penny4yourthoughts

Five months after the last treatment.

2010-03-25T16:44:51Z

I have Endometrium Cancer, Papillary Serous with clear cells Grade 111C, or should I say I was diagnosed with it, had the op, the chemo treatments, the radio therapy (two cycles of it) and have already had one 'all clear' (from the first scan).

In a few weeks I'll be having my second scan - and hope and presume I'll be OK.

I'm feeling very well. And it feels extraordinary. (?)

And this is why I'm writing. When I was living the days of chemo and then again all those days of the three months of radio therapy I was emotionally low, sometimes fighting depression. You'll all know what I'm talking about. Those dreadfully grey months and months. (Which began in January and ended the first days of November last year).

I lived then with the notion that since this is a nasty cancer, with 25% survival rate, I should prepare myself for perhaps not living very long. "Why should I necessarily be one of the survivors?", I asked myself. "Wouldn't it be better to be realistic and look the truth fair and square in the face - and be prepared?".

I thought like this because I was sure it would help me lead a more fulfilled, serene life, concentrate on having a truly 'better quality of life' than the one I was leading just before I was diagnosed - thereby heading off the dastarly cancer cells in the future if /when they thought they might like to re-form. "If I'm in a good place emotionally, my immune system will figh the cancer cells in the future, so the cancer simply CAN'T re-form!!!". (So get serene and try to stay that way- and you could win out on this - but stay real).

To cut a long story short (five months after cancer treatments is a long story), I came across information which informed me more specifically on how the survival rate statistics come about. And according to this information if a cancer patient has the exact same op and treatments as I had, even Grade 111C patients have a 100% chance of survival. (If they are unable to finish the treatments, or they dont have the exact same op, i was told, then their chances are reduced to 50%, and if they dont have some of the those treatments, their chances go down from 25%. etc etc)

I was suddenly in the 100% survival rate bracket !!!- and it turned my head around. (and inside out too).. A shroud was lifted; I felt new again and extremely happy. Everyone said how incrediby well I looked.

It had been excellent to re-think life, to think of ways of living it less stressfully, of finding peace - and I still hold on to ALL of that wonderful experience.

But since then, I've learned that the statistics don't necessarily apply to Grade 111C'ers!! Just to Grade 1 ers.(a-hem, silly me!)

The incredible thing is though that I don't care what the statistics are any more. I'm so up for living now because I enjoyed it so much after that first news (without the fear of death or more chemo niggling at me) and I'm really attempting to do it right and to enjoy the decisions I've made from a less controlling feraful place

My oncoloogist told me that right now he is treating two women (with my same cancer) with more chemo after 7 years without it, so I might have seven years, which is good news too. But it honestly isn't affecting me,much. (I'm 63)

I find living happily is all about just looking for ways to find the bliss - and trying to find it makes me feel really good. (Taking care of health and convalescing is priority. It means making choices that make the day more pleasant and easier). That's ALL I really know. (Why go to dark side places which may or may not be in my life story - that's maybe tomorrow's trip. Isn't itall a trip?, this last year was a trip..which I'm looking back on now...which i couldn't have imagined to be doing when I was really really ill with everything, but I am,- extraordinarily)

I'm surprised and wanted you to know how surprised and yet how real this has been to me, this roller coaster ride, this being inside the tumble dryer while it bashes me from side to side and how I feel happy, today.

Living after cancer (?) is like this for me. Bless.

Happy after my scan! All Clear

2009-12-23T13:59:33Z

It only seems right to share the good news, doesn't it?

It's been tough until now, but suddenly, since I got the results of my first scan two days ago, which were all OK, I feel such great happiness. It feels so wonderful.

Exactly this time last year, it was so different. I'd been diagnosed with an advanced stage of Endometrium Cancer . I had my op a month later and was diagnosed with Grade 111C (of an aggressive type of cancer). Since then and until the last day of October I've had chemo therapy and Radio Therapy and have been tired, sometimes very low and once along the way, I got really depressed.

(Blogging here helped with that! Thanks)

My treatments finally finished and I did, after about a month, begin to feel well again ,(though extremely tired until just recently ).

