<p>1of42: thanks. You may find this source (from the British Columbia Cancer Agency) interesting: <a href=“http://www.bccancer.bc.ca/PPI/UnconventionalTherapies/GreenTea.htm[/url]”>Error;
<p>LTS:</p>
<p>That oncologist sounds awesome. I’m so glad you’ve linked up!</p>
<p>Here’s a link to diet for chemo patients I found on the Dana-Farber Institute’s website:
<a href=“http://www.chemocare.com/eatingwell/[/url]”>http://www.chemocare.com/eatingwell/</a></p>
<p>Hi LatetoSchool,</p>
<p>Maybe it’s been said but there is a specialized area of deitetics dealing with oncology. Your oncologist or the hospital you are using should be able to give you a referral to this person. They can help you by providing recipes and menu ideas that will keep you healthy, and most importantly, not aggravate any digestive side effects you might experience during treatment. Also, whoever is recommended will likely work hand in hand with your treatment specialist so that you won’t find yourself trying to choose between advisors! Buying and preparing nutritious food, or sharing your dietary needs with your friends who might want to feed you can be a great source of strength and gives you an area of control in an otherwise sometimes out of control situation. There are some tremendous cookbooks designed expressly for cancer patient undergoing traditional cancer treatment. </p>
<p>My best wishes to you. I’ve just started reading CC this month, and what a tremendous source of knowledge, and especially support, this place is. Your courage and determination are an example to me.</p>
<p>Take care!</p>
<p>Getting a great contact via CC is exactly the sort of networking you needed. Those referrals are priceless and whoever gave it to you deserves many many cyber blessings. </p>
<p>I am beyond pleased for you and not at all surprised by the CC response or the response of the physicians. If the CCr is a good friend, I wouldn’t be surprised if they sent advance notice of your contact. The response sort of indicates that. Anyway, academic oncologists have a huge drive to cure the impossible cancers. Be prepared to be awed by the talent and the drive. Much luck at your first meeting. Are you taking someone with you to take notes? </p>
<p>Besides food, you might want to find an experienced Reiki master. I’ve seen some out and out miracles when Reiki is applied with western medicine. At the very least, Reiki is tremendously rest-ful, if that makes sense.</p>
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<p>I second Cheers’ good idea. For any important medical appointment, I always go with a buddy (H is best, if he can get off work). I find I get floored by a comment and my head doesn’t hear the next item accurately. The other person ALWAYS is able to help me
after the appointment by going over, “what s/he said” where I was fuzzy.
On occasion, they also contribute an excellent question.</p>
<p>The presence of another person, even if silent, also gives me courage, confidence and calm to be my best and not get upset. </p>
<p>LTS, I was at a healing service this week and there’s a point where people say aloud the names of anyone they want to send healing energy their way. I didn’t want to say “Late To School” out loud, so just thought of you there.</p>
<p>ROTFL @ paying3tuitions, that is so funny. I am happy that you thought of me. It would have been hysterical though had you said LTS out loud - or - for that matter - any of the other screen names here who are also having challenges. Thank you for helping me laugh. </p>
<p>I am so very thankful for all of the kind posts and I will write back in detail when I am more like myself. I do sincerely appreciate everything everyone has written, and also the PMs - if I have not yet responded, I promise that I will soon. Today I did not have a good day - very, very unusual for me - and I think I know why - I completed drilling through the abstracts of the over 17,000 articles on pubmed.com to come up with the 19 or so that have something positive to say about long term survivors of this - I am glad to see that there are at least a few long term survivors (1.2% at 10 years) but having to drill through all of the negative to even get to that bit of news may have taken its toll on me. It also didn’t help that last night I accidently googled my way to discovering that Christopher Reeve’s wife, also a nonsmoker, died of this, at 44. And she had what appears to be the best medical care money can buy. </p>
<p>Then, most of the rest of my hair fell out this morning, and my wig arrived, and I made myself wear it all day, and I hate it. It looks nice enough and does the job but it feels so fake, icky and creepy. Rather like wearing a carpet. But I have to wear it and I have to get used to it and “make it real” because next week I fly north for five days of meetings, and then a four day conference with hundreds of people, and some of them have known me for years and I don’t want them to know I have cancer. </p>
