Choices

Marla, is there any way to get a download of the 48-page doc that you have? Would love to at least have recipes and foods to eat, thanks, Don/Doc Roc

Please find at

tached the Cancer Eating Hints! Hopefully it will open and you can download it!

Thank you!

Good morning ladies and gents

My first question of the day is to Claoh: Are you all right? Not hearing from you makes it hard for me. You and Marla both mean a lot to me as well as this board. Trying to get through my troubles while hearing from y'all makes it a lot easier on me. You both are great encouragers and I really appreciate both of you. Thank you for being there.

So my last radiation treatment was Friday. I now get one week off and then begin chemo treatments again. I've also been set up for another PET scan and brain MRI as well as an echo for my heart. I also have a couple MRIs setup for my pelvic area. These are to make sure that the radiation treatment worked. I see the orthopedic surgeon this Friday so he can see how well my hand is healing from the thumb surgery I had back at the beginning of July. All in all it's going to be a very busy time for me.

Marla it sounds like you have been busy too! I'm glad that you are getting a new oncologist. I can't believe that your previous one hasn't seen you since Jul,y! I would hope that your new one sees you at least once a month and can also take a look at your medications to see if she can do something about the nausea that you have been dealing with. That shouldn't be so rough for you as well as tiring. I don't think it has to be that bad myself personally. But that's just for my own experiences.

Claoh I miss you on the boards and hope that I did not blow you out of the water by asking the quality of life question. I would really like to know how you're doing and if you found out what that was on your breast.

Don you should visit us more often on the boards and let us know how you're feeling as well. We all would like to hear from you as well as all the other partners involved in this. (Yes I know he is my husband but I like to write it through the boards so that everybody knows what's going on).

Y'all take care

Pat

Thanks for your good wishes! I pray they can resolve your issue soon. Prayers!

Claoh thank you for your prayers. I really feel that they help me even as they have from the beginning.

I went back and re-read those first few pages about what I had written in them concerning my dad and my sister and my brother. I also noted that the fears I had back then has changed. My chemo now is nothing like the chemo that I had back in 2013 when I incurred a lot of bodily damage from it. I also noted that my journey is nothing like their journey. I still believe that my sister would still be alive if she would have gone to the Cleveland Clinic instead of her doctors in Pittsburgh. The Cleveland Clinic has state of the art equipment and knowledgeable doctors that can catch and destroy any of my metastasis before they get out of hand like they did for my sister. My dad had none of this available to him but even so he didn't want to go to any doctors until it was too late. My brother found out when he went in the hospital for pneumonia that he only had a couple months to live and decided not to have any treatments. As you can see each journey was different and all of them are different than my journey. Yes we all have cancer but the way they went about dealing with it was as individualized as ours is. The end it seems was all the same with each of them in incredible amounts of pain. Dad endured it because in his generation you were supposed to be tough and strong and so he tried to be that way even to the end. My brother had a morphine pump where he could press the button and get a dose of morphine when he felt he needed it for the pain. My sister had three or four different types of pain meds that she took to help her through her pain. I know that I am not at that point yet. My oncologist from my 2013 bout of cancer taught me that pain has levels and that your brain will categorize pain so that the one that hurts the worst comes to the forefront while all the others seem to go away. Once that worst pain is dealt with then the next pain comes to the forefront and all the others seem to go away, and so on and so forth. So my breast pain seems to have gone away because of the pain in my sacrum and lower back and tailbone. This pain registers into a high eight / nine on the Pain scale. I have to use ice on it continuously as well as doing my pain meds. I'm not sure and haven't said anything on the boards yet but when I took that hard fall I think I may have possibly cracked my tailbone. Driving the 3 hours back and forth to the Cleveland Clinic on bumpy roads for radiation treatment probably aggravated it to the point where it's either cracked worse or possibly even broken. And I'm sure the radiation treatment itself didn't help matters either. All I know is that it really really hurts. Add to that (and it doesn't happen all the time) when I set my feet down onto the ground it feels like there are 50 knitting needles being shoved up through the bottom of my feet. That has progressed to my shaking all over as if I had a seizure even though I know it isn't.. This knitting needle / seizure only lasts for about a minute. My radiation oncologist is already on it and has ordered MRIs of the pelvic area. At that time I had only mentioned the knitting needles and the other part had not happened yet. I really don't know what's going on with me but I think I'm in the right place to find out. I messaged him about the seizures so he should receive that on Monday (today). This has never happened to me before. But I also know that the sacrum is very close to a lot of nerves. I am not a doctor so I'm not willing to put two and two together until they figure out what's going on. My sacrum could be sore from the radiation as the type of radiation treatment was high dose short burst for a minute. And my lower back has had problems for quite some time and in reality on the Pain scale it's just noticeable but not causing me too much pain at this time. It's mostly in my sacrum and my tailbone.