I was anxious before this first scan, afraid I might have to have more treatment, secretly worried that I might have cancer back in some other part of the body (because with this Endometrium cancer, it could return anywhere - in fact the chances of survival are 30% apparently).

I was preparing myself to be free of it, because, in my experience, it really does help to try to be 'chilled out' as much as possible, to think the 'happier thought',go for the nicer 'thing to do next' , not give in to fearful obsessions and frets or doominess...... while, at the same time, I was also making my peace with my spirit (just in case I had to deal with more cancer).

But suddenly with this amazing 'all clear' I feel I've been let off the hook to enjoy my life again. This Christmas is a huge blessing. My family and friends and loved ones are all so happy.

Obviously I don't know what the future holds, but for today I AM CANCER FEE and I want to share it with everyone.It feels wonderful. I'm totally appreciative of the life I have.

Living with cancer has been dreadful but I'm better today, and it is a part of my illness. The experience is with me and perhaps I'm better for it. Anyway, I'm deeply connected to fellow sufferers and to those,who today - are having a good day...or a bad one, or a long one, or a weird one, a low or zonked one, or even a day of reprieve.....

I just wanted to tell you that it feels incredible to be on the other side of this year. And to have been allowed to survive - and share it with you.

Hope this is OK.

Reflecting back on it all.

2009-10-29T09:21:22Z

I finished chemo therapy in June.( I've got an endometrial cancer at Grade 111C - it had spread from the womb area to the pelvic and aoarta lymph nodes).

Tomorrow I'll have my very last Radio Therapy treatment appointment.

I've had RT every day since August 5th 2009 (apart from a one week break).

I can't wait. I'm so excited. It will all be over soon.

The scar and the cancer damage was too extensive for one set of 35 days of Radio Therapy, so I had to have two sets. An eternity of daily appointments at the Radio Therapy unito of my public hospital here in Rome. (where I live).

The first set was to the pelvic area and the effects were nasty. Anyone who has had RT to the pelvic area will know what that's like.

The RT to the higher place, more or less stomach area, has made me weak, nauseous and terribly tired. I got depressed a few weeks ago and blogged about it which helped. I'm out of the depression now and enjoying plans for the future.

I realize that I'm writing this - as though it's a list. As though I'm ticking boxes. Been there, done that, here I am to tell the tale (so far).

Where's the emotion, where's the pain, where are all the feelings that when I look back surge in and take over, completely?

Here they are, in part. They are many feelings -

from fear, (of dying soon)

to intense fear,(what does chemo do?),

to the feeling you get when you have to create courage and compliance,

the feelings fo pain (sometimes excruciating, especially in my leg bones, after the medicine to boost blood counts during chemo, the pain going to the loo during the pelvic RT treatments).

And why has this cropped up so low on the list? ( It's not right, it should be at the top, but this isn't the way it works) - The feelings of incredible love and gratitude to my loved ones and friends who helped me and whose prayes bouyed me through the operation, and always until today, whose prayes have continued and whose cards, emails and text messages have never stoped...their love has been amazing. And to my children and partner who have either dashed down for the weekends to help, or every morning take me to the hospital, every evening help me eat, every day rush around getting medicines, or whatever I need.

I remember thinking after the operation, "You know, you could die today you are so loved. What more do you want out of life. Your life has been a success because you are loved SO much. There is nothing more that you can ever want out of life". Powerful feelings of completion and resignation and love of life and of humanity, my own humanity and my own spirit. In other words the recognition of being given a gift and the feeling of peace that came with that revelation.

There are the feelings of frustration, more often than not at the nurses or the medical assistants who have, occasionally, but not always (by a long shot), treated me as though I wasn't there, just a piece of meat on the slab - while they natter on about their normal life (oh lucky imbeciles, oh cretins for being in the medical profession when they are really better suited to counting rollers at a hairdresser salon). But this is anger.

Anger never comes out where it should. It seeps out like volcanic heat. But anger there was I can see now. Anger at noisy neighboursat not having a parking place at having to wait in waiting rooms for hours etc etc....though I kept a lid on it there..

And then there's the feeling that 'you have to work on that; it's not good for you to be angry, you need to be on a better plain than this. "You need to try to get rid of that - get positive".

