The scary stuff!!!

[tricia keegan]

Pink girl, love the discussion here and can identify with your thoughts and am every bit as confused as you.
I've just celebrated my third year out and was feeling good in believing totally herceptin had changed the stats for me and I was one of the lucky one's.
I say this because two of my friends dx with me have had recurrance's, one to the liver and passed very quickly and one who is still in horrendous tx having had a huge tumour growing on her spine the whole time she did chemo with me!!
I was feeling confident, this evening I sit here with a pain in my knee, it's been there over a week and if still there next week will have the attention of my onc but...suddenly I have that dull scared feeling in the pit of my stomach and wonder if this it???
God do we ever get over this fear??
I doubt it and imagine I'll never have a pain that is just a pain anymore but mets somewhere in my mind. I think cancer does'nt just affect the body but no matter how positive the personality it always has a profound effect on the mind too.
Thanks again for bringing it up!

[BonnieR]

Today I just began reading a book called "After Breast Cancer" by Musa Mayer. It was sent to me by the people who make Herceptin. When I began treatment there was someplace you could sign up for info from them and I have periodically received little encouraging pamphlets, etc. Now that I have completed the year of treatment, this book came. The timing is perfect. It looks to address so many of the concerns and fears we all share.

[harrie]

The way I try to look at the present and the future is like this: For today, if I am NED right now, and there is nothing significant that I need to be concerned with, I really want to appreciate THIS day. Who the heck knows what tomorrow may bring. It may bring yrs and yrs of days like today, it may bring situations like before where I will be needing to contemplate options and whatevers.....So no sense in jumping the gun and spoiling the carefree days right here and now. I will deal with the future when the future becomes present.

Dont get me wrong...many times I do slip and worry about what may happen,....I just try not to for the above reasons.

[swimangel72]

Thank you all for this interesting discussion - I do not worry about recurrence but I do worry about a new, different cancer showing up in my body - and I worry even more about a life-threatening disease showing up in my husband or kids. I feel strongly that if I do get a recurrence, I'll get through it. Sometimes though, I feel superstitious - when I look at the palm of my hand and realize how short my lifeline is compared to other people.......silly, of course, so I try to get negative thoughts like that out of my mind. Heck, for all I know, I could get hit by lightning tomorrow (considering all the thunderstorms and rain we've had in my region, it's not an impossibility!) So I'll continue to say my prayers for good health and happiness for my family and friends - and do my best to live life to the fullest!

[Bill]

Amen, Harrie. The Buddhists would call the essence of your post, "mindfulness". Living in the moment. If you dwell on the past and worry about the future, you cannot enjoy the only thing that you really have-the present. The past, you "had" that and now it's gone. The future, you may or may not "have" it, who knows. The only thing that you actually "have" is right here, and right now, and we should enjoy it to the fullest. Be mindful of every moment, and how we spend them.

[Bill]

You have always been a 10, Sheila.

[harrie]

Another thought.....

Every single person alive on his planet has "X" number of days left to live their life. It is a granted that in the days to come, some days will be great and some will be challenging. To spoil a good day with worries about something that may happen in the future that we have no control of at the present, is a thoughtful waste of a good day that already has so many blessings to be appreciative of right here and now. AND...these blessings may for some reason not be around in the future. BUT......remember too....the future will probably be holding some surprise blessings for us that we are totally clueless about right now!
Life has a way of working itself out really well if we just allow it to be.

[Sherryg683]

[quote]However, women diagnosed as Stage 4 from the get go, being chemotherapy naive, they may never recur and the chemo may do its magic the first time as it does in the lower stages of cancer (by erradicating micro mets that we don't even know are there). I stand by my fact and I am sure yours is true to but we are talking about 2 different kinds of Stage 4 patients.

Becky,
My oncolgist told me exactly the same thing. He said it was very possible that I had a complete response to my initial chemo and there was a possibility that I would not reoccur. Meaning that the chemo had gotten every stray cancer cell. He told me from the beginning that he expectecd that if I were going to reoccur that it would be in the first 7 to 9 months after chemo, that's when they see the majority of reoccurances in stage IV that had responded to chemo. It has been 2-1/2 years since my diagnosis and I have been NED since the first scan they took, which was 6 weeks into treatment. Now I am not saying that I will never reoccur, I am usually more of the glass half empty type of person and kind of expect bad news every time I get scanned but I have been pleasantly surprised. We have to have hope or we'd just as soon give up now. I still believe God has a few miracles that he hands out and if I could live another 20 years, I'd consider that a miracle. ..sherryg683

[harrie]

Oh my God Tricia!! I absolutely positively LOVED reading your story. It makes me want to totally jump for joy and just give you the biggest hug!! Your picture is absolutely beautiful also.

I also love that quote what you included on the bottom of your post. I am going to safe that one.
Well, I think i might want to save your whole post actually.
Lots of love to you,
Maryanne

[schoolteacher]

Tricia and all you other wonderful ladies,

Thank you for your stories. I have been feeling rather sad after finishing my radiation June 27, 2008. I started chemo back on July 31 to make sure there are no stray cancer cells floating around. The doctor told me the same thing that all of you have discussed. He said, "that about my cancer could have been eradicated with my neoadjunvate therapy." He just wants to make sure. I really needed to hear these stories this morning. Every time I come to this site I learn something new. I now know that in stage IV that the cancer usually reappears in 7 to 9 months. I have been NED since April 16, 2008. I did have my HER2 test last week and it was 9, and the doctor said, "that this was a good indicator."

Good Bless all on this site.

Amelia

Amelia

[DanaRT]

Tricia, Thank you for taking the time to share your story. Simply uplifting and remarkable. Love the quote by Patricia Overton.

This thread is making me feel so much better than I have felt in months...9 months. I plan to focus on the positive more and more. Maybe I will sleep through the night and not wake in a panic. Daytime is easy, nights are horrible.

BonnieR, Thank you for your kind compliment. It has been very rewarding raising the three of them. The oldest one on the right is an English teacher, middle one in 10th grade and the one on the left a hairdresser/stylist. They have turned in to people I plan to be around for a long long time.

Hugs,
Dana

[harrie]

Amelia, are you doing well with the recovery from your surgery?
Maryanne