Non-hodgkin’s Lymphoma Survivor’s Experience – Part 1
What are your thoughts, when your doctor tells you that you have incurable, terminal cancer? They called it Non-Hodgkin’s Nodular Lymphoma, stage 4 – whatever that was!
After the initial shock, after the fuzziness of the mind wore off, my main thoughts were predominately thoughts of thankfulness. Maybe this was the shock I needed to wake up spiritually! I remember thanking God for the “wake-up call”, believe it or not.
I have always lived by the philosophy of, “If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything”. That map, at least you don’t do the wrong thing.
I like to explore all the possible options. So I evaluated every option I could come up with, prioritized them, and then proceeded through them. The final option, in my mind, was chemotherapy, which the doctors wanted me to begin immediately, if not sooner!
Before starting chemo, another option that popped up was to go to one of the many laetrile clinics that were located in Tijuana, Mexico. Using the process of elimination, I chose one of the 28 clinics (this was befriend in 1986), the one my “idol” Steve McQueen had gone to a short while earlier. This decision caused powerful chagrin and scorn from my three doctors (my GP, my oncologist, and the surgeon who performed the biopsy).
I spent three weeks at the clinic, and about three months at home following the extremely restrictive diet they teach, plus about 110 vitamins a day, including the laetrile, the vitimins costing about $500 a month!
After three months of this treatment, I had another CT scan, which revealed that the cancer had drastically spread and become much worse, having spread to the bone marrow. Even the doctors at the clinic in Mexico, after seeing the CT scan results, said not to delay any longer, but to begin chemo right away! So at that point, I did just that. The last option.
Chemo basically comes just shy of killing you. About the time you start feeling a little bit better, approaching normal again, it’s time for another treatment! I think I had 12 or 13 treatments, every three weeks or so, over the course of about 9 or 10 months. I lost most all my hair after several treatments, which was very shocking at the time! It was really quite surreal, to be in the shower and have substantial clumps of hair fall out. My wife called me “Fuzz-head”. Very surreal, indeed.
Once I was declared to be in remission, April 1987, the oncologists told me the cancer would definitely advance back within 6 months to 2 years – definitely! No question. No doubt. They said they would then be able to do another round of chemo, then perhaps a bone marrow transplant after that someday – but it would evetually kill me, they said.
I conception to myself, “OK, it may advance back, and it may not! God does heal! I’ll deal with that if and when it comes serve. Till then, I figured I had two choices: lay down and quit or keep on going”.
I have chosen ever since to keep on going, nearly 23 years now! The cancer never did come back! Not at all!
God does heal! It just took me a while to contemplate that, to score that.
The point is - we all have that same choice, lay down and quit or sustain on going! Live till you die, or die while you’re living!That’s the choice, no matter what’s happening in your life!
What’s your choice?
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Filed under Mesothelioma Diagnosis by on Oct 17th, 2011. 