laineya

Go Lisa! You can live with CC as a chronic disease…and have a “normal??!” life too. The hardest part (I find) is trying to explain it to others. They expect you to get a diagnosis, a cut, some radiation or chemo or both and then be done.

More and more, we’re finding cancer doesn’t really work that way all the time… Just keep going, explaining and scanning. : )

Look great & feel great! Keep fighting!

Nn, you know what I learned really early in my cancer treatment? Don’t ask questions that you don’t really want the answer to… this is really helpful advice and I learned it the very hard way! (Someone really frightened me–for no real reason–I didn’t even have that type of cancer!) It seems like not asking everything would be counter to what cancer is all about…but I fight my cancer every single day without knowing a whole lot of specific information…all the time. Things like statistics (don’t apply to me, anyway!) and what exact measurement my largest tumor is currently, and my personal favorite, “What is my prognosis?!” (How do they know? I’ve never had CC before!)

Knowing every single detail about everything doesn’t make my fight any better (or worse!) In fact, working on goals keeps me focused on what I have to do every single day to beat this terrible disease. Believe me, in my life I am the major info. junkie, communicator, etc. & I am married to an engineer. (They just want to “fix” things!) Cancer has taught me that I don’t always need to know everything. : ) My oncologist (whom I love and trust!!) takes care of those details for me…and lets me know when I need to know. We work on “goals” together and celebrate successes. You can’t tackle the entire disease all at once, although that is so tempting. You have to take steps and focus on parts. I have to get rid of my mets before we work on other things. Then we’ll work on the main tumor and then remission. From there, I can become a “maintenace” case–where they scan for follow-ups. I have an “outline” –now I have to do battle with the day-to-day. Get plans and goals for treatment. Get what you all want in there…things that are important to you.

I am not advocating being a stupid sheep…just pick what is really important to know and work with that…then learn some more. This site is really helpful in finding out what you might want to know… Also, if you have any control over the situation, make sure your friend has an oncologist that they “jive” with. I don’t care if you go to the #1 person in the world–if they don’t get you and you don’t work well with them…your treatment may be successful; but miserable. Who wants to be miserable?

Good luck to you and your friend! Hope to see you in the “good news” section, soon!

I actually had a tumor in my left humerus. It ate all the bone away…so now I have an arm full of bone cement, plates and screws…but it works and doesn’t seem to have any additional cancer development. I am so thankful for the arm problem or I would never have found the cc!

I have mets to my bone and liver, only. My bone spots were in my hip, spine and my left humerus. In fact, the only reason we caught my cc was because I thought I had tendonitis in my shoulder. I had an adenocarcinoma when they biopsied and they finally tracked it to cc. The tumor in my humerus was removed & radiated and the orthopedic oncologist and medical oncologist both felt that the spots in the other spots would be eliminated by chemo. Most people have mets somewhere else; but they do go to bone.