7 years NED (stage IV mets to liver and left lung)

I'm very lucky and grateful. I'll share some of our discussions.

I was a little disappointed that the white blood cell counts I watch (WBC, platelets, and absolute neuts) were a little lower than they have been the last several years. He remarked that they were perfectly normal and when I mentioned where I like to see them he said that he would suspect an infection if they were that high. I said he never mentioned infections in the years before and he said they were never that high. He looked them up on the computer and grunted his "I don't understand" sound and just said well it seems to have worked for you.

After I quit smoking and had my "instant menopause" surgery I had gained about 45 pounds (I needed to gain some but not that much) and he fussed at me for the weight gain a few years ago. He noticed that I had lost some and asked how. When I told him that I don't diet well so I just changed the way I ate (avoiding added sugars and high glycemic pastas and starches as much as possible). As it turns out he and his wife are following the same regime so we talked a lot about that and how much better we felt. He said the infusion center had recently changed their contract to exclude sugary sodas and juices.

One thing he talked about that I had never heard of was how much more detrimental abdominal adiposity (belly fat) was to colorectal patients, especially men. When I asked why men more than women, he said it was because men tend to put most of their weight gain on their tummies and that women will put in on the hips and legs as well as tummies. He did mention that the mortality rates for obese men and women has been rising just as the obesity rates have.

On the subject of how young some getting CRC are, he agreed with me that there are probably genetic tendencies "we haven't found yet". Then we talked about how much better it would be if all the different tumor markers (including CEA) were checked whenever anyone has a physical. He loved the idea and really couldn't explain why it isn't done.

On Vit D, he worries that people will take too much since the body stores it as opposed to so many other vitamins.

Lastly we talked about how much more info is out there today then 7 years ago when I was making my decision. I asked about a man I met while on chemo that had lymphoma who had been juicing for years and had like 250 of his lymph nodes removed already. Rusty died in 2008 but outlived every other patient they had ever had with his type of lymphoma by several years. He laughed that there just isn't any data for him to recommend anyone doing "what we had done" but he would never tell anyone not to.

Thanks again for your kind words and I hope you are doing great. You know it's not too late to come to Chicago!!!

Love, Lisa P.

It breaks my heart to see people as young as you are have to join us. Keep me posted on what you learn since I am always learning and tweaking.

And thanks Smokeyjoe, your posts to me have always been so sweet!

Lisa