Hi all,
I've just joined this forum because my 33 year old fiance, who was always the healthiest man, suddenly got siagnosed with Stage 4 oesophageal cancer, which has spread to his spine, lungs and lymph nodes. This has been a terrible shock and I am finding it so hard to accept and deal with. All the symptoms he had was back pain for a couple of months, and every now and then some bubbling in his chest while lying down (which his GP attributed to acid reflux from too much ibuprofen for the back pain).
He's also had radiotherapy on the tumours in his spine which made the area inflamed and he can now no longer use his legs properly and has been doing physio to try and regain some mobility.
Even now he looks fine, he looks like he got lost and ended up in the oncology ward...The prognosis from the NHS doctors has been that there is pretty much no hope for remission, and best we can hope for is to limit the growth. Does anyone have any happy stories that start like this? Where the doctors were maybe too pessimistic? I really need a thread of hope to hang onto.
Also if anyone has any advice on anything that might help on top of the chemo and immunotherapy. Any foods we should make for him (or avoid)? Anything else that helped you? Thankfully he seems to be taking the chemo with pretty much 0 side effects other than slight tiredness.
Thank you in advance and apologies if this post comes across a bit whiney. It's only been 1 month so it's still very raw.
Hi Lathspell and a very warm welcome to the online community which I hope you'll find is both an informative and supportive place to be.
Having a cancer diagnosis when you weren't expecting it can be very difficult to deal with and it's natural that you want to find positive stories.
The online community is divided into different support groups and I can see that you've already joined the oesophageal cancer group which is a great place to ask questions, share experiences and get support.
When you feel ready to post there you can start a new post in the same way as you did here and join in with existing conversations by clicking on 'reply'.
It would be great if you could put something about your fiancé's diagnosis and treatment to date into your profile as it really helps others when replying to you and also when looking for someone on a similar pathway. It also means that you don't have to keep repeating yourself. To do this click on your username and then select 'Profile'. You can amend it at any time and if you're not sure what to write you can take a look at mine by clicking on my username.
"Never regret a day in your life, good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience"
Yes, although it's called a 'profile' within the community. Full instructions on how to do it are shown here.
"Never regret a day in your life, good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience"
