My Story - so far

Ok - here goes :) I am a 51 year old male. Been married for almost 27 years to Brenda, truly my better half. We have adopted 4 children and are currently working on adopting 3 more, siblings to our two oldest boys. We have been foster parents for over 22 years. We lost count after 180 some kids over all these years. We have also done day care for many years.

I was starting to feel very fatigued way back in November. Typical male, I just kept thinking I would get over whatever it was. Then in January I was off of work for 6 days with a bad case of the flu. The day I thought I was over it I took Brenda out for breakfast at our favorite restaurant. I took two bites out of my favorite breakfast skillet and then had to run to the bathroom. Brenda called the doctor's office and we got there shortly thereafter. He had some lab tests run and sent me home to rest. Later that afternoon he called to say my hemoglobin was really low and he wanted me to see a specialist. I saw the specialist the next afternoon. He took one look at me and read my lab tests. Told me to go right to the Emergency Room, that I most likely needed some blood. That started the whole ball rolling - straight downhill.

I got admitted in ER and started getting fluids and tests. I ended up getting 3 pints of blood! No wonder I was so pooped. They couldn't figure out why I was so low since I had not been passing blood in my urine or stools. SOOOO - the famous scope tests were in order. The upper scope found a bad bleeding ulcer, right next to a mass, which they biopsied. The doc that did the scope may have told me what he found but I was so doped up that I remember nothing about the test or who might have talked to me.

The next morning, bright and early, a surgeon came in (woke me up when I had almost not slept all night.) Told me that I had a cancerous tumor that needed to be removed as soon as possible. It looked to be about golf ball sized from the pictures that they took through the scope. I know I was almost in shock. When I heard the dreaded word CANCER nothing else made much of an impression. I expected to hear about an ulcer, not about cancer. I vaguely remember agreeing to surgery. My wife wasn't due in the hospital until after 8:00am because she had to get kids off to school. So I was a real wreck for awhile, never felt so scared in my life. Then I thought I would use my laptop to do some quick research on the Internet about gastric cancer. The hospital had free wi-fi access. Imagine my surprise and further shock when Windows totally crashed before my eyes. Thank you Bill Gates - grrr. Thankfully I am a PC technician and had what I needed to repair my machine. Took me all day to do that. When Brenda got there she said she knew that it was cancer and thought I knew. The first of many times while I was in the hospital that I was so drugged up that I did not know what was going on or even who was in the room with me. I did have a lower scope the next day or two that found nothing. My intestines were full of blood from the ulcer.

I had surgery at 7:00am on a Sunday morning. Yes, I found it hard to believe a doctor doing surgery on a Sunday especially that early. He expected it to last 2.5-3.0 hours but it turned into 5 hours. The tumor was actually tennis ball sized and was right next to my esophagus. The surgeon took half of my stomach and two inches of esophagus, along with my spleen, appendix and 15 lymph nodes, 7 of which were cancerous. I was in Intensive Care for only 1 day, instead of the 2-3 that they thought I would be there. I was released 8 days after surgery. I was sent home to recuperate for 6 weeks.

An oncologist had come in for a consult while I was in the hospital. Brenda and I went to see him in mid-March. He scheduled a PET scan. That showed some suspicious spots on my liver so he ordered a CT scan. That showed 9 cancerous spots. At that point we had no idea of what we were facing. We asked him for a prognosis. He asked us several times if we really wanted to know. Not a good sign but we said yes. He told us based on my scans that the average gastric cancer patient had 4-6 months without chemotherapy (chemo from now on) and 10-12 months with chemo. Felt like we were sucker punched. He even questioned us about our plans of going through with the adoption. Said we might want to rethink that - we said no way.

I started my first round of chemo soon after. My memory started getting fuzzy after that. Cancer sucks royally but chemo is a close second. I might have been a bit weak still after having major surgery but chemo drained me dry. I have never felt so fatigued in my entire life and still feel that way.

I had three rounds of chemo. Had one week of chemo then two weeks off to let me body try to recover from it. Chemo is so highly toxic to the body. It doesn't discriminate much - kills cancer cells, sure but also kills many good cells. I get 5FU and cesplatin and one other I do not remember now. I get the two on a Monday and the 5FU I get the rest of the week via a pump. Yeah, that is a real barrel of laughs - tethered to a fanny pack that carries the pump. Impossible to take a shower and damn hard to use the bathroom lol.

Had a CT scan awhile ago on a Thursday and had to wait until the next Monday to see the oncologist for the results. Jeez - waiting is one of the hardest parts of this whole cancer crap! BUT it was great news. He was just looking for no growth. I actually had 8 of the 9 spots get so small they were barely visible. The biggest spot had gone down after in half! I had been all ready to tell him no more chemo if it wasn't doing any good. He said we needed to do three more rounds and see where that brings me.

I completed round four last Thursday. Was rough the whole week, more than it had ever affected me. I knew I was going to feel bad the next 3-4 days because that always happened after a round of chemo. I insisted on the family going on a camping trip we had planned for many months. I felt miserable almost the entire time. I threw up alot and could hardly eat or drink. I lost almost 10 pounds between the 24th and 29th. It was important to me and my wife to do the camping trip. We had our first date at Lake Storey campground, 29 years ago. We have tried every year since then to either go camping there or at least have a picnic there. Had only missed a few years, usually due to problems with scheduling the kids, who were in foster care. We usually go camping with my mother-in-law and brother-in-law, who share a house in a neighboring town. They have been very supportive of us. It was nice spending time with them, even though I felt so sick.

Whew! Haven't typed this much in ages. I am thinking of getting a custom Tshirt that says Cancer Sucks on one side and I Hate Chemo on the other. Cancer has changed my life in many ways. Sounds like things to blog about later :) Hope something here has been helpful. Please feel free to make some comments. That's it for now.