<p>Then, I had my appointment with my oncologist. All the numbers are great and he is very pleased and described my progress as “excellent”, but I was too weirded out to fully appreciate his remarks, mostly because everything I have read about this says that you have really great days when the doctors say wonderful things and then your next appointment/scan the absolute devastation follows. So we did NOT have the same rapport today and that is because my frame of mind pinged off him and we just didn’t “click”. </p>
<p>So, because it’s pretty important that I don’t lose my mind or go sliding off the slope into an emotional tailspin, I have called the rabbi and asked him to visit me tomorrow during chemo - I liked him better than any of the catholic priests - and, a friend is looking for a psychiatric referral for me asap.</p>
<p>This really isn’t intuitive, but ask your onocologist for a psychiatric referral. There are psychiatrists that specialize in cancer patients. The medicial center my husband is at has one on staff. And, if you haven’t had a psychiatrist before, here is the part that weirded me out, psychiatrists don’t have staff. They don’t have a receptionist to answer their phone. They do their own scheduling, and call and confirm their own appointments. (Or this one does, and friends, all of whom seem to have their own therapists for various and sundry reasons, all confirm their therapists do their own scheduling.) So you may have to leave a message to get an appointment.</p>
<p>UCDAlum82, I am sort of puzzled by my oncologist’s response. I sort of DID tell him what I needed - we started off with he asked how I was doing, and, I said, well, physically, great, I even went running this weekend. But I said mentally, today, not so great, and I explained to him why. So he said “so what are you doing to help yourself” and I told him that I called the rabbi, and that a friend is getting me a referral etc. And he didn’t say anything else - he didn’t offer a referral or a support group or anything. I was puzzled by this - I thought he might offer a resource. Almost certainly I should have firmly asked. But I had 20 other questions I wanted answers to so we moved into my other questions…</p>
<p>UCDalum-
Yes, some mental health professionals have limited staff services, but some have offices with full support staff. Unfortunately, when you see 5-8 or so pts a day, max seeint pts for usually 50 minutes (other specialties can see many pts in an hour and have nursing staff and PAs to do additional labwork, etc) thanks to our wonderful healthcare system, for those in the MH field who accept insurance, the reimbursement rates make it hard to afford staff on top of rent, ancillary services, etc. But it sounds like LTS has a great network of resources and will get great referrals. Good luck, LTS.</p>
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<p>Maybe he thought you covered the territory very well already by what you did. Too many resources and advisors could be its own problem, after all.</p>
<p>I think you just had a bad day today. You expect so much from yourself, that’s clearly you. Just the disappointment with the wig is enough to make a day bad. I think the next time you see the oncologist it’ll go better again.
Anticipate good and bad days. Think of the Biblical Sarah, “She lived ALL the days of her life.” You were brilliant to call in a rabbi to stand by you during the chemo.</p>
<p>Yeah, These doctors are dealing with so many things–as you are too–that even the best ones won’t pick up on everything. Treat yourself like the goddess you are and do whatever feels right for you tonight. Watch a funny video or listen to beautiful music or get some sleep.</p>
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<p>And if they do know? I think that most everybody over a certain age has encountered friends or relatives undergoing various stages of chemo, for all kinds of cancer situations. I’m on a faculty now with 2 women in turbans. After a certain age, it’s just part of the territory, like someone showing up in crutches for a while.</p>
<p>If anyone wonders, can you simply say “I’m undergoing some medical treatment” and leave it at that? If I saw someone at a conference with a wig or turban, I think honestly I’d assume she was in some stage of cancer treatment but that is a normal thing to see these days. They won’t think less of you. I could imagine the discomfort only from someone very young (20’s, 30’s) who hasn’t yet lived long enough to brush up with this in his family.</p>
<p>Sending rest-ful, positive, spring-time energy to LTS, across the oceans. </p>
<p>Dana Reeves was the friend of a friend of mine. As I have another otherwise healthy, trim, female, non-smoking friend who developed lung cancer in Manhattan, I sometimes wonder about the fallout from 9/11.</p>
