Stage 4 Survivor so far so good ~

My Story a repeat for some of you.







Just to brighten your day and give you all some hope I will tell you my story. I was 38 years old mother of three teenagers diagnosed in Feb. 03 with Stage 4 rectal cancer with mets to liver I had 1 large and 3 smaller tumors on my liver. I started out with chemo oxaliplation sp?, leuvicorin, and 5fu combo, I did it every two weeks half way through I did radiation to shrink the tumor in the rectum I had radiation for 28 straight days with a continuous infusion of 5fu. I had 8 straight chemos to try and shrink some of the liver tumors before a liver resection in Jan. 04. January 04 they did the liver resection and removed 10 % of my right lobe in my liver. (Since then liver has grown back it regenerates itself) The mass in rectum was very low near the base 2cm. mass I was very lucky not to need a permanent colostomy. The radiation was able to shrink the rectal mass totally no visible signs so no real surgery. However after close following about 6 months later it seemed that a small trace of the rectal mass might have not been totally gone so I went in for an outpatient transanal excision to remove what the colorectal surgeon saw. I was told from that point that everything was removed and I now had clean margins. Following my liver resection I believe 6 or 8 weeks later, (it gets kinda blurry you try and forget this part of your life like a bad dream) I had 4 more chemo's giving me a total of 12 from start to finish. Since all of this thank you GOD I have been doing very well. I go to the oncologist every couple of months and he sends me for PET scans, MRI's & CT's they have all been clear. I go every 6 weeks for blood work still. Sometimes my life is a real emotional rollercoaster but I am still here to tell about it. When I was diagnosed we had just put our house on the market with hopes to sell and build a new home. We had bought six acres and wanted to build a new home on it at first we put it on the back burner, but I told my husband what are we waiting for we can't sit around and just wait for me to die lets just do it. So we did we moved into our new home in November of 2006. You really have to keep living its very hard alot for me to block this out of my mind but I think what has kept me going is I keep telling myself this is crazy and there is no way I am sick. I am very active and I continued to be very active through all of my treatments I never wanted to be labeled as a sick person and I didn't want the pity. Don't get me wrong I have my days its very hard sometimes on my family especially waiting on test results I get very snappy. Somethings I have changed are my diet I really try hard now to eat as much organic as I can I don't eat as many sweets. I take vitamins daily, I take centrum one a day, I ordered organic miatake mushroom tablets and take two of them a day, selenuim, Vitamin E and I take organic flax seed oil daily 1 Tablespoon. You can look into these they are all antioxidants if it says antioxidant I take it. I also try and drink alot of green tea. I bought myself a juicer and in the beginning I've slacked off now and I need to start back up I juiced organic carrots everyday and drank that. I would juice a bag of carrots which equals about an 8 oz. glass. Who knows if all of this helps but something has helped me unless its just the dear LORD and not my time to go. Just had bloodwork done 2 weeks ago and CEA is still 1.2. I can breathe again for another 6 weeks. Doreen