moving on need suggestions
 

Hi,
I haven't posted in a while.I just finished my second week of rads 4 more to go.I go from being very optimistic about my future to just wanting to curl up and not deal with it.I know most of you have gone thru the same emotions and I am hoping you can give me some advice or words of wisedom for those down times.
I guess the road block for me is that just prior to diagnosis I was going to college finishing up my pre recs to apply to the nursing program.The work I do now is rewarding but doesn't pay well at all.I know money isn't everything but I would like to get into something I like and I could make a living at should anything happen to my hubby.
To go back to school after treatment will require a great deal of commitment.I get afraid that I will just get started and I'll have a recurrance.These thoughts are what keeps me from moving foreward with my life. I also know if I wait too long to make a decission I will be too old to start,47now.
I have thought of starting my own buisness at home possibly a boarding kennel for our 4 legged friends.This also would be a considerable commitement but a little more tangeable.
The threat of reccurrance seems to freeze me in my tracks and so I go nowhere.I am usually a glass is half full kind of person and this fearfull way of thinking is really getting to me.Any advice will be helpfull.
Dx 3/05
IDC multicentric
6.5 total tumor load
grade 3 stage 3
er/pr- her2+++
4 AC 3 carbo/taxol/herceptin
sx 10/05 currently doing rads

Thanks for your help, sorry this was so long,
Alice

Dear Alice,

I can only say a few words about your mindset right now. I certainly understand why you think the way you do, but must insist that you turn your sails to meet the wind that has been dealt you. I have been fascinated since childhood, that a sailing ship can actually sail INTO the wind. I find it nothing short of amazing.

Try to look at it this way. You are no good to yourself, your husband, or anyone else, if you are paralyzed by fear of recurrence. Try, if your health permits, to continue on the course that you have set. But remember that your health and treatment must come first at all times. If you can't handle school right now, then take some time off and get better first. Don't plan your life based on hypotheticals; i.e. my cancer might come back. Assume that it will not get in the way. If it does, mount all of your efforts to fight it again. Let it be a detour rather than a dead end. If and when you do become a nurse, you will have an understanding and compassion that few posess.

If you think 47 gives you ants in your pants, wait till you hit 50...haha. I have had many occupations in my life, each changed by the health of a family member. When my Dad became ill, I left my job as a crime scene investigator to be with him. After he passed away, I worked as a private detective. When Mom's health began to fail, I became a home-based stock trader. After she was diagnosed with her breast cancer, I needed more time to run here and there to doctors and treatment, so I began building reproduction antique furniture in a basement woodshop. Some day I'll figure out what I want to do when I grow up...lol. But for now, I try to live in the present, and worry mostly about her treatment. Although I need to plan for the future, there is a one in three chance, I am told, that I will develop genetically influenced pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal. But until then, I will be hopefull that I will some day have a "normal and productive" life.

Just keep your head up and keep your eye on the ball. Try to enjoy the rads. They are helping you, and giving you a free tan in the middle of winter at the same time. Well, so much for my "few words" on the subject. I apologize for the sermon. Best of luck to you, and we will all keep you in our prayers.

Sincerely,
Tom

Dear Alice, One quote that I had read in a book about moving on after cancer was from an oncologist who said that you can spend everyday worrying about a recurrance and before you know it, 2 years will go by and you will have wasted 2 years of your life, when you could have been living it.

None of us knows how much time we have or what is going to happen tomorrow, let alone 6 months or a year from now. I try to live every day in the present and try not to worry about things that I have no control over.
I don't think you are ever too old to start a new career. When I was in law school, there was a guy who was 62 in my class. He ended up becoming a state representative when he was 67 and is still going strong. Good Luck!

Laurie

Alice;

I have had the same feelings many times. I find coming to this site is the answer for me.....it is here I find hope. Yesterday for example I read here about lapatinib this new drug currently in clinical trials. It targets Her1 AND Her2 and is small enough to cross the body/brain barrier....so it holds hope for brain mets (a big fear for me as I had a tumor in my supraclavicular node heading in that direction). I'll start to follow it. Plus there's lots of other information here to give me hope......different treatments. I just finished the book about the discovery of Her2 by Robert Bazell. Just the amazing story of this wonderful drug gave me hope of more future treatments. This is how I keep putting one foot in front of the other each day....dreaming of a great future full of who knows what.....all the possibilities. The worst case is not to finish after all.....it's not to start.

I wish I could give you an answer, but I am writing to tell you that I wonder about these things everyday too, and you're not alone with your questions. On good days, I refuse to think of anything but continued good health.

Jen

Thank you all for your replies. I knew I could count on you to get back my perspective.

I know there will be days like today that seem overwhelming. I also am so glad to have this site to go to on those days and be encouraged. A lot of times I dont post but just go thru other posts and have always found a good word to help.I hope there is someone else out there who has been touched by your words.
I will now go foreward and have the courage to change the things I can and not fear the things that I can't.
Thank you,Alice

Alice,

I too was attending school fulltime for my teaching certificate when I had to have two surgeries then treatment. I had (sometimes still do) all these emotions you are experiencing. As difficult as it was, I did take one class in the fall and though I will never be the same I was glad to have a sense of "normalcy" back. Best of luck with any decision you make.

Diag. 12/05 2B, 1 node, 4 a/c 4 taxol, 6 week rad Herceptin every 3 weeks.

Mary

Words of Encouragement
 

These are some of my favorite quotes, they always uplift my spirit and help me to move past my brief moments of doubt. I hope that they may do the same for you.

"All things are possible until they are proved impossible - and even the impossible may only be so, as of now."

Pearl S. Buck, 1892-1973
American Writer and Missionary

"We are all afraid - for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man, every civilization, has gone forward because it's engagement with what it has set itself to do. The personal commitment and the emotional commitment of working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man."

Jacob Bronowski, 1908-1974
British Mathematician, Writer and TV Presenter

"Never give in!
Never give in!
Never, never, never, never-
in nothing great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense."

Winston Churchill, 1874-1965
British Statesman and Prime Minister

"My personal trials have also taught me the value of unmerited suffering. As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways that I could respond to my situation: either to react with bitterness or to transform the suffering into a creative force."

Martin Luther King, 1929-1968
American Civil Rights Leader and Minister

"To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it -
who can say this is not greatness?"

William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811-1863
English Writer

"My message to you is:
Be Couragous!
Be as brave as your fathers before you.
Have Faith!
Go forward.

Thomas Edison, 1847-1931
American Inventor

"He who has courage and faith will never perish in misery!"

Anne Frank, 1929-1945
German Jewish Schoolgirl Diarist

"Be strong and of good courage:
be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed:
for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."

The Bible, Joshua 1:19

"If suffering went out of life, courage, tenderness, pity, faith, patience and love in its divinity would go out of life too."

Father Andrew
Life and Letters

"Believe you can, and you can. Belief is one of the most powerful of all problem dissolvers. When you believe that a difficulty can be overcome, you are more than halfway to victory over it already."

Norman Vincent Peale, 1898-1993
American Writer and Minister