a “dormant” volcano (which I do): it may be quiet now, but there’s no guarantee about the future.
In my mother’s case (lung cancer) it was “sheer dumb luck”: an incidental finding on a pre-op chest x-ray before surgery for her carotid arteries. I don’t know if they told her about the spot before or after that surgery.
They caught it pretty early, and removed that lung a month or so later. Unfortunately for her, the official recommendations for her stage etc. changed shortly AFTER the surgery - so she did not have chemo / radiation followup, which might have changed the outcome; a year after the first lung was removed it was confirmed to have occurred / recurred in the second lung.
Dunno what the initial finding was for my father (prostate); probably issues with urinating. For my brother, it was routine PSA checks. In his case, since the approach with Dad was “you’ll die with it, not from it” and that was rather disastrously wrong, my brother and his doctors took a more aggressive approach.
For my husband, very early stage melanoma was caught when he went for a routine annual visit to the dermatologist (inspired by two people he knew having skin cancers removed). He’d spotted a mole that was beginning to hit some of the ABC criteria. It got yanked; came back as “well, good thing you didn’t wait” and they carved a slightly larger chunk to get better margins.
For me: not cancer, though I’ve sure tried my best. Routine screening colonoscopy, done as a “while we’re at it” when I needed an upper GI. No bowel symptoms, but that screening scope caused the doctor to say “I wouldn’t have wanted you to go five years with that going on”.
In the case if a friend’s 4 year old granddaughter: headaches and uncontrollable hypertension. Childhood cancer can bite my shiny flabby ass.
THIS is why I am so gung-ho on screening colonoscopies. It’s a fair bet that mine saved my life - and yours too. Well, mine saved my life, yours saved your life Though I think it’s entirely possible that mine will ultimately save others’ lives given how, um, evangelical I’ve become on the topic.
It can certainly strike people under the age of 50 (and I think they’re lowering the recommended age these days), as Chadwick Boseman and our own Maggie the Ocelot prove. But it’s still worth doing the screening as soon as you can.
Though I think it’s entirely possible that mine will ultimately save others’ lives given how, um, evangelical I’ve become on the topic.