Positive Cancer

Generally when I go to the gym I run into the same bunch of people. Some know I have metastatic cancer, while others are oblivious mostly because I look fairly healthy. You would think the one’s that are aware of my sickness would be tactful and understanding, but often the opposite is true. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

One friend often says “Sure you’re sick. Let me see your Cancer club membership,” to which I reply “I bet you’ve never been outbenched by a guy whose eligible for a handicap sticker.” This usually ilicits a laugh and a crass reply which I won’t repeat. It’s great to be able to joke about Cancer, and its very positive for me. Friends joke about many things, and in my case, my illness is one of them. Friends being normal around me seems strange;it seems strange that they wouldn’t joke around like they used to about every personal aspect of my life.

I just wanted everyone to know that having friends joke about your Cancer is okay, about your situation is okay. Usually those friends are the one’s that will be there for you when you need something, the one’s who understand your situation well enough to joke about it when your feeling okay, and deal with it when your not. Sure someone might think their strange, making light of your situation, but like the title says, Strange is Normal, at least to me.

Stay Positive, keep your mindset positive and surround yourself with positive people. Positive Cancer is all about being normal with yourself and others, even if normal is different. Besides who wouldn’t want to outbench a healthy person and then gloat about his constant battle with Cancer?

Well it feels a little strange to be writing another post for Positive Cancer, as it’s been a few weeks(okay more than a few weeks) since I’ve updated the site. As often is the case, real life becomes the muse for my writings, and this post is on how life can through you curves and how you have to stay Positive to deal with it.

At the moment I have the unenviable situation of having a cold, which is no fun let me tell you. From my last post(excluding the post explaining that I would eventually repost) until now I have had one of my family cats pass away, and other various setbacks in an otherwise happy life. Staying positive isn’t something that comes natural to people, even me, and so I found myself reading my own posts(go figure) and managed to stay Positive through what I call the “downturn” of life.

Just a few weeks ago I had another CTScan, and as always the anxiety level from waiting for the results tends to build quickly and with great stress. Again through understanding that I was in a battle, and that this was a waiting war, I managed to stay Positive and not bite the head off of everyone around me, worrying about the results. The results were good, and here I am writing again.

Positive Cancer is very important to me as a medium to express how I feel about fighting cancer and how I feel about trying to help others to feel as good and healthy as is relatively possible. Any weapon in the fight against Cancer is valid, especially when the answers come from within. Stay positive, live positive, be positive with Cancer; it’s that simple.

Just a quick post to let everyone know I’m fine, and that I’m still thinking about the site. I’ve been very, very lazy as of late, especially when it pertains to writing, and so I haven’t done any of the topic writing I wanted to. Within the next few weeks I will again be able to focus my full attention on the site, so for those of you that come back, please keep coming back.

Stay Positive!!

I wish that the doctor had a handy list of things I should or shouldn’t eat, or places I should or should not go, but they really don’t have anything more than guidelines. I decided to write down a few things that I avoid due to the negative effects they have on my health.

Getting wet is a big problem for me. If I’m out in a rain for a few drops that’s okay but if I start to get wet hair, or cold, then it’s a guarantee that I’m going to get a cold. This isn’t scientific, but for me its nearly 100% of the time. I can remember power washing my fence in over 30 degree Celsius weather and getting fairly soaked, and by that night I had developed a cold which turned into an infection. It must have something to do with the humidity but all the same I avoid rain and getting wet outdoors. In my own house I can have a bath but again if I’m in there too long I start to feel sick the next couple of days.

Celery is another thing that I find bothers me. It could be the chemotherapy pills I take, but something about the consistency of chewed celery makes me feel ill and immediately throw it up. The reaction is fairly intense and so I decided to just avoid it from now on.

Chicken is usually one of the things I eat often, but sometimes when I eat it I get a whiff of smell, something that almost registers as “urine-like” to my senses. I’ve learned that if I smell this, and usually nobody else does, I had better not eat that piece of chicken and if I do eat it I can expect to throw up immediately. It is strange, but that’s the way it is.

Water for the longest time made me want to choke, if only slightly. I think it had something to do with the speed in which it hit my doctor made stomach pouch, but I have slowly gotten more used to it. It only took 3 years for me to be able to drink a glass of water, but that’s just the way it is.

