[chrisy]

Hi Skip,

First of all, thanks Lee (colleen's husband) for the encouraging post. We all need that from time to time. Most of the time in fact!

Skip, its pretty hard to get your head around a Stage IV diagnosis - let alone your hope. That's without being surrounded with dear family members fighting other battles.

Your wife has really only just started actively engaging this battle - barely 2 weeks into therapy. I can only vaguely remember how I felt at that stage of the game. I know I cried a lot, and bounced around between disbelief, dismay, determination, denial, and doubt.

I, too, looked for hope wherever - probably the least successful place was the "mentor" from the local cancer center who was a long term ovarian cancer survivor. She was inspiring right up until she told me she had to drop out of the advanced cancer support group because it was all these women dying of breast cancer. Hello!!!!!???? What an idiot!

So not all "support" experiences are necessarily helpful.

There are long term survivors of Stage IV disease, including to the liver. Maybe your wife can just consider this: some people ARE "cured". Why not her.
You sometimes hear people talk about how it's bad to have false hope. I think they are wrong. Hope is good, and it's reasonable to have hope (since you KNOW there are already long term survivors - and there is so much exciting research in this area!) It's far worse to have false despair. I used to make myself laugh, realizing how stupid I'd feel if I lived another 30 years but wasted it all thinking about dying.

Try not to dwell on the worst possibilities (at least not all the time). Instead, try and imagine how WELL the chemo is working...while you wait for the proof which will come with the next scan.

You know, if she has liver-only disease, she may be a candidate for (curative) local treatment, too.

Right now, your beautiful wife needs to just put one foot in front of the other. Breathe in, breathe out. It's not necessary or even possible to have a positive attitude all the time.

Just allow the tiniest space for the possibility...

Do not lose heart,
Chris