Support for LateToSchool

[sueinphilly]

<p>LTS, you are going to outlive us all. </p>

<p>I can’t wait to call you Long Term Survivor, same acronym, new meaning.</p>

[momof3sons]

<p>LTS, couldn’t be happier for you today. You sailed through your first wbr and are back at work in a flash. I hope you took that Superwoman cape off before you lay down on the table. Don’t want to distract the medical professionals. ;)</p>

[Hanna]

<p>What wonderful news. We are all thinking of you.</p>

[jym626]

<p>LTS,
So happy to hear things went as well as they did! I have been getting responses from several colleagues on my listserv. One nice gentleman in Belgium sent me 3 journal articles. Please let me know if you’d like them-- I’ll have to backchannel them to you.</p>

[CountingDown]

<p>Amen, amen, amen. Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” is running through my brain now, and the tears are flowing.</p>

[northeastmom]

<p>I am so glad that it was a good day!</p>

[4Giggles]

<p>LTS- Tears of Joy!! and thank you to G-D for making this day great for you.</p>

<p>good luck with tomorrow:)</p>

[mafool]

<p>LTS-</p>

<p>I am struck by the image of the nurses and support staff stroking, kissing, soothing you. My prayers for you this morning, in addition to requesting blessings for you and your daughter and others in your life, and skill and wisdom for the Drs, nurses, and technicians, was that G-d would hold you in his/her arms, that you would feel loved and supported, comforted and safe.</p>

<p>I am certain that others, more skilled, articulate, and “connected” than I, were praying similar prayers this morning.</p>

<p>You were ministered to by angels, one way or another. I am humbled and thankful.</p>

<p>To others in this amazing community, I hope that, should I find myself in challenging circumstances, I will be able to surround myself, IRL or virtually, with a community of this sort. I wish the same for all of you.</p>

[mommusic]

<p>Such good news! </p>

<p>I echo the thoughts of the community, and agree that LTS will someday stand for “long term survivor”!</p>

[calmom]

<p>I am soo happy it went well for you and turned out to be much less horrible than you imagined. </p>

<p>I also believe very strongly that your mind will stay strong because you use it actively. (Plenty of science to support that assertion as well). I think that the risk from the mets in your brain is much, much worse than the risk from the radiation to kill them.</p>

[epistrophy]

<p>LTS: So good to hear that things went so well today.</p>

<p>Here’s yet another story about a lung cancer “survivor.”</p>

<p>

Phil beats lung cancer</p>

<p>I was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer in 2001 at age 62. Throughout this experience, I received assurance directly, by telephone, card, and e-mail, that there was a very large group of my family, friends (including many I didn’t know I had!), co-workers, and church members that they were all praying for me. I believe when you get to the bottom line, that is what makes all the difference.</p>

<p>A tumor appears</p>

<p>It started when a suspicious fuzzy spot in a chest x-ray turned out to be a 25 cubic centimeter tumor when checked by a CT scan. It was diagnosed as small cell carcinoma from a biopsy taken during a bronchoscopy. </p>

<p>I had smoked for 40 years, having started in the army in order to get the hourly break instead of the hourly extra chores. No doctor had ever told me before then that there were truly effective ways to treat the physical addiction. None of my ancestors back to 1620 had ever died of cancer, so I thought I was safe. But that’s its own story. Anyway, I quit.</p>

<p>Small cell carcinoma typically has begun to spread by the time the primary tumor has reached one cubic centimeter in size, so an operation is generally not done. I expected to die, and prepared for it. But I was treated with a lifetime allowance of radiation and the “maximum tolerated dose” of chemotherapy, after brain and bone scans had indicated the cancer was apparently limited.</p>

<p>Therapy begins</p>

<p>This was not the most enjoyable experience in the world, and although I tried to continue to work, every attempt was accompanied by more unpleasant effects, like shingles and blood clots, so work had to wait until I recovered from all therapies. </p>

<p>That the cancer hadn’t spread was one miracle, that I could hold up through the treatments and stay on schedule was another, and that my company held my job while this was going on was a third! I have to believe some intervention was made on people’s hearts, among other things.</p>

<p>A couple of months after therapy ended I had CT and PET scans. They could find no trace of remaining tumor or sign of it having spread. A few months after that I fulfilled a life-long dream that had been my mother’s before me and her father’s before her, and visited Ireland. Truly a land of magic.</p>

<p>I threw a party when I hit two years after the original diagnosis, at which everyone in my extended family donated to a fund split between the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society.</p>

<p>Remission doesn’t last</p>

<p>There was still no indication of the cancer reappearing anywhere, and I learned that 90% of the people who will have a recurrence will have had it by then. Just before I would have been a three-year survivor, I developed a cough that wouldn’t go away. </p>

<p>Nothing could be seen on an X-ray, probably because there was a mass of scarring from the previous radiation. Even a PET scan was inconclusive. But another bronchoscopy and biopsy was quite clear – the small cell carcinoma had returned, in the same place it had been originally. </p>

