Former Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma Patient

unknown said:

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Hi there, I am Tiger, chemo is a real pain in the bum,but now they have so many new nausea drugs that it is alot easier than it was that long ago.Take heart that you are a cancer survivor of fifteen years!!!! That in itself is inspiring. Breast cancer is getting to be a fashionable disease these days,welcome to the club!!! I have stage IV metastatic breast cancer in the liver. I am 31 years old,wife,mother of two,blah blah blah. The key to this whole cancer thing is to tell it what to do, dont let it rule your life. Sure the chemo may make you sick the first time, and yes, you will be tired for a while after your chemo, but life goes on and so must you. I had my last chemo two weeks ago, I had it for exactly one year, every three weeks.But i am feeling my enery coming back already, I dont nap as often in the afternoons and stay up later at night. I was an emotional wreck for the first couple of months,but then I took charge of what was going on around me. Positive attitude is essential, this site and these ladies are phenomenal. I dont know how I got along without them for so long, now I dont cry or get depressed, or whine so often to my husband. When someone on here needs help, you feel stronger and more empowered because you are helping someone else,even though you have cancer!!! We are not the walking dead as most non cancer people think, we are the walking fighting!!!! When people find out about me for the first time, they are speechless,but I just shrug and say, hey its no big deal. That way i dont let myself get into the victim mode,and people dont see me as a victim, they see me as a normal person who happens to be bald and boobless on one side. You have to be comfortable with who you are and how you look, because you are still the most beautiful woman in the world to those who matter most. Ok, I am prone to rambling when I get on here, sorry, i will sign off for now, but I hope you stay connected with us and fight with us, the more the merrier!!!! I wish you all the strength in the world,and if that runs out then lean on us, that is what we are all here for.
Hugs from Tiger xo

mindycarey said:

Hi!~ I am also 31yrs old with breast cancer. I was treated in 1986 almost 15 years ago for Hodgkin's. I am really interested to hear from other people who are now popping up with secondary cancers. Were you treated with radiation? I did not revieve chemo with my treatment of Hodgkin's just radiation. They feel that is what gave me the breast cancer now. I guess maybe they don't treat Hodgkin's and Non-Hodgkin's the same way, as you recieved chemo the first go round and I didn't. I am recieving chemo now but will have to undergo mastectomy post chemo as radiation is not really a healthy option for me since a I have already recieved so much already. Would love to hear from a fellow survivor. Mindy

4 Cancers from Radiation
As an infant I was radiated in 1946 for an enlarged thymus gland in the mistaken belief that this would prevent SIDS. The amount of radiation I absorbed was equal to ten common CT studies today. After surgery, radiation and chemo treatments for four cancers (leukemia, thyroid, lymphoma, prostate), three open-heart operations, four years under Hospice care, and twenty-six years after being told I had six months to live, I believe that one of the reasons I am still alive is to tell this story so we can learn to use medical radiation with greater caution. I am firmly convinced that the proper use of radiation saves many more lives than it threatens—I have benefited from diagnostic and interventional radiation, without which I would not have survived the very diseases that excess radiation caused.

I am currently working on a book about the tragic misuse of radiation on children for benign conditions (including thymus, earache, acne, tonsils, adenoids, birthmark, mumps, fungus, etc.) and would be very interested to hear other’s stories.

I want to alert parents to the risks from the increasing amount of radiation children are receiving from CT scans today. According to a recent New England Journal of Medicine report, “there is direct evidence from epidemiologic studies that the organ doses corresponding to a common CT study result in an increased risk of cancer. The evidence is reasonably convincing for adults and very convincing for children.”