Mally

Thankyou so much to all of you that have kept me sane through this journey because without your posts of hope i dont know how i wouldve got through chemo and the surgery so thanks xx

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I had my end of chemo scans done yesterday and was getting the results next Wednesday but went to my gp to get some scripts and he had a copy of my results so IM CANCER FREE ....i was so happy i was crying walking around the supermarket trying to text my kids through watery eyes ...
 
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Jeffrey so glad they found no Brain cancer!   Less than 2 weeks to go now.  Get some exercise.  Try to eat healthy.
Also try to relax.  My prayers I offer up that all goes smoothly for you.
Donna G
 

And now the VA has moved me to %100 disabled service connected.  Sent in paperwork in 3/13 and approved 5/30. Now that was fast!

Jeffrey,
Fast and well deserved. Sometimes the VA gets things right!
I hope your forthcoming surgery goes as plans and look forward to a NED result!
Stay the course. 
Tom

Hi, Jeffery,
I'm happy to read your great news! We'll be thinking of you on the 12th and hoping for even more good news after your surgery. Please keep us posted!
Lauren
--
Digital Community Manager
LUNGevity Foundation

Well leaving at 3AM to have surgery at 5AM , first of the day. Rather go back to Nam than do this. Hell of a deal , 65 and scared of a little surgery.

Best of luck to you Jeffrey. I haven't known anybody that's not scared of surgery. Hang in there.

SO happy to hear you finally got some good news and are headed to surgery. Will be praying for you the rest of today and in the morning. I'm an early riser and prayer, so I got you covered going into that surgery. An R.N. Once told me surgeons will scare you to death with all the dire possibilities so that they appear even more brilliant when all turns out fine. Made me think of it when I read your post about what the surgeon said. My husband had the same dire possibilities list with surgery to remove a tumor from his spine years ago. Freaked us both out. But he's fine. And we do believe his surgeon is brilliant so I guess it worked. Lol.
Judy M

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Hello, 
I am a 40 year old mother of four. I have had fatigue and right upper quadrant pain for about 7 months but since my MD retired it took awhile to be seen. I had a CT of my chest and abdomen which showed 6 nodules-3 in my right lobe, 1 in left lobe and 2 others-a 6 elevator nodule in my anterior lingual and the largest a 9mm nodule in the anterior lingula. The report also shows a 1.7 cm low attenuation right paratracheal lymph node, small lesions on liver and an enlarged spleen at 14.6cm. I just need some help making sense of this information. I did get a referral to a pulmonologist who said rescan in 6months. My husband is worried and wants a second opinion...can anyone give me any advice? Thanks for your time!
Jen
 
 

Good morning.  I'm not a doctor, but I agree with your husband that a second opinion is warranted.  If, God forbid, it is cancer, it's important that you get an oncologist and a plan to move forward.  A second opinion will hopefully include a biopsy to determine what you're dealing with.  I hope this helps.
Please keep us posted.  

Jen,
Welcome here. 
If I had a CT scan report of 6 nodules, enlarged lymph nodes, a liver lesion, and enlarged spleen, and my doctor wanted me to wait and rescan, I'd get a copy of the radiologist report for the CT and take it to another specialist, pronto.  My first choice would be a medical oncologist, but I'd see the first available lung cancer practitioner.  
While waiting for your appointment, you might want to read Lung Cancer 101 on the LUNGevity.org site.  
You'll have questions, no doubt and this is a good place to ask.  As Susan said, we are not doctors but have accumulated lots of experience with all facets of lung cancer diagnosis and treatment from a survivor's prospective.  
Stay the course.
Tom
 
 

Thank you Tom. My husband had his ct  scan yesterday they called today that was the fastest response from the VA I've seen.they told him which was the nurse said she couldn't go in detail but he has 2.2 cm nodule upper right lung near the heart. They called it Mediastinal adenopathy. I looked it up at what I understand its enlarged lymph nodes and in middle of lungs.they said something about pretrachual node too but I don't have the whole story on it. Waiting for appointment for pulmonoligst.do u know anything about this? I'm worried. Thank you for any response.

I can't tell if this went thru

Michele,
I'm a veteran also with experience with the VA medical system. Let me know if he has problems with the VA. I may be able to help him navigate the through the system. 
Stay the course. 
Tom

Michele,
I got your message.  Good news about the rapid VA reaction.  I wish the preliminary findings were better.  What I know is the next physician he sees is likely to order a PET scan to check for metastatic disease and determine the extent, and a biopsy to determine the type of cancer if it is indeed cancer.  There is still some chance he does not have cancer, but the lung nodule and enlarged lymph nodes are typical lung cancer presentations. Depending on the location of the nodule in the right upper lobe, he could have a surgical biopsy or a needle biopsy.
Waiting is a major pain and lung cancer patients do a lot of worrying and waiting.  You should use the time to read into the disease so you can better understand the doctor's explanations at future consultations.  Here is a good start point for your reading.  I would encourage your husband to read up on the disease also.  Here are some important information on asking the right questions that may be helpful at his next consultation.
Let us know how his next consultation goes and contact me if you have difficulty with the VA.
Stay the course.
Tom