Then comes the worst feeling of all. It lasted several months with me (through RT mostly) -the crushed out blahd feeling of not wanting to help myslef. I hated admitting this to myslef. I often thought, "why dont you write your diary or do your meditations or follow the diet the nutirtionalist gave you, why dont you get some help with this? Why dont you say your prayers ? Why don't you try to find your Godess again, the one that came to be with you when you were having your operation that you preferred to the male God of your expderience" but immediately I thought,

"Nah, leave me alone. just let me get to the end of this. Just let me get to the end of this.Just let me get to the end of this" I told the thoughts that wanted to try to help to" Leave me alone, please".

Nothing to be proud of. But being ill is just this. It's not having the normal stuffing you can usually draw on do much about how you are or how you feel, or what youmight want in 'well life'.. It's a sort of porrigy greyness and it took over with me. I pretended alright to people; they worry if you don't - but inside, no, I wasnt where I thought I should be AT ALL.

I was worried about it too. Is worry a feeling? It's certainly a nag! My cancer is the kind that will probably come back so I need to be doing everything I can to be well, emotionally,physically and spiritually - but nah, during those 'bad weeks/months, I could't get there inside myself. Porrigy, porrigy blobby mushy grey person.

I got into a depression which I blogged about and through it found the way to come back up.

I'm taking some iron pills because I became enemic (spelling/ help!!) and they have boosted my pathetically low blod counts - so I'm feeling better. Also because I finish tomorrow.

I finish tomorrow and then in a month or two I will have a scan to see if the cancer has gone for now or if it has come back somehwere else (because this is the sort of cancer it is). I've made plans to go on holiday to Ischia with my friend in about 10 days, to see my family in Hereford just before Christmas and to visit my mother inCalifornia in January. I've ordered some CD's to listen to and which will helpme get back into daily meditating (I do hope).

I'm feeling happy and I'm also a bit worried about the future, but I'm hoping that when I feel well again, I'll know how to handle it a day at a time. It doesn't help with the worry, but it does a bit. The tusstle is on. "Can I fight for the right way to deal with my life, or will I lapse back into the porrigy person?"

Perhaps bit of both. But it's good to blog about it.

Inching out of a depression

2009-10-13T08:18:31Z

Just three weeks away from finishing all the treatments and I went under completely. Seeing the end of the long haul of operation and treatments insight I felt truly depressed about the probabilty of my cancer returning (I have an endometrial cancer Grade 111C) and of dying within the next few years.

I'd been reading through the internet descriptions of my cancer and, it hit me, without denial attached, just how precarious my life is now. How likely it is that the cancer will return somewhere. My brain? My lungs? My liver? Could be anywhere.

I did do a few things which helped me pull out of the depression which I'd like to share with anyone who might like to know.

Firstly, I emailed and told a friend. She said 'yikes! you're great, i dont kow if i could have had so much treatment and be as brave as you have been till now; surely it's natural'. So, primarily I reached out to somoene, instead of keeping the depression inside and feeling so ill with it - and I got some friendly feedback. She told me to check out the Macmillan website too. Very helpful.

I read the www.macmillan.org.uk - emotioal effects/Depression piece and wrote their words down in my notebook because they seemed so important. Here they are:

"There is no need for you to feel guilty about feeling depressed or not feeling positive all the time" . Because I had been feeling guilty, Writing the words down helped to make them mine. I did not have to feel guilty. It's OK.

I'd been feeling guilty about being unable to do a single thing about feeling so unhappy and ill;

no spiritual reading interested me, no book, no looking for the wise words

or the strength you can sometimes find by perhaps sitting outside.

None of the strengths I'd drawn on in the earlier, hard ,chemo days interested me to draw on again. The wise words, the books on 'The Will To Live' etc, lay scattered, collecting dust around my bedroom. I was feeling like a complete failure, as though I had really secretly given up and was feeing guilty about it.

I began a blog on this site 'Endometriam Cancer Grade 11C, coping with low survival rate info..' and a wonderful person bounced, blogged into my life who identified with me because she has more or less the same kind of cancer. We write to each other about our day. The blog writing seems to lighten the feelings about everything. Sharing with another woman who lives her life, in more or less the same way as I do is excting and wonderful. I can not explain how, but it is. You probably understand exactly,since this is the helpful thing about blogging!

