Stage IV survival without chemo...it happens

dancer2 said:

Hi, I'll try not to write a

Hi, I'll try not to write a novella this time..Glad to hear someone is also considering 'stress' as one of main culprits. Since '91' my life and husbands were turned upside down and there has been nothing but stress since then.........Caregiver twice, 24/7 all adl's with my mother, and then with my husband, 24/7 all adl's for almost four years. The point being, STRESS..........Tho I knew I should have had a doctor take a look inside when i started seeing mucous/blood coming out of me before bowel movement while being a caregiver, it's hard to find the time or the inkling to see about it.......it was only when the stool got very thin did I finally go to a colon/rectal surgeon and that was two years after my man died..........so more STRESS.....at the same time I had the derm I was seeing for superficial nonsense, that I finally told him to take a small lesion off my left cheek which he kept telling was nothing to worry about and it turned out to be a pretty invasive melanoma.......if he had done the biopsy three months prior it might not have got as far down as it went. So my colon surgeon told me to go get a second opinion, and that is when i went to an oncologist......they agreed the colon tumor needed to come out, then do the face.........the onc gave me only 3 rounds of oaxy with xeloda and stopped saying it was not working because tho nothing new had popped up, nothing had shrunk either and i was told to see a radiologist for the rfa on the one and only liver lesion, it was successful, a month later a ct contrast was done and he said all was well, nothing new. A month after that was scheduled to see the oncologist ( been 3 months now) and he had me do a ct/pt scan two days before seeing him and told me my liver glowen, and seven new tiny spots in lungs......hmmmm So in one month, I went from successful ablation, nothing new in liver, nothing new in lungs to all  hell broke loose....told to come back in 3 months.......i got a new onco throught my surgeon, and have one session down with avastin-irinitocan and wear the fanny pack home with 5FU.......this happens twice a month and i guess will go for six months......I have started juicing since i sporadically have been doing that for a long time..........still under so much stress, and the only thing that relaxes me other than to go take the pro dance class i have taken since a girl, is  having a glass or two of red wine at dinner. But don't want to push it while undergoing chemo..........tho my new onco just shrugs her shoulders and I get the impression of eat well, but don't deny yourself little pleasures...........but I think of the sugar issue, and I don't hardly ever eat anything sweet except honey in morning coffee, so wine was the only sugar for me...........ah, to bad....and that stresses me, since I know I am not living normal....It was my only little vice and only at dinner time..........I also wonder, besides stress, if trauma can be a culprit, because I fell off a six foot ladder ( on top of it i was) about four years ago and landed hard right on my back right into med size desert rock landscaping....the main area of impact was middle and lower back area...........got xray and was told pelvic trauma.........I don't feel sick, and for the most part go about and except for the round, still healing inch scar on my face absolutely no one would know what I am going through. You would not have wanted to see it right after the surgery. My son told me don't look Mom, it looks like you have a black cavern where your cheek was........funny in a way....so I just dealt with it. And that is what we all do, right??? Well, it looks like once again I have written an essay and will have to learn to write more concisely. I mainly juice carrots, apples, celery, small beet, ginger root, and when i think to buy it, fresh pineapple. Cheers!!

I agree!

Long posts are totally accepted! Gee, look at mine!!! lol.

OMP, stress is the worst! It's all about the immune system and there are so many factors in our lives and environment that lower our immune system's ability to fight off the cancer cells. You add something as traumatic as stress; particularly severe, long-term stress, and the immune system can completely fail.

Cancer is opportunistic; at least mine was. It took control by exhibiting symptoms every single time I experienced any kind of stress, especially before my diagnosis. I had a job where things could get super intense at a moments notice, and at those times, my symptoms would intensify to the point of incapacitating me. After diagnosis, recurrences would come shortly after particularly intense events of stress.

Dancer2, you must get stress out of your life by any and all means necessary. I know how hard it is, believe me. My whole life had to be uprooted and altered before I was free of the stress that kept making me sick, but once I was away from it...I can't tell you how relieving it felt. The recurrences stopped until that other stressful event happened, and I am so much happier now than I thought was possible after dealing with this crap for so long.

The only other choice is to learn how to accept whatever it is that's giving you the stress, and let it bounce off of you as if it has nothing to do with you. I think this is a much harder route to take, but it depends on your situation. It requires so much mental discipline, and basically a re-wiring of the brain. It can be done, though. I've been able to do it to a certain point, but just enough to where I can detach myself emotionally from the smaller stresses of life. A great book that helped me with this is called, "Buddha's Brain". It's written by a couple of neurologists and it explains how the brain is wired, and why we react to stress the way we do; among other things.

The juicing is great. I was able to clear up a met by juicing for a month, even though I was still in the stressful situation I was in. I don't know if juicing while on chemo can achieve the same results. I've known a few people who did it that way and they didn't experience much change. I don't know how committed to it they were. All I can say is it can't hurt, and you have a ton of healthy stuff in your juice!

I'm so sorry you've had to deal with those messed up docs. Unfortunately, anyone who's spent quality time in the healthcare system knows that as a general rule, they don't listen to the patient. They automatically assume they know our bodies better than we do, and this assumption has failed us dramatically. Nearly everyone I know who has advanced cancer was basically ignored by their doctors, especially pre-diagnosis, but it certainly doesn't end there. Their attitude towards us is probably the first thing that needs to change in order to efficiently defeat cancer. I think the only way we can do that is if we take them off their "God" pedestal and question everything they say.

I hope your stint with melanoma is finished, and I'm glad they did a good job in removing it. Our surgeons are our first ally (sometimes our only ally as far as Western medicine goes)!

Hugs,

Krista