Thank you

niprut

To one and all that have contributed to these pages over the years I thank you for your time and effort from the bottom of my heart. I am truly overwhelmed and so relieved to have found your discussion board.

Finally I feel that I have found some insight from people who do know exactly how I feel, and that are going through and have gone through the same things I face and feel each and every day.

The openness and honesty that I have discovered in your words, your encouragement to each other and your support has been inspirational and of great comfort.

My list of questions for my doctor and urologist has grown long as you have all helped to educate me in areas that I had not even thought of, and made me understand how naive I actually am about my own procedure and result.

I am a 42 year old female living in Australia. I had a radical nephrectomy July 2010. It has nearly been a year. In all honesty I feel I am only now really starting to process all that has taken place over the last year and beyond. Like many, I feel scared, thankful, happy, sad, hopeful, mad, lucky, confused... everything :-) and sometimes all in one day.

And now I see I am not alone.

Again, thank you all.

icemantoo

You are welcome
Dear niprut,

On behalf of all my my fellow posters you are welcome. Hopefully we cam make it easier for those who follow in our path.

Best wishes.

Icemantoo

ejneary

We all are trying...
to wade through an abyss of information and usually find information that is quite stale. That is my biggest complaint about my current situation but then I realize that I am "Lucky?" enough to have stumbled upon the scene at an interesting time in treatment for this disease where things are changing rapidly and there are a lot of us with a lot of questions..... Thank goodness for that but it sure makes it difficult to figure out what to do and what to believe about treatment options. There seems to be a disparity between oncologists too depending on their experience and beliefs.

Going from being blissfully unaware of health issues to dealing with a deadly health issue which even researchers still don't fully understand is understandably full of the emotions that you listed plus a few that I didn't even know existed before!!! Trying to figure out what is best for you when your mortality is sitting there staring at you has been the biggest challenge of my life and one which I know everyone else deals with.

One of my biggest frustrations with message boards is that people usually figure out their problem or what worked for them and then don't circle back to make sure that they document what the resolution was. You are left hanging with no resolution... This board seems to be very different in that regard.

I am thankful for those that are willing to continually relive their experience to coach others. Most people would run away as far and fast as they could back into being blissfully healthy again and try to forget the beast. There are many though who have endured cancer who want to give back and for those folks, I am thankful. I personally am trying to document what I am going through so that others can read my experience and not figure that dying from cancer might be preferable to the treatment that I am going through. I was scared to death when I started my first round. Now, though it is distasteful, it is doable and not nearly as horrible as I had been lead to believe from my research due to the fact that the protocol has changed in 10 years. Yes, treatment for cancer is tough, no argument, but there is way more hope than even 5 years ago. THAT is the message that needs to get out and the only way to do that is to have people willing to give back.

Thanks to all who are giving back!!!

John Neary

niprut

ejneary said:

We all are trying...
to wade through an abyss of information and usually find information that is quite stale. That is my biggest complaint about my current situation but then I realize that I am "Lucky?" enough to have stumbled upon the scene at an interesting time in treatment for this disease where things are changing rapidly and there are a lot of us with a lot of questions..... Thank goodness for that but it sure makes it difficult to figure out what to do and what to believe about treatment options. There seems to be a disparity between oncologists too depending on their experience and beliefs.

Going from being blissfully unaware of health issues to dealing with a deadly health issue which even researchers still don't fully understand is understandably full of the emotions that you listed plus a few that I didn't even know existed before!!! Trying to figure out what is best for you when your mortality is sitting there staring at you has been the biggest challenge of my life and one which I know everyone else deals with.

One of my biggest frustrations with message boards is that people usually figure out their problem or what worked for them and then don't circle back to make sure that they document what the resolution was. You are left hanging with no resolution... This board seems to be very different in that regard.

I am thankful for those that are willing to continually relive their experience to coach others. Most people would run away as far and fast as they could back into being blissfully healthy again and try to forget the beast. There are many though who have endured cancer who want to give back and for those folks, I am thankful. I personally am trying to document what I am going through so that others can read my experience and not figure that dying from cancer might be preferable to the treatment that I am going through. I was scared to death when I started my first round. Now, though it is distasteful, it is doable and not nearly as horrible as I had been lead to believe from my research due to the fact that the protocol has changed in 10 years. Yes, treatment for cancer is tough, no argument, but there is way more hope than even 5 years ago. THAT is the message that needs to get out and the only way to do that is to have people willing to give back.

Thanks to all who are giving back!!!

John Neary

Frustration
Thank you for your welcome and John I understand your frustration at lack of documented resolution. Everyone has a different journey and it is imperative for research and knowledge that these journeys, before during and after diagnosis are recorded in order to provide all possible information.

I would not want anyone to go through the experience that I and so many of you have gone through but if someone has to, then I want them to have answers at their fingertips.

I have a son, I hope to god this does not affect him one day, but if it does then he will be armed with more knowledge than I, and so the cycle should continue.

Thank you for your insight and in time I hope to be able to give back a little too.

Take care.