Had some mouth sores from chemo crop up. Biotene and salt/baking soda rinse are healing them up pretty quickly. Have since read that Cisplatin, part of my chemo cocktail, is notorious for that. Also that if I'll munch I've or popsicle through chemo treatment it will stop them. And that chemo tends to go to your mouth. Given the nasty taste experience I can believe this. Suppose it's along the same line as cold caps to spare your hair. Planning to take a bag of popsicles to infusion next round. It's a learning experience. Just Passing that on to any of you who haven't yet started or are dealing with the same issue.
Judy M
 
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Hi richard i was diagnosed with stage 111A adenocarcinoma in October last year and had my lower left lung removed in january this yr followed by 4 rounds of carboplatin and Gemsitabine which i had the last infusion last week and ct scans done and my results showed NED so i know Recurrence can occur but for now im so happy to say im cancer free and you can be too !!!

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Add "Fight Song" to your playlist - it is good.  I'm happy to see that you can find a silver lining everywhere.  That's been my mindset - find something good about each day, even the icky parts like scans and chemo.  I met a lady last year at an American Cancer Society function who told me "I have cancer, it DOES NOT have me."  I think that is an awesome mantra for all of us.  
Keep us posted on your progress!  

Sarah,
You've been down this trail once before. The only good thing about taking another hike is you'll know what to expect.
Stay the course.
Tom

Richard,
Welcome here.
Sounds like you are in first line treatment for your stage IIIA adenocarcinoma and you are in your fourth of perhaps six or eight cycles of chemotherapy.  You mentioned carboplatin. Are you receiving a second type of chemo concurrently with your carboplatin?  I also note you are in your fourth week of five day-per-week of external beam radiation therapy.  
You've posed two questions: will my cancer recur after treatment and should you be concerned about incremental life survival predictions?  My short answer is maybe and no respectively.  Unfortunately, lung cancer is very persistant.  I've had 4 recurrences after no evidence of disease (NED) treatments but I'm still here.  So my first comment is if I can live, so can you.  You might find this information interesting on lung cancer persistence.  Now, let's turn to survival statistics.
I'm an engineer and consider statistics to be a valuable tool in predicting outcomes provided the inputs into the prediction analysis can be controlled.  When designing a concrete mix, we precisely measure the proportions of water, Portland cement, large aggregate, and fine aggregate. This measuring precision is called controlling the inputs.  We can also change the amount of water used and keep all other elements unchanged and test the difference in yield strength.  Once we get enough laboratory data, we can perform what is called a design of experiment where the yield strength can be predicted statistically without a physical experiment.  But, that prediction results from a large number of actual laboratory tests all with precise control of inputs.
Precise control of inputs related to human beings is impossible.  We are all different: ages, current health, genetic composition, height, weight, disease state and in a million different ways.  Thus, medical statistics are vastly more inaccurate than engineering statistics.  Moreover, the trials that are conducted to validate new treatments against established treatments often have a small number of study participants.  So when the literature says treatment A yields a three month extension of life versus treatment B, that report only applies to the study population and not necessarily to all cancer patients.  To conclude that it will apply to you is the wrong approach.  It might apply to you; it may not.  Medical researchers understand the limitations of their use of statistical measures, but there needs to be some objective criteria to determine a measure of effectiveness.  Statistics is unfortunately the only game in town.  Here is more information on lung cancer survival statistics and I do encourage you to listen to Stephen J. Gould's essay cited in the link.
Here is information from the American Cancer Society to keep in mind with pondering survivor statistics.  Particularly note the material under the heading: "Survivor rates don't tell the whole story."  If they did, I'd be dead 12.5 years ago.
You'll likely have many more questions and we'll be pleased to answer.
Stay the course.
Tom

Hello Richard.
I was diagnosed with Stage 3B in December 1997.  I started my treatment with 2 chemo drugs and daily radiation. 
Later I was able to have a lobe on lung removed followed by more chemo.  As you may figure out this December it
will be 20 years ago.  I am NED since the Spring of 1998.   Keep us posted on your progress.
Donna G

Well, things have been going along fine. Had radiation everyday this past week and chemo on my scheduled Wednesdays. I really haven't felt any effects yet except possibly a bit of a sore throat from the radiation.
I've lost over 40 pounds now and that makes it difficult to do anything, no energy. Try to eat, but can't keep it down.
Actually, I have severe pain and I have been getting morphine for about the past month and a half. It helps the pain somewhat. I had been getting oxycodone and it didn't do anything for the pain. I actually started complaining about the pain in my chest starting about 2 to 3 years ago. But since I have all the wonderful side effects from agent orange such as heart disease, copd, acid reflux, they removed a tumor on my stomach about 10 years ago, it was benign, PTSD, diabetes insulin type and so on, any pain I had they always looked for the heart first and found nothing out of the ordinary considering I've had 5 heart attacks, 7 stents and a pacemaker/defib. I'd go to the hospital and complain about chest pain and that was a couple of years ago and then they would do a stress test and keep me for a few days and say