I cannot eat and drink at the same time, though I can have a drink and then eat, as long as I don’t have another drink of any liquid for at least a half hour. If I mix the two, I have immediate dumping syndrome, which is something I try to avoid. It makes taking pills interesting since I have to take them before I eat rather that with a meal.

I’m sure if I think about it I could find many more items and situations which bother me, but the main reason I did this list is to show that we all have problems, but by identifying the things that bother me I have been able to overcome. Also by sharing what goes on in my life, I hope you can relate it to yours.

I consider myself to be in good shape, maybe even very good shape, and most people who know I have Cancer would put me in great shape. In any case, I don’t look sick and that’s why people sometimes say things around me that are inappropriate. Here are a few examples so that you can feel better about your situation, or just laugh at mine. Either way, it is Positive Cancer.

I can remember three different times where I have told people that I’m disabled, to which they responded, “Sure you are, and I have Cancer.” You can imagine all the different responses in my mind, but most of the time I have been civil enough to say, “Well then your Cancer spread to me.” I say it with a smile but most people stop laughing pretty quick when they figure out I’m not kidding. I must admit I enjoy telling people about my Cancer when they say something ridiculous, or offensive. I take whatever joy I can in life, and humor is important to me.

Once at a restaurant I asked the waitress, a young lady, to pack up my dinner, which was hardly eaten. She stared at the food and said, “You not hungry?” to which I replied, “No, not really.” I tried to leave it at that, but she continued to talk, “So what are you sick or something?” She said it offhandedly, but something about the way she was talking told me that she was just trying to get a tip and be friendly. “Not sick….wait, does Cancer count?” I can assure you the young ladies face turned red and she did not say another word to me, not even when she dropped off the bill. One thing about staying positive that I always adhere to is my right to talk about Cancer, and to not worry about making other people comfortable with the topic. I have way too many other things to worry about.

I’ll give you one more example of the things I have to deal with, and this one is to do with the disability office. When I first went into the office I had no problems getting approved, I apparently looked very “disabled.” After a year I had recovered physically but I was still taking chemo and dealing with dumping syndrome and other problems. The Disability office called me in for a routine paperwork signing but when they saw my physical condition they immediately attempted to halt my disability payments. It almost turned ugly, but when I explained my situation and backed it up with medical records they actually issued an apology. I suppose that on paper I look horrible, and in real life I look better than I feel.

Maintain your positive thinking, your positive mindset and you can look at these situations from a better point of view. I’m glad that people think I’m healthy, it helps me think I’m healthy, and if that isn’t Positive Cancer thinking then its at the very least a good step towards it.

Sometimes when I write I tend to get a little dramatic and to shade everything with degrees of seriousness. When it comes to my Cancer and how my story unfolds, I think if anything I am the opposite and that I am writing it with less seriousness than the situation allowed. I wonder if everyone who has ever had a life threatening situation looks back the same way, with the numbness of time shadowing the pain slightly.

So the pain, as I mentioned in Part 1 of my story, turned out to be a gastrointestinal stromal tumor, or as it’s more commonly referred to, a GIST. This Gist had been inside me for over two years, and now was ready to rip through the lining of my stomach. I can remember waiting at the hospital emergency room for someone to come and get me, to help me understand why the pain was so intense. Forty minutes waiting is what I remember, but I was in a fevered state and so my sense of time and reality could have been askew, before I was admitted to emergency. The doctor put me on the examining table, and started asking me questions, ones I still don’t remember to this day.

I should take a moment hear to talk about my pain threshold. I am not one of those people who are “bragging” about how much pain he or she can take, however I am one of those people who in extreme situations tends to be able to continue to function despite pain. Give me a cold and I’m whinier than most, but give me kidneys stones and I still go to watch a movie while passing them. It’s not anything powerful; it is just the way I’m wired.

