Postby bomberbob » Mon Oct 16, 2023 2:50 pm
Hi
I am still alive. Diagnosed with prostate cancer November of 2021. My previous surgeries and internal plumbing modifications complicated what the doctors at the University of Iowa were able to do. We did what we could, some radiation treatments, and two years of hormone shots. January I go in and have my PSA level checked to see if they got it all.
So why talk about prostate cancer on a forum devoted to colon cancer? Because in my opinion, cancer is cancer. Colon, breast, brain, prostate, lung, different locations in our bodies, different symptoms, some treatments are different, some are the same. Most of these treatments are really tough, it comes close to killing you but since cancer is weaker than you are, it dies first. Its like a medical version of playing chicken with cancer. Don't give up, keep your foot on the gas and stay on the road to recovery. Cancer will chicken out and roll down into the ditch. I don't care how big cancers headlights get and how close it seems, its pedal to the metal. I don't know how else to put this.
Did I ever share with you my dads experience with colon cancer? Maybe I did, I will give you a brief recount. He was diagnosed in his late 40s. Did some radiation, it didn't seem to help, so he went home and retreated to his bedroom and just wasted away and died. He just gave up. Watched ESPN on a little portable TV. I look at photos of him out on the front porch. His eyes were not of a sick man fighting for his life, they were the eyes of a beaten man who had given up.
Please do not give up. God has given us bodies with tremendous abilities to heal. We can also do without some organs that we were born with. I haven't had a colon since 91. Have a bag on your side? Been there, done that. Used to run 5 miles a day with a ileostomy bag. Had to add tape to keep it from coming loose, but I wasn't going to allow it to slow me down. And it didn't.
Don't get me wrong, I am not superman, I am not immortal. I will die eventually, but God put me here to live out my life. So I will do that, packing as much love and empathy for others into the time he has given me.
So you tell yourself in the morning, and at night before you drift off to sleep:
"I am still alive"
"I will not give up"