lunhs cancer

Cancer?!? This can't be happening. What did I do to deserve this? Am I being Punked? Is this my fault? This isn't real. Why me? Cancer. The Big C. The malady that once was only spoken about in whispers. The Voldemort of diseases. With so much fear surrounding this diagnosis, is it any wonder we end up asking, " Why me? " Why does a 14 year old vegetarian get bone cancer ? Why does a 37 year old non-smoking mom of three little ones get lung cancer ? Why would both patients be the same person? ~~~ When I was diagnosed with lung cancer, the first person we contacted (after my parents) was my pediatric oncologist . Could this be a very delayed recurrence of my osteosarcoma? Was this caused by treatment for my first cancer? Is there something about ME that explains how I got two cancers before the age of 40? A biopsy answered the first question. No, this was adenocarcinoma of the lung. A totally different cancer than my childhood osteosarcoma. My pediatric oncologist conf...

This belief has driven how I respond to stressful situations throughout my life. When I was pregnant with our first child, I took every class I could find, read lots of books, and watched many hours of birth videos (thanks to my midwife sister). I learned and got ready. When I found out we were having twins, I read books and asked questions of every twin I knew. As the pregnancy progressed and took a complicated turn, we were told that the girls would likely be born severely premature and if they survived they would face a lifetime of challenges. In response, I started reading about raising children with special needs. I subscribed to blogs written by some amazing families with special children. I got prepared. When I was diagnosed with lung cancer, I dove into the research and tried to learn everything I could about this disease. Actually, that is not quite true. For the first few weeks I actively avoided reading anything about it. I knew enough to understand how dire it was. I couldn...

I am realizing that I have been, perhaps, too delicate in describing my health situation. People keep asking me questions that indicate that I need to be more blunt about the current state of affairs.  So here are the bold facts, no holds barred: I have Stage 4, metastatic adenocarcinoma, a non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). It is incurable, and considered terminal with an average life expectancy of eight months. Since there is no cure, there is no end date to the treatment.  I will continue to have chemo (or other treatments) for the rest of my life. There is no plan to do surgery since the cancer has already spread throughout my body, making removing it from my lung pointless according to current thinking on the subject. As of my last CT scan, my current chemo regiment appears to be working. This is a great thing, but it is by no means permanent. The tricky thing with cancer is that is can mutate and become resistant to the chemo at any time.  I am currently on a ...

When I was in high school, our well-meaning cheerleaders painted the inspirational phrase, "ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING" on the wall of the lunchroom. While their intentions were good, the execution was poor in that they chose to paint it in our school colors, yellow and purple. They alternated the color with each letter, and unfortunately chose a very light shade of yellow. When painted on the off-white walls, the saying looked like this: A T T D  I  E E Y H N I remember staring at it for ages, wondering what this cryptic message could mean. ----- I have received a number of beautiful cards and messages from people, many of which have remarked on how I am keeping such a positive attitude through all this. I definitely appreciate the kind words, but I'm not quite sure how else I could proceed. I certainly have my moments where it hits me how totally crappy this all is, but I don't see much point in dwelling on that, since it is pretty hard to function if I just feel sad al...