fuck cancer

Fingers crossed!

I shouldn't really be posting personal stuff here but my cousin was diagnosed earlier this year with skin cancer. They removed moles from her back but luckily she hasn't needed further treatment tho she has 5 years of tests but hopefully it wont come back and need chemo or anything. Fingers crossed.

hope everything turns out okay for her, enbb.

Fingers crossed for you ENBB. And glad to hear your friend's surgery went well, suzy.

I've been dealing with a tough one here. One of my good friends was diagnosed last fall with stage IV melanoma, has had multiple surgeries, a month of five day a week chemo, and then self-administered interferon 3 days a week. His recent PET came back positive. It's in his blood. They took him off the interferon for now, and he's got a stress and lung test as well as an MRI tomorrow. His spirits are great, and he's doing things he planned like releasing an album and setting off on tour the end of the month. But he knows what the odds are. This all just sucks..

oh shit - for some reason I thought this was on 77. Can a mod scrub the last sentence for me? It's more info than I want on a public post.

oh EZ,even if the post is removed, : ~ hugzz ~

thats some heavy shit.

skin cancer is one of the more terrifying. i had a friend who had a small mark on her thigh, she didn't think much of it, finally (after six months or so) she realized it had been growing and went to the doctor. turns out she had a melanoma. a year later she was dead. she was in her 30s. it all seemed to happen in a flash.

Thanks Mark. It sucks, but he's a real inspiration. He'd get chemo in the morning and spend the afternoon on the skate ramp he decided to build in his back yard. Iron will.

that's amazing! sorry about your friend, ez.

Thanks again, everyone. We'll see. She's 75 and smoked for prob over 30 years in total so I'm not too optimistic but who knows.

EZ that really sucks about your friend but he sounds like an amazing person.

He's a real peach of a young man.

Mod gotcha

Thanks!

hoping the best for all

I just realized that I never posted here after the results but it is lung cancer. She's opting for radiation instead of surgery and we'll see. I don't really know much right now except that it's slow growing and they don't think it's anywhere other than her lungs. TBH I think she'd convinced herself for absolute worst case scenario news so she seems to be taking it fairly well all things considered.

E :(

I'm so sorry to hear that ENBB. I hope the radiation succeeds.

You know how to reach me if you ever want to vent or talk.

Aw, thanks both. My dad's going to send me copies of all the records and images and I'm going to have one of the doctors here (recommended by my boss) take a look just so I know if they agree with the diagnoses and what exactly it is because my dad doesn't really remember the technical terms and stuff so I feel pretty in the dark now. I sort of knew this was coming so I'm OK but it's still worrying, obv.

i was just going to ask. hope you're okay too, such a powerless place to be. stuck for platitudes, just wishing you all positive outcomes for you.

through the medium of shitty grammar, obv

Found out yesterday that mother in-law likely has pancreatic cancer.

So this just happened over here. Mother-in-law's doctor was speaking based on a CT Scan and observable symptoms, but said she thinks it is stage 4. MRI and biopsy tomorrow will confirm for sure. I kind of feel like no doctor would say this preliminarily unless it was already semi-definitive (the dr was speaking to my wife's sister, not my mother-in-law herself, to be clear).

Obv wife and I will be heading to Boston within the next couple of days.

WTF.

damn Jon

seriously
i'm sorry
hang in there, friend -- all hojo all the time

Good idea. Will endeavor to not crack up, see both sides, bend brain and throw off mental chains. May have to go against brief and try to live life in one day though.

That's heavy, Jon. I'm so sorry.

All the best to you Jon and to EZ & ENBB too. This shit is fucked up.

I could use some extra strength but only so I can pass it on to my wife and her sister tbrr

don't forget to keep some for yourself -- you're a person too!

otm

damn Jon, wishing you the best

xpost i am naturally selfish to a sufficient extent that I will do that, believe me.

At least Boston area is pretty top notch for this kind of thing. I guess it is not crazy to predict that treatment goals will be palliative more than anything else :(

ugh, sorry to hear that Jon.

xpost yeah stage 4 is rough

you've still got a long road aheead but I will float this suggestion early, just to put it out there for later on; if you can get your hands on a w33d vaporiser it can really help with appetite, nausea, and associated side effects when things get rough

my husband's uncle was pretty far along, and well into his 80's and even though he didn't use the w33d a ton it at least got him to eat and just kinda mentally relax a bit more.

My mother inlaw was definitely down with it, she had awful trouble with indigestion and lost her appetite almost entirely and the w33d helped her so much -- she would even crank up the Pink Floyd :)

just something for you to keep under your hat til you need it

Good tip. Even though it would be uncharacteristic for her to roll w that (she doesn't even drink or smoke) she has already uncharacteristically agreed to low dose Vicodin so maybe that will be the narrow end of a wedge called drugz.

This whole thing just really isn't filtering through to all parts of my brain yet. Likewise with wife.

it'll take a while

fuck cancer

i am naturally selfish to a sufficient extent that I will do that, believe me.

ok, but i am compelled to note that i don't believe it's selfish to take care of yourself! it's a necessity, like food and sleep :)

hey guys I'm hoping someone has had some experience with this: mother-in-law (yes it is advanced pancreatic cancer, possible liver involvement) is taking oxycodone for the pain, and last night she got paranoid/irrational. My wife is there taking care of her by herself; she said she was talking in circles about this one thing that had annoyed her the day before and couldn't stop. I see that paranoia is one of side effects of oxycodone in the "rare" subheading. The oncologist had prescribed her ativan along with it and I'm guessing that would be indicated at this point, since the pain meds are a must?