I go into this pain threshold only because it helps to show just how badly my stomach hurt. I can remember cutting off the doctor and saying, “Doc I understand pain, I don’t usually have a problem with pain but this is beyond normal. I need something for the pain.” Something in the way I talked to the doctor must have registered that I was in a serious situation because things started to happen faster. I was put on a morphine drip, and then there were a few more nurses helping out, and they got me as comfortable as possible, and finally I passed out. I awoke a few times with chills or sweating from heat waves, both very typical symptoms of fever, and once I can remember the doctor checking my “rear area” for blood, of which their was none.

The night turned into another day, and then the word came that I would be transferred to another hospital, one that had a CT scanner available. I think that the best way to describe how I got from one hospital to the other would be “teleportation” because I don’t remember anything along the way. At that hospital they did a CT scan for which I was barely awake, though I do remember having to wait on an uncomfortable stretcher for over 5 hrs. The scan showed a mass in my stomach, which then prompted a scope, for which I was mostly asleep which then showed that I had a GIST in my stomach.

I slept again and awoke in a third hospital, even more fevered and more morphine “high”, and I can remember certain things with great vividness while others are more elusive. I can remember the surgeon visiting me, and looking at me gravely and saying, “Normally for this kind of operation we would wait three days, but I’m not giving you three hours to live so where going to operate immediately.” Part 3 of my story will tell you how the operation went, but you can probably guess since I’m writing this post whether it was successful or not.

I can remember waking up in the middle of the night, feeling such intense pain within my stomach that it made me feel like throwing up, like things had finally come to a point of no return. It turns out they had, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

My name is Mike, and this is part one of my story. It was early in summer and me and my wife and son all lived in a small town where I helped run a restaurant. The times were generally good, though I found myself being unreasonably angry, unable to quite control my temper over the slightest things. This boiled over to the way I spoke to others, including my wife, though at the time we just thought it was a relationship issue, not that there was anything medically making me this way. I went to my doctor, as my heartburn seemed to be very intense, and for the next while went through a series of different prescription medicines all designed to help. None of them did.
At this point I started feeling tired almost all the time, and began to feel even more temperamental towards others, not to mention that I had slight pains along the abdominal wall of the stomach. I went to the doctor again and again and I started feeling more heartburn, and an unusual amount of back pain. This part of the story proves that chance is a strange thing. I had been driving one morning to pick up a few groceries and ended up being hit by another vehicle. It was that point at which my back pain acted up, and so everyone including myself, the doctor, and my chiropractor just assumed it was a result of the collision. Once again, I was wrong.
When they finally did a blood test on me, my Iron count was low, and my red blood cell count had dipped to less than 40. I was tired all the time and my stomach hurt, but I tended to gloss over these things and just “get through” the day. It was at this time that off-handedly I remarked to my wife that I might have Cancer. Turns out I was right, which by the way is a very bad time to be right. I started getting constant chills, then heat waves, but again it seemed to be manageable, and even when the acid coming up was so strong it was burning my mouth, the doctor and myself thought that it was nothing too serious.
I should take a moment to explain a little more about myself. I was 31 years of age at the time this happened, I worked out a fair bit and was heavier than the average Joe. I have always pushed myself, even when tired, but have had the worst time dealing with colds and flu, especially during the year before my cancer was found. Overall anyone looking at me would have thought that I was healthy, and with my age factored into the equation it would be hard for any doctor to say that I had a life threatening disease.
The doctor had spoken about a scope, but again we both discounted it, and I never really knew what was happening even during the final two weeks before the fateful night when things came full on, even when I started dropping weight and bringing up almost every meal.
So back to that fateful night, when I awoke it was dark, and I thought, “This really, really hurts.” I got up, went and sat on the rug in front of the bed, and I can still remember the feel of the carpet; it was new and clean. I started to think about my wife who was sleeping, enjoying a momentary break from our two year old, and about my two year old boy who was sleeping well for once. I decided that despite the pain, I would wake them in the morning and make a doctor’s appointment then. The pain was so intense, it wouldn’t quit, it just came in constant waves. I suppose I was in shock, but such is the power of the mind, and ergo this website, that I started to rock back and forth, over and over, until my son awoke 7 hours later.
At this point I told my wife to get up, and take me straight to the hospital, and I can still remember the urgency I felt to get there. As you’ll find out in part two of my story, which I’ll post at a later time, the pain was in fact a gastrointestinal tumor ripping through the lining of my stomach muscles.