New to board, but not EC

This is my first post, but I have been reading this for a year or so. I communicate with "Betty From Vegas" quite often about her husband. My story is as follows:

I was dx with stage III EC on April 14, 2008 after having a fever for 3 weeks. However, the fever came from an infection in my chest and had nothing to do with the cancer. The cancer was found only after and endoscopy just to rule out anything. After my procedure, the dr. came out and said everything looked fine except for a couple areas of Barrets, but he took a biop anyway.

Well, the next morning, he walked into my room and stated that "we got some nasty results from the biopsy". I was totally shocked at the moment and just laughed at him. Anyway, I continued on antibiotics for the next week and then the fever subsided. A PET was ordered and showed the infection which my local Onc said was cancer all in my chest, but nothing showed in the esophagus.

I told him that I wanted to be refered to MD Anderson for a 2nd opinion. After test at Anderson, they told me that all the activity in the chest was infection the EC was locally advanced with 1 node involved. After chemo/rad which I tolerated very well other than a few bad days, we were back back in August 2008 for other test before surgery.

After another PET and endoscopy, everything was clean and surgery was scheduled for August 12, 2008. Suergery was complete with no complications, path was clean except for a few micro-cells in the 1 node out of 40.

Was out of the hospital in 8 days, dove hunting within a month, and back to work at the fire dept within 2 months. I did retire from the FD because we have a heart/lung bill that entitles one to full retirement for cancer/heart disease. I am doing fine so for. I do everything I did before such as fly airplanes, hunt, fish, long distance hiking trips on the Applachain trail, and volunteer with my local fire dept.

No, I am not out of the woods, but I feel fine and believe that I will beat this with the grace of God. I go back for scans in February and then again in August. If I am clean in August, he said we are going on the 1 year plan after that. By the way, I was only 42y/o at dx, and now 43. I just wanted to share my story and prove cancer is not a death sentence. I am not saying that it won't get me, but I am living noraml at the moment.

Charlie Carpenter
Mobile, Al