My mom died of pancreatic cancer and she was prescribed liquid (oral) morphine and ativan. I spent the last month of her life with her - she was occasionally delusional. She did not spend the whole day in that state however and would snap out of it. The visiting nurse gave us a pamphlet on what to expect and it was all there, laid out the course of everything. My mom read the pamphlet too and when she put it down... man that was rough.

Good luck, Jon

My mom read the pamphlet too and when she put it down... man that was rough.

;_;

Yeah this lasted I guess a few hours and this morning she is her usual self. But she will need a lot of oxys today so I hope the freakout can be avoided. Wife has a call in to the oncologist re meds and is waiting to hear back.

Yeah, no harm in looking at new meds as long as helps the pain.

One time my mom bolted upright in bed and said "I need put in an obituary!" Then slunk back down and was normal again. Kinda lol mostly sad.

Jon, that sounds like delirium, which tends to fluctuate and is often worse at night. Opioid painkillers like oxycodone can trigger delirium (but then, so can pain itself, along with sleep disturbance and a whole host of causes), and benzos like Ativan can actually make it worse (in some cases, YMMV).

They might try to scale back her oxycodone dose if they think she could be overtreated, but that might not be an option, it's a painful disease. There might be some other options for opioids that are less likely to produce cognitive side effects.

Otherwise, they might use a low dose psychiatric medication to try to help limit her confusion while keeping her calm at night. Seroquel (quetiapine) is often useful for that purpose in the hospital setting.

It might be good to ask if a palliative care doctor/nurse could review her case. They're often more experienced than even the oncologists in managing the many challenges of trying to provide effective and well tolerated pain control in cases of advanced cancer.

All the best, it's a tough situation.

For the first week, she had been on Vicodin, which had not produced this effect. After talking to the onco my wife switched her back to that yesterday; so far so good. Only problem with the Vicodin is that the Tylenol ingredient limits the number of them she can take per day.

There is a dedicated palliative team who will be brought on line shortly I am told

they had an in person follow up with the onco today. It was confirmed that the cancer exists in the liver as well. Dr wants to pursue an aggressive chemo course: a "port" will be installed on Tuesday. Lord love a fucking duck.

ugh jon that's rough

So there's a little girl who's a classmate and friend of my younger son, who, two years ago, was diagnosed with a rare type of kidney cancer. Since her diagnosis, she's mostly been absent from class while undergoing various intense treatments. Every now and again she'll make it school to see all her friends and have a small bit of normality back in her life, but it's been a long ongoing battle for her. Generally there's a very high rate of success for the treatment of her particular illness - some 90% or thereabouts, but unfortunately her cancer has returned and all the treatment options that the NHS are able to provide have been exhausted. However, there are still further courses of treatment available privately, both in the UK but mostly in the US, and as giving-up isn't really an option, her parents are urgently trying to find the £100k that it's going to cost.

Sorry if I sound vaguely robot-ish describing the situation btw, but I'm still finding the whole thing really scary and hard to process. How the fuck does an 8-year old cope with this whole thing? And I just can't fathom what her parents must be going through at all. I've found it pretty much impossible to think about, let alone discuss... my wife's needed to chat about it sometimes - she's a lot closer to the parents than me and I've just basically been quite useless here and unable to deal with it at all. It's only now that there's something to be done that I feel like I can even approach engaging with it properly.

Anyhow, there's a whole little fundraising operation kicking off here - kids making and selling stuff, parents thinking up various little schemes and calling in favours from friends and aquaintances. Someone's mum knows Simon Cowell's mum and reckons they might be able to pull a few strings; one of the school dads is a professional footballer for a minor Prem league club and he's talking about tapping up his football mates; someone else knows a fairly well-established gothy singer with a decent following who's supposedly going to write and sell a song especially to raise some money... the benefits of living in a relatively well-to-do city I guess. All of this talk of DOING SOMETHING is so hopeful, god knows if these people will actually deliver but even if only some of these things come through I think there's a fair chance of meeting the target. And I know the fundraising is kind of a diversion from worrying about the medical side of things, but I'll happily take that for now and surely it must be a huge boost psychologically for the family too. I'm organising a sponsored bike ride for my elder son and his friends to do, and I'm actually doing some crazy running race in a couple of months myself which I'll get people to sponsor me for, so I'll post a link to that once I've sorted a page if that's okay. I keep nagging my wife to bake me some cakes to sell at work, I guess I really ought to get on with it myself but I'd give Roxy's cousin's mooted bakery a run for their money as far as making things-you-wouldn't-want-to-find-in-your-mouth goes. So... full of hope and anguish here and can't stop thinking about this thing, apologies for rabbiting on.

Hope everyone's doing okay out there with their own battles!

uggh huge wall of gibber

Sounds like she's got the same thing I had when I was little - if that's the case, your friends might already be onto these people for info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Wilms_Tumor_Study_Group (although American, very informative)

I hope they have good luck with fundraising and are able to get your son's friend sorted out; don't worry about blethering on this thread!

My friend mentioned waaaay upthread got his all-clear two weeks ago and is also the proud owner of a PSA reading of 0.02.

That is it exactly Suzy and thanks for the link.

Also way to go Suzy's friend! :)