- Joined
- Dec 19, 2000
- Messages
- 186
First, let me give you folks a little background.
11 years ago my wife Harriet was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through chemotherapy, surgery to remove both breasts with immediate reconstruction, then deconstruction some months later when the implants weren't working out well and were causing pain. Three years ago, she had a local recurrence that was treated with drugs and radiation. A year ago, summer breathing difficulty that she thought was asthma-related turned out to be a collapsed lung caused by metastatic cancer, with also some bone involvement. She had more hospital treatment and more drugs. Last winter a lump started growing on her sternum -- more drugs, more radiation -- but to the doctors' surprise the lump went fully away.
Right now Harriet is feeling pretty good, albeit suffering some side effects -- dizziness, fatigue -- from the drugs she is now taking. Life otherwise is pretty good; we moved to a new house four months ago and although I've been without full-time work for more than two years, I still bring in enough as a freelance writer/editor to keep us going. I've lost 120 pounds in the last 18 months myself and can now shop in normal stores. We don't put things off until "someday" like we used to. For us in our early 60s, with this history, "someday" is already here. While my view of life is quite different from Uncle Bill's Buddhism, I've learned a lot about being at peace from him and from the rest of this gang.
Anyway, I often pass along to Harriet threads from the Cantina about Uncle Bill and others -- this is, after all, one of the most interesting places on the Web to hang out. Now she's passed along a link from the Washington Post that she feels might be helpful or useful to some other Cantina patrons.
Since most of us here are guys, with all that that implies in the sense of being fixers and problem-solvers, there's a lot of good food for thought in this article. (Free registration required to read it, sorry.) From my own experience, this piece is dead on target. It's inevitable that we make some of these mistakes, but here's a chance to learn from them and about them. Honestly, I hope none of you ever has to use any of this advice.
11 years ago my wife Harriet was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through chemotherapy, surgery to remove both breasts with immediate reconstruction, then deconstruction some months later when the implants weren't working out well and were causing pain. Three years ago, she had a local recurrence that was treated with drugs and radiation. A year ago, summer breathing difficulty that she thought was asthma-related turned out to be a collapsed lung caused by metastatic cancer, with also some bone involvement. She had more hospital treatment and more drugs. Last winter a lump started growing on her sternum -- more drugs, more radiation -- but to the doctors' surprise the lump went fully away.
Right now Harriet is feeling pretty good, albeit suffering some side effects -- dizziness, fatigue -- from the drugs she is now taking. Life otherwise is pretty good; we moved to a new house four months ago and although I've been without full-time work for more than two years, I still bring in enough as a freelance writer/editor to keep us going. I've lost 120 pounds in the last 18 months myself and can now shop in normal stores. We don't put things off until "someday" like we used to. For us in our early 60s, with this history, "someday" is already here. While my view of life is quite different from Uncle Bill's Buddhism, I've learned a lot about being at peace from him and from the rest of this gang.
Anyway, I often pass along to Harriet threads from the Cantina about Uncle Bill and others -- this is, after all, one of the most interesting places on the Web to hang out. Now she's passed along a link from the Washington Post that she feels might be helpful or useful to some other Cantina patrons.
Since most of us here are guys, with all that that implies in the sense of being fixers and problem-solvers, there's a lot of good food for thought in this article. (Free registration required to read it, sorry.) From my own experience, this piece is dead on target. It's inevitable that we make some of these mistakes, but here's a chance to learn from them and about them. Honestly, I hope none of you ever has to use any of this advice.
I don't know how I would handle that. Cancer has ran in our family for at least three generations now and I'm surprised it hasn't gotten me yet. Bill's right, "Fight it to the bitter end."