[Lien]

Cancer is many diseases lumped together under the same label. As are mets. Generally speaking, some live a good life for over a decade, some die soon after the Stage 4 diagnosis. Skin mets are not directly life threatening, and often respond well to treatment. Over the past 9 years I have "met" women online who survived and thrived after they were told there life expectancy was limited. Some have been NED for over 13 years. For some cancer has become a chronic disease that calls for treatment, just like diabetes or a heart condition do. These chronic illnesses may or may not cause one's death, eventually. My father just lost a friend to pneumonia, who was diagnosed with lung mets 10 years ago. He had been NED for 9 years, and died from an infection he got after he broke his hip. He was 81. He never thought he would beat his cancer, but he did.

So what I'm trying to tell you, is that doctors just don't know. They make a guess, based on other people's cancer experience and they present it as a fact. But it isn't. The only fact you have to deal with, is the fact that you need some kind of treatment for a disease that is chronic for now. It may or may not kill you eventually, but there's no-one in the whole wide world who can tell you for certain.

So live your life, love your loved ones, and find someone you can talk to about your cancer. Someone who doesn't know you so well, so you won't hurt them by telling them the truth, telling them about your fears. The hardest thing for me was telling my dad. My brother had died at 18, my mother had died from cancer 4 years previously, he was just recuperating from treatment for his prostate cancer, and his younger brother had died from cancer when he was 20. So much cancer in his life. But I needed to tell my kids, because they were more afraid of what I wasn't saying, and it wouldn't be fair to forbid them to talk to Grandpa about it. So I told him. He dealt with it much better than I expected. And I'm still here!

Love

Jacqueline