right....so i've been debating on whether or not i should even mention this here. in the end i decided to let people know what's been going on with me irl.
warning: foul language ahead
a couple of weeks before my birthday (back in january) my sweetie had a biopsy done on a mass in his right lung. it turned out to be lung cancer. folks who know me irl know i did not take the news well - i was inconsolably depressed and spent a lot of time laying in bed crying.
unfortunately i was so depressed i didn't go with to his first few doctor appointments - his mom went with him. i didn't think this was a bad thing until he came home from a consultation one day acting even more depressed than i was. One afternoon while he was out i spoke to his mom on the phone and then it all became clear that she pretty much felt it was hopeless and was already throwing in the towel. (her view was that chemotherapy was going to make him lose his hair and feel icky so he shouldn't even bother.) i am ashamed to admit that i allowed her defeatist attitude to influence me and i sank back into deep despair. this continued until i got this great urge to get out of the house one day and went to visit my bff (heidi) who introduced me to her neighbor who lives across the street.
he has cancer too, and by the time i left he managed to convince me that if my sweetie was going to fight this he was going to need me and that we had to have hope.
so i went home and decided that after that i was going to make a point of being at all of his doctor appointments. i also spoke to her (my mil) again and told her about heidi's neighbor and how he said the treatment was helping him and that we should have hope.
at the first appointment i went to, the doctor did not sound like it was hopeless and was explaining that the way they treat this is through radiation and chemotherapy, etc. when suddenly she interrupts the doctor to ask "won't chemotherapy make him feel icky? he'll lose his hair! why would he give up 2 months of his life to feel sick?" the doctor tried to explain that there was a chance that the chemo would shrink the tumors and that would make my sweetie feel better and it could also add a few years back on to his life. he went on to point out that although cancer isn't curable - and she interrupts again, this time gesturing toward me: "yeah she still doesn't get that, she's still hoping he can be cured..." at this point, i was livid.
of ******** course i know we don't have a ******** cure for cancer! i am not a ******** moron! having hope does not make me an idiot! i quietly stood up and excused myself to go get a cup of coffee.
when we got home, my sweetie decided that he wanted to pursue treatment at a different hospital that is closer to our place. he also figured a second opinion never hurt anything, so we got his info sent over and went in to meet them.
his mom did not make it to that appointment so there was no one to interrupt the doctor when he was outlining the treatment this time, and he said pretty much the same stuff the other doctor had said. he also sounded like he had every intention of shrinking the tumors and making my sweetie feel better. hooray!
so we set it up to get treated there. we are now halfway through his treatment, and he is (dare i say it?) starting to feel a little better, or in any case he isn't feeling worse. oddly, he actually feels really good after his chemotherapy treatment.
questions and answers
so why am i telling you this?
i just want people to know i've been a little distracted lately - i am not angry at anyone here or avoiding anyone.
you probably want stuff don't you?
no. please don't send me anything - really.
what kind of cancer does he have? what stage is it?
it's stage 3b, inoperable non small cell and it's in his right lung. (this s**t is still greek to me, sorry)
how did it get that bad without him noticing?
it didn't. he noticed, plenty early on... but the pulmonologist he was going to is an incompetent twit that misdiagnosed him for the better part of 2 years. (i have a lot of anger for that person) first they said it was just asthma, then they thought it was copd. she just kept prescribing inhalers and his pain kept increasing until one day when he was seeing a different doctor he mentioned it to them and they had the bright idea to get an xray. that's when they saw the mass and ordered the biopsy. sad it's a shame his pulmonologist wasn't that ******** clever a year ago....
thanks for listening and understanding.
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ummm......journal?
i dunno...all the cool kids are doing it...
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