Sunday, December 12, 2010

Not giving up hope



Well, my dear "sister" who has cancer, has stage 4 cancer. It's incurable. She has a brain tumor, and a spot on the liver in addition to all the other places mentioned in my previous blog.

HOWEVER.... her team of doctors plan to treat agressively and they are optimistic that while they can't "cure" her... they can buy her YEARS instead of months.

Since I work for a company that deals with recurrent cancer, I read a LOT of research articles about it, and it really is possible to live for years with metastatic cancer. Our company president's wife has had metastatic breast cancer for 5 years!! She gets chemo every single week. (low dose). She is the first person I have actually met in person who has survived so long with metastatic cancer.

There is hope.

There is always a rainbow.

Plus, my dear "sister" has a very positive attitude and is facing this with courage and humor. She has named her brain tumor "Bob" and now she can blame everything on "Bob" when she messes up. LOL.

They are taking care of the brain tumor via surgery and radiation. It's quite small, so they want to deal with that first. It will never be gone, but at least it can be virtually non-existent if it is small enough.

Right now, she is in denial. And she admits she is in denial. And I sure don't blame her at all. But she has hope to cling to, that this won't be her last Christmas, and that she will be able to accomplish the things on her "bucket list".

I wish I didn't live so far away.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Anguish


Someone near and dear to me is facing a challenge. In her words, " My cancer has recurred. There is a huge mass at my mastectomy site, multiple axillary lymph nodes, one nodule in my lung and a mass in my chest cavity. The huge mass has integrated into the chest wall and has begun destruction of my third and fourth ribs. That information is from the chest CT only. I had the core biopsy done today. Bone scan and brain MRI on Wednesday and PET scan on Thurs. We go back to the oncologist on Friday. We won't know any results before Friday when we talk to him."
She is younger than me..... and has 4 children.
What can I do? Well, the company I work for deals with cancer treatment. Especially recurrent cancer treatment. I gave her a contact and hope she is able to get in and get treatment.