ButterBean's Journey with Lung Cancer

My pulmonologist (sp?) was awesome, very caring. The diagnosis was not unsuspected, but still took my breath for a moment. I made it thru surgery and was 2 weeks into recovery when the whole thing finally hit me. That was the second of the two times I cried about having cancer. I had a small lesion (5cm) on the upper right lobe. Was actually smaller than the pulmonologist originally thought. No node involvement. I was very lucky. I had been coughing up blood in a progressively larger amount for about 5 months and was being treated for an esophogeal infection/possible ulcer. Family doctor sent me to gastro, who referred me immediately to pulmonology.

I had previously had surgery several times and have always recovered rather quickly, with minimal problems. This has been the hardest one to get over, even 11 months later I am still in pain. Maybe my age has something to do with it now...

I would still rather have blood drawn from my arm...the port site is just so painful when they stick it.

I only had a 2-drug cocktail, as a preventive measure since the surgery got all the cancer. I had cysplantin and taxotere. I had no nausea/vomiting, was a little queasy only once and was told it was because I took the treatment on an empty stomach. I had dreaded the treatments worse than the surgery. I envisioned people laying about the chemo bay, just urping all over the place. But it wasn't like that at all. I was given anti-nausea pills to take at home, starting the day before my treatment. Also, anti-nausea drugs were given in a drip just prior to the chemo.

Mouth sores, fatigue, white count dropped... hair loss but it didn't bother me all that much The biggest problem I had was dehydration and low BP...my oncologist couldn't figure out why it affected me that way. Each time was a little worse. With the last treatment I had to have 2 bags of IV fluid... my BP was 70 over 50 when I got to the ER after passing out at home alone.

I only had 3 of the 4 treatments my doctor recommended. It was a joint decision between us, since I had no active cancer and since the dehydration was debillitating to the point that I missed a week of work after a treatment. My last treatment was Dec 30, 2011. Hair is back ... it came back curly! :) Blood work is good, scans are clean, feeling pretty well. I do take some supplements that I didn't use before...turmeric, Vit.D3, fish, flax & borage oil, as well as a couple others that I will begin soon. I've read where these help the immune system fight cancers in various ways. We'll see.

A positive diagnosis was suspected but still was shocking. Surgery was scheduled 3 weeks after initial diagnosis and I was pretty much numb until 2-3 weeks after my lung resection...when it hit me, it hit hard. That was the second of the 2 times I cried over my diagnosis.