<p>Another bronchoscopy in a different hospital with a difference pathologist checking the biopsies confirmed the diagnosis. The normal, recommended treatment for a recurrence of small cell carcinoma is palliative treatment only, because the recurrence is expected to be more resistant to chemotherapy than the original it has almost always spread by the time it is discovered they can’t give any more radiation to that area. </p>

<p>Once again I was prepared to die.</p>

<p>Final miracle</p>

<p>The tumor did shrink in response to a different chemotherapy drug than the combination I had received three years before. CT scans, another PET scan at the last minute, and lymph node biopsies confirmed that by every appropriate test, the recurrent tumor had also not spread yet. </p>

<p>The lower and middle lobes of my right lung were surgically removed. Lymph node biopsies were taken all around the lung at the beginning of the operation and found to be normal. </p>

<p>The tumor itself, examined by the pathologist in the removed lung parts, appeared to be surrounded by a tight wall of non-cancerous cells. The margins of the removed areas were clean. If that wasn’t a full-fledged miracle, I don’t know what is; no, I know of another – that I was guided to the right doctors.</p>

<p>At the time of writing this, it is nine months from the time that the persistent cough led to the discovery of the recurrence. I am not quite finished with the follow-up chemotherapy that is done to make sure any tiny pockets of cancer cells too small to be visible, are eliminated once and for all. I believe the cancer is gone.

</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.wikicancer.org/page/Phil+beats+lung+cancer?t=anon[/url]”>http://www.wikicancer.org/page/Phil+beats+lung+cancer?t=anon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[Muffy333]

<p>So glad everything went well for you and that you were pleasantly surprised by Dr. Grouchy!! I love reading your eloquent posts. Best wishes to you.</p>

[latetoschool]

<p>Mythmom, very happy birthday tomorrow :)</p>

<p>Mstee, you have it exactly. This doctor - who was just so horrible on the phone yesterday - could not possibly have been kinder. I wish everyone could have seen his face - he spoke very little, but his eyes, and his face, such great, great compassion, and such incredible emotion. I was so amazed that this man was patting my shoulder, rubbing my back, and being so literally “hands on” both before and after the radiation treatment.</p>

<p>Later, when his head nurse made the comment about how they were so happy I was there for treatment, it all clicked. He was positively evil on the telephone yesterday because he doesn’t want to talk about reports, or other brains that are not MY brains. He has incredible, lethal, effective cancer fighting weapons at his disposal and he wants to be about the business of firing those weapons at cancer cells, not sitting behind a desk talking about the cancer cells - or treatment risks. He was angry because I had him pinned behind a desk and stuck on the telephone, vs. letting him fire his weapons at this cancer.</p>

[mythmom]

<p>Thank you lts. But you will be on my mind.</p>

<p>And I totally take away any negative energy toward the gruff doctor who wants so much to heal you.</p>

<p>He goes on the list of good guys.</p>

[Karen_Colleges]

<p>(deep voiceover) “Stay tuned for our next episode, as the cancer weapons do their work and LTS makes another remarkable discovery on her epic journey…”</p>

<p>Thanks for giving us the next installment, we were all on the edge of our seats. Tears of sadness, compassion, joy, laughter, astonishment, angst— this thread has it all…</p>

<p>Have a nice weekend, wish I could join y’all for the cherry blossoms walk.</p>

[bethievt]

<p>Here with you every day.</p>

[sunnyflorida]

<p>LTS, you are wise. Your doctors anger was just that. The only time I have been thoroughly frustrated and short with a patients (three actually, in about 24 years) was when they were questioning treatment, urgently needed treatment in cases when there was NO OTHER REAL OPTION. In each of these cases, I was angry at the patient, and scared that their decision not to accept treatment would result in their death (and in one case the death of their unborn child.) I was not ready to accept their deaths, especially when they were young, and had so much life to live. I think he knew that those dam lesions were probably more than the 6 they could see, and in a matter of days could be 12 without treatment. I have had plenty of times where I had patients decline treatment. So has he. But they were terminal, and it was time to make that decision. You are not, nor was he ready to do anything other than FIGHT. But he didn’t know how to say so. So he got ornery.</p>

<p>Yup, I agree with LTS meaning LONG TERM SURVIVOR. </p>

<p>I also think that the staff finally realized just how scared you might be. You may be all knowlegable and matter of fact, all work and no play, all business. But a part of you is just as scared as the next patient. Someone realized that you also needed stroking, hugs and a show of concern. They dropped their defensive walls.</p>

[NYMomof2]

<p>epistrophy, I love the stories you post. This last one is especially inspiring. I love the idea of the body walling off the tumor so it can’t spread. </p>

<p>sunnyflorida, thank you for that insight. It does add to the explanation that LTS had already figured out.</p>

[great_lakes_mom]

<p>What a day, filled with lessons of all sorts! An amazing group effort, both in your clinic as well as on CC. </p>

<p>Visualizing shrinkage to all tumors…</p>

[curiousmother]

<p>Prayers of thanks coming from Texas as well.</p>

<p>Well done LTS!</p>