<p>Buy a scarf if the wig feels icky. What were you saying about the importance of what is between YOUR ears? Let everyone else adjust. Your comfort is paramount.</p>
<p>Cheers, I really wish though I had not read her story. I really do. What spooks me most of all is that she looked absolutely fantastic and appeared to be totally optimistic and on top of the cancer - right up until about eight weeks before she died from it. Reading this stuff really isn’t good for me, not at all. It’s so discouraging and disheartening. There’s the whole “why” of it - especially considering she left a young son (13), and then Randy Pausch leaving three very small children. </p>
<p>BTW, the wig evidently LOOKs great even if it feels horrible. Daughter came to the oncologists office for my appointment (she leaves her job or whatever she’s doing and comes to everything, even though I tell her not to), and, she said, “how was your morning”. I told her “well, my wig arrived” and she said “really”? Then I told her I was wearing it, and she said she didn’t even notice. Can you imagine? I have been hiding my progressive hair loss in ponytails and hats etc. the past couple of days and so she didn’t notice. Then two other people who happened to be sitting in the waiting area decided to jump in and say it looked great, they didn’t even notice it wasn’t my real hair. But it feels horrible and I feel like a fraud because it’s fake…I’m almost tempted to say forget everything, and draw graffiti on my head, consequences be d.</p>
<p>LTS, my mother had a wig that looked a lot like her normal hair, with just very small variations in style. She was continually complimented on it, which was great–what wasn’t great was all the people who complimented the change from her old haircut! She continued to work, just taking days off after treatments and time off after surgeries, so many clients and other people she worked with didn’t know she was undergoing chemo. She got compliments on her new haircut for months! It actually bothered her quite a bit, but I guess it’s better than having a really ugly wig. The real problems arose once treatments stopped for a time and her hair started to grow back. She stopped wearing the wig, but everybody else saw her go seemingly immediately from shoulder length brown hair to very short grey hair. </p>
<p>I say give the wig another day or two of casual wear around the house. See if you get used to it and how it feels. If you still don’t like it, lose it, and try something else.</p>
<p>Your reaction to the wig is totally normal. What my friend did at first was to wear the wig with a scarf on top of it…she thought it didn’t look as “fake” that way, and then she just got used to the wig and it was fine.</p>
<p>I’ll be thinking of you tomorrow as you go through your chemo, and praying for renewed optimism!</p>
<p>Yeah…put your head out for a bit of grafitti ‘tagging’. No one will remember to talk about your cancer. :eek:</p>
<p>Lates, I am so pleased you are looking for a psychiatrist and possibly a cognitive oncology therapist because you’re right. The ‘stories’ can be demoralizing. Surrounded by so much that is so unfamilair to your former healthy self and essentially unfamiliar to your loving, but healthy friends and family–well-- you need a sounding board who has seen the abysses and knows how to get your sanity across to the other side; intact.</p>
<p>Yup, that’s a great idea. Who knows, maybe a compassionate CCr will forward the name of a great therapist/psychiatrist. Hospitals usually offer support groups for family too.</p>
<p>lts - I know the Dana Reeves story is discouraging, but don’t forget each case and each tumor is unique. You may have the same disease, but how that disease behaves in your body may be completely different. A sister of a sister-in-law in my family died of the exact same lobular carcinoma that doctors feel my mother will conquer. They both had lobular carcinoma, both launched the most aggressive of treatment plans at their cancer, but both had drastically different results. </p>
<p>The wig thing is a weird progression. Both my mom and my good friend had the immediate reaction of ‘I cannot do this…I hate this thing.’ But interestingly, they eventually came to appreciate being able to ‘slap their hair on their head’ and ready to head out the door in 30 minutes.</p>
<p>Just a note to let you know I am still praying for you…and yes, it is “out loud” on my walks in the morning with my dog. </p>
<p>Hang in there…</p>
<p>LTS, I have just read your very brave post and want you to know I am thinking of you and having positive thoughts for you! I know three young (in their 30’s and 40’s) people who currently have cancer (2 lung, 1 breast) and all three are so very positive! I truly believe attitude is everything!</p>