Recent diagnosis

English_Larry

Hello everyone,

I was diagnosed with Stage III anal squamous carcinoma cell cancer in November after suffering from an anal unhealing lesion/ulcer for some time. It was discovered through biopsy during an operation to curette the ulcer. The cancer is extremely small and does not even appear on MRI, with only a small blip on CT and PET. The latter also showed various lymph nodes lighting up and so a biopsy was done on one of them, which confirmed it was squamous carcinoma. The treatment decided on was chemoradiation for 28 days (54gy) of both anal cancel site and pelvic and groin lymph area. with capecitabine on all RT days, and mitomycin on day 1. I am currently one week prior to the start and I am simply horrified at the thought of all the side-effects of the CRT. The biopsy resulted in an inflammation and hard swelling (similar to hernia) in the groin area — this has been getting slowly better but still has not cleared up, four weeks post biopsy, and still causes some discomfort, for instance, during exercise. Has anyone else had experience with this. I am particularly worried that the RT will make things worse; the medical team doesn't seem to concerned, though. Has anyone else had a similar experience? Also, as the peri-anal lesion is still there, I'm also worried that the RT will make that worse as well. Any ideas? Finally, I'll have to take the capecitabine in tablet form twice a day. Any advice would be much appreciated as I'm finding it difficult to cope with all of this. Larry

McG

Hi Larry,

Your situation is much like mine. I know the treatments sound daunting but believe me, time will pass and you will be fine. As you saw in my post describing my experience the two things that helped tremendously were cannabis and L-glutamine. Hopefully you have access to both.

I'm coming up on nine years since treatment ended and I've had no cancer recurrence. (Dealing with pulmonary fibrosis now but at least it's something that doesn't require chemo or radiation.)

Hang in there and try to keep a positive attitude. You will feel crappy for a while but it will pass. Folks here are great for support. You're not alone!

Grant

English_Larry

Thanks, Grant, your encouraging words are much appreciated.