Ha ha, got sidetracked on that one. :)

So I'm not sure what you're looking for Claoh. These are definitely not end of life pains. That's why I really haven't mentioned any of this before. But yes, both the Cleveland Clinic and I know that they are simply doing maintenance to keep me alive as long as possible along with trying to keep some quality of life for me. We all know that it's going to end someday but we are all hoping that there may be a cure discovered during that time.

Pat

Hi Claoh! Are you sure that your thinking of me in the middle of the night wasn't a nightmare? 🤣

All kidding aside, I tend to believe that my family will have their own paths as far as their grief is concerned. Some will stay "strong" for the families sake, others will go into a deep grief, while others will just consider it to be another day, taking the view that such things happen as a part of life. And I hate to say it but some of them will be wondering if there's anything in the will for them even as they get ready for the funeral service. This truly is a question that I can't answer. People take death in different ways and with a variety of emotion that sometimes even surprises me. Emotions run high at this time and anything can happen. I know this is not an answer but it is the best I can do. My daughter has excused herself from the funeral which I told her was fine because for her she would rather remember me alive. Should see however change her mind for the sake of my husband then that would be fine too. Either way she has my blessing and she has my blessing as my daughter and best friend. Besides haha, I won't be around to care LOL. It won't matter to me and actually it just shouldn't matter period. Sometimes we get hung up on the silliest little things. We can carry those things through life or we can let them go and be free.

Haha, there I go getting sidetracked again!

Marla your mighty quiet! Are you okay? We miss you on the boards when you're not around including your jokes. Please let us know what's going on. I join Claoh in her prayers for you and am in agreement that you find peace.

In fact I pray that all of you find peace in this moment.

Claoh I wish hospice would speed it up for you. I think of an old saying of "molasses running uphill in winter". I wonder if there's a way for you to try to get them to consider this a little more important than something that needs to be done in a week or two. And I agree talking with the radiologist is very important before you go in for treatments. Just me. :)

That's it for me right now. I've got a few appointments in Cleveland Thursday and Friday but I will try to get on the boards as I can. Y'all be blessed and love on your families even as I love on mine. :-)

Ahh dang girl you need to get some antibiotics in you ASAP. I started down my road (like I said) with my one breast 3X the size of the other. It just exploded overnight to be that size but it was also very warm and red. My OBGYN gave me antibiotics and it helped a little bit with the warmth and the redness but it didn't bring down the swelling in my breast. It only brought down the swelling in my arm but even that was temporary because within a few days it swelled right back up and I was diagnosed with lymphedema on top of triple negative. Anyway you don't want that getting away on you so make sure your hospice takes care of you ASAP.

I'm curious as to whether the radiologist is just going to do that spot on your breast or if they're going to do your whole breast plus your lymph nodes on that side. Don't forget that when I had radiation done on my sacrum it was to kill the cancer to keep it from spreading. Hence the reason for 10 days straight of radiation. Interpolate that to your condition and you will see that could very well happen to you. Is that a bad thing? You already see what I've gone through but to me I think it would be wonderful if yours was only in your breast and radiation killed it all off. The second thing to remember with radiation is (as I said before) it's easy to get a radiation burn similar to a sunburn. Pick up some CeraVe to rub on after the radiation so you don't get blisters or burn. I think I left you with a lot of things to think about but it would be awesome to me if they could just zap it out of you and you would live a long and happy life. Again, just me. :)