No. Being terminal would be liberating. Take care of a few financial matters for my daughter’s benefit, then all bets are off. After all, what can anybody do to me at that point? Kill me?
Yes. I have a friend with colon cancer and she’s going through chemo. Like Athena’s mom she is on a roller coaster of feeling bad and feeling good but she looks to be having a great time on those great days. Plus she’s only 37, a couple years older than me. Way too young to die - her only option is to fight. She’d be my inspiration to do chemo if I ever came to need it.
A friend who had bladder cancer went through surgery and a round of chemo that was horrible. Six months later it was back and he declined further intervention. From then on (maybe three months) he was the happiest I’d ever seen him.
With only 15% survival odds with the chemo? Nope, give me a few gallons of morphine and send me home.
Of course. I don’t want to die. I’m only 30 and I’m engaged, so the side effects would be worth the chance.
I would answer differently if I were over 60.
Of course, this is a hard discussion without knowing exactly what cancer is being discussed but I don’t think I’m on board with the OP’s presumption that if you make it two years you’re basically out of the woods.
In my experience, most patients that got lucky with the chemo and went into remission and hit the two year mark suffered a recurrence and died during year 3 or 4.
I was very active on a on-line pancreatic cancer support group for about 3 years – I finally resigned because I felt I’d grown too far away from the events that brought me to the group. But while cancer patients are urged to ignore the statistics – “you are not a statistic, the median is not the message” - the actually statistics are a actually somewhat grimmer than the general public’s interpretation…most pancreatic cancer chemo treatments, on average, add two months to the expected lifespan. While a 15% or 20% 2 year survival rate may sound like a good bet, you really need to look at the 5 and 10 year survival rates.
As depressing as the on-line support groups could be, the picture they paint is actually rosier than the reality. That is because ( at least on the group where I acted as a moderator ) the long term survivors were very active for a few years and very much on their message of the pursuing survival, while the more typical patients die within a few months of joining the group. so the long term survivors made up maybe 20% of the postings in the group but if you looked at the membership over time they actually made up only 1 or 2% of the group membership.
This.
If I was younger I’d try, but if at the end of the two years I didn’t get a really better survival percentage I’d quit.
My aunt was buried just this past Wednesday. She was 85, and less than nine weeks earlier was diagnosed with cancer in three different parts of her body. She chose to forgo chemo. I’ve heard how chemo can almost kill you, I wouldn’t want to go through the pain.
My mom had chemo, I warned her to expect to feel like total shit, she said no her doctor told her she would be dancing.:rolleyes: I’m guessing she misunderstood or something.
After one chemo treatment she was crying and saying she felt like she was dieing, had to have blood transfusions as her marrow was essentially not producing blood cells.
I dunno honestly, I think if I got cancer now with a young son I’d go for anything life extending possible. If my son is grown and my cancer can’t be cut off, I’d just opt for all you can eat morphine and enjoy the time I had left.
I’d fight like hell
My father died of leukemia, and I swore at the time that there was no way in hell of undergoing chemo for those kinds of odds.
Now I’ve got little kids of my own, now six and four, and I’d have to do it, if nothing else, to give them a little more time with me. I have some memories of when I was four, but not as many as when I was six.
I’d at least try it. My grandfather was given similar odds, and ended up dying cancer-free 15 years later of something entirely unrelated (at 87).
When my grandfather died of cancer and was cremated, his bones were stained green from chemo.
I wouldn’t rule it out entirely, but I’d be really wary of it.
I agree with Ann above that a 2 year expectancy is a weak carrot for several months of chemo. 5 year odds are what i would judge on. But on the other hand, pancreatic cancer experience can be a bad reference point because it is kind of one of the worst.
Speaking of one of the worst, my dad is currently doing chemo for lung cancer. Caught after they realized something else was wrong after poor recovery from minor surgery. The first round knocked him down pretty good and they decided to wait and do a lower dosage this time. Second dosage yesterday, so far so good. But even when it was bad he could still enjoy others company. He couldn’t go skydiving but luckily he never did that before chemo either.
I don’t know. For many the main side effects are hair loss, nausea and tiredness. Is that really too big a burden to risk for more time? I tend to think it’d be worth it if I wasn’t bankrupting my family for it.
I’m saying “Yes, absolutely” but perhaps more because I find the poll options to be a little confusing to me. Maybe I’m just too analytical on this issue.
Age and family don’t seem to be relevant factors in my decision. In fact, if anything, family seems like a reason to die quickly. I lost my mom in an instant, from a car crash. As bad as that was, I simply cannot imagine having to watch her waste away the way my wife did with her mother.
To me, the only issue is a cost/benefit analysis. The odds in this case really don’t seem all that good, so even the “Yes, absolutely” option doesn’t describe my position very well. I need to know things like the extent of the chemo and its likely effects. What are the odds of a happy/healthy life after chemo? (For example, a client’s wife went through chemo in her 30’s and has neurological damage that will prevent her from working more than part-time light-duty jobs for the rest of her life.) This is why I’d need some serious discussions with my doctors, and why I’d seek out a second or third opinion.
By the way, one other consideration: In a situation like this, I’m actually worth more dead than alive. Without me working in my business, there is no business and there is no income for my family. No income means no house. With chemo - even if successful - I see no outcome other than losing everything financially. I suppose we’d avoid being homeless if we could find relatives to take us in. But dead, my life insurance policy is designed to pay off the house and provide a cash cushion to keep the business going long enough to sell it at a reasonable price.