Thanks to everyone for their responses. Not been online much lately, so sorry for the delay. Nice to see some familiar faces, e.g. , CRGuy and Bev . Sorry to the new faces that you had to join us here, but you already know this is the best place to be. A few years ago, I thought I would always been ...

Thought I'd share my FB post today in honor of my 5th cancer-versary: Happy Cancer-versary to me. 5 years ago today was when I received my diagnosis. I know it sounds like a strange thing to acknowledge or celebrate. But here's why. It means that in a week, I get to celebrate another birthday. And t...

I don't come around that much anymore and sometimes I'm saddened by the infighting that seems to crop up every so often, but I'm reminded by posts like this what a wonderful place this still is.

Namaste

YAY!

For purposes of recurrence, surgery, if you have it, makes the most sense to me, because that would be the first time that you don't have evidence of disease. Some people have chemo and/or radiation prior to surgery, but it's unknown if there's disease until the surgery, and some have it after surge...

I guess it must be a state-by-state thing, and you definitely have to look at your doctor list and your prescription list. When you go on the Medicare website, you can plug in all of your prescriptions and it will tell you what your costs would be under the various plans available. You can also see ...

Hi folks. I've not been around here much, as I've sailed through to my 4-year surgery anniversary recently. Lots of new names and faces. I hope you have all found this as warm and caring a place as I did. A friend's sister was just diagnosed with CC - has had MRI apparently but hasn't been staged ye...

Sure, I'll throw my hat in the ring too - birthday #51 is on the 27th and my 4-year cancer-versary is the 20th (based on surgery, this puts me at 3 yrs, 9 months NED; based on the end of chemo/rad, I'm closing in on 3 yrs)

I'm not sure they'd understand that letter; may have to dumb it down. I would send them a relatively polite, but explanatory letter. I'd also either copy it to or a write a separate letter to your state's department of insurance (some states have a separate one for health insurance and some also hav...

I'm late to the game, but will chime in anyway since we were close in our diagnostic history - I was just shy of 47 also. First, while I agree with everyone about medical oncologists and surgical oncologists with regard to treatment, I don't feel the same way about diagnosis. My medical oncologist w...

I think you're getting incomplete answers or mixing issues. One of the exceptions to the 10% penalty is for permanent disability. It's Internal Revenue Code section 72(t)(2)(A). From IRS Publication 590, p. 57: "Disabled. If you become disabled before you reach age 59½, any distributions from y...

On July 20th, I had my 3-year cancerversary. On July 27th, I celebrated my 50th birthday. And today, I got test results - clean CT scans and a 1.7 CEA! That's 2 years, 9 months NED (since surgery). Next scan 1 year.

MD Anderson has housing attached to the hospital or maybe around the corner. We stayed there a few years back when my dad went for a second opinion on his pancreatic cancer treatment. http://www.mdanderson.org/patient-and-cancer-information/guide-to-md-anderson/services-and-amenities/rotary-house-in...

I'm late, but that never stopped me before

I think there's more of an issue with the surgery than the chemo. So whatever your surgeon said is the rule. I started biking during chemo because my surgeon said that wouldn't affect the abdomen or potentially cause a hernia.

I think the problem with sub-groups is that topics often veer off into different directions and placing messages into sub-groups deprives people of those discussions because there's no reason to check all the sub-groups. I believe that over at the UOAA board, most people only check the General Discu...