A friend suggested that I deal with things in little chunks - instead of trying to deal with everything. (I had been thinking of sorting through my things so that I my life would be in order when I died. Or, I was thinking , maybe I should try to borrow $5,000 and go to a cancer treatment centre in California run by O Carl Simonton where there are many people over the years who have reversed their cancer).

I thought I could do the little bite sized chunk thing. My blogging friend also said it was a helpful way to deal with life. See, you get wisom from others that you just can't get from yourself!

What do I want to do? Mmmmm. What's the first thing I want to do?

I suddenly wanted to go to the sea (I'd missed the summer hoildays because of treatments). I realized that doing something that made me happy, made me very happy - and this was already good - so I booked a short holiday in Ischia for the week after I finish the last of my RadioTherapy. It feels great to be looking up hotel information, asking how far the hotel is from the sea, what the weather's like in November, what beauty treatments I get included in my off -season special. Can I have a room with a balcony overlooking the sea...yes, yes, dreaming about it was/is fantastic. So I'm booked and off on November 9th till 15th! I canalready imagine the ferry boat pulling out into the sea of Naples, the sea gulls, the wind, the big waves, the wind, the smell of brine...it's beautiful.

Then, instead of getting myself into impossible debt, by going over to a 5 day seminar in California (?) I ordered California oncologist's O. Simonton's 'Seminars and Meditations' from the site http://www.simontoncenter.com/api/Index.cfm/products.details/i/3922 So that's coming in the post.

Although I hadn't wanted to 'do' anything like this, when I was in my lolling about depressed state, now I'm beginning to 'do' something. I've ordered some material that might help me deal with surviving this cancer.. which means I'm beginning to believe I might have a shot at surviving it again. I think I'd given up.

I might even listen to the CD. Not sure yet, it's a step at a time here! I might begin the meditations again. I might bring it with me on holiday and listen to the CD looking at the sun setting on the sea. It's that word 'might' that is the clue- I am inching out of the depression, there are now 'mights' and there are 'dreams' and there are people to talk to who I trust and who will not lecture me on 'how to' (which doesnt work for me), because they know how weird it is to have cancer and go on its roller coaster rides.

Endometriam Cancer Grade 111C; coping with low survival rate info

2009-10-08T14:02:03Z

Wondering how women with Papillary Serous Adencarcinoma with clear cells Grade 111C cope with the poor survival rate they read about when they look it up on the internet? At the moment it seems there's a 33% chance of survival for us. Is this your reading? Has it improved? Would like to know more!

I tend to not automatically believe I will be the lucky 1 in 3. What kind of presumtious thinking is this:

"Oh of course it's going to be me. I'm so special, so strong, I know how to do this!"

Fundementally, I don't see why it should necessarily be me, though it could be, of course. I have told myself that I preferred to try to be realistic and say

"this could be a very long haul and so you would be better to organize your life to be as well as you can, emotionally."

In those dark days of chemo, post op, I spoke to my new female God, I meditated and flushed out my cancer cells, I found all sorts of internal strengths to feel good about. I worked on dealing with my cancer the best I could,;so if there was a chance of being the 1 in 3, it might just be me

But gradually, through feeling ill for so many months (now I'm on 55th Radio Therapy treatment), I've stopped meditating, stopped vizualizing, stopped delighting in my female god and I've become maudlin.

Until today. I went to have a head massage and a facial. I felt good, less mentally tired, prettier, alive, less DIZZY!!! I enjoyed my lunch, which I don't usually enjoy.

I read the Budwig Protocal,which is helpful, especially the spiritual aspect of it (havent dared tried the diet since I have a nuttritionalist).

Some friends are coming round for a short visit in a few hours. I have wonderful family and friends.I don't know more than this.

The future bothers me. I can have dreams I enjoy, (for example my youngest son is going to have a baby. I'm going to visit my mother in California and see friends in LA). Then I experience deep secret fears which are like bad dreams (mostly financial). I would appreciate sharing experiences with someone, or others who are also dealing with this roller coaster ride.