Having been home from hospital for a few weeks, I was expecting to have had my various lung infections cleared up and be back on track, nutrition-wise. However, I was still not able to eat or drink anything. I could manage lemonade icy poles and iced water, and that was about it. Even then, I'd cough up phlegm from my lungs. Naturally, I assumed that I still had some residual lung infection.
That wasn't the whole story though. I called my GP and told her how I was getting by on around 100 calories a day and losing weight fast. I'd gone from around 130kg to 75kg in six months with 13kg lost in the past month alone. I asked her to call my Gastroenterologist at Monash and see what to do. He said to get straight to Monash for a gastroscope and a feeding tube insertion.
The GP arranged for the ambulance to pick me up and bring me to Melbourne.
All seemed like it would be ok until after the gastroscope. The doctor gave me the grim news that he thought the cancer had returned. Six weeks prior, at the last gastroscope, all looked clear and on the way to healing. Now the stomach was inflamed and there was evidence of a hole leading directly from the stomach to the lung. This, he thought was a direct result of the cancer returning and had probably been brewing in the background for a while. In any case, it explained why I constantly had fluid on the lungs and was hacking up phlegm all the time. The lung and stomach were touching each other and the cancer had made a direct conduit between the two.
I asked the doctor what all this meant in terms of a revised life expectancy. He said "weeks". As I was still coming out from under the anesthetic, I didn't really take it in straight away.
The following few days involved my parents coming down from Sydney and lots of other questions to the doctors about further treatment options. The doctors here at Monash, as well as my surgeon didn't hold out any hope for further treatment, saying that any more surgery would be essentially futile and more chemotherapy would most likely be fatal, especially if I was to develop another lung infection while my immune system was being compromised by the chemotherapy. Radiation was also out of the question as I have already had the maximal dose of radiation therapy last year.
So, I have two choices. The first and easiest is to roll over and accept the bad news and wait to die, or explore my options. Not being ready to die, I've decided to explore my options.
I've asked the doctors to suggest other specialists for me to consult regarding a second opinion, both in Melbourne and Sydney.
There is an oncologist known to the family in Sydney who has kept my cousin alive for seven years after initially giving her six months to live with stage four breast cancer. I will make an appointment to see him as soon as possible with a view to getting some treatment underway.
I know the odds may be stacked against me with this, but they always have been. It comes down to those two choices. Roll over and accept death or fight it and maybe survive for years to come. We all know of people who've defied the odds and beat cancer despite being given a grave prognosis. Why not me too?
No comments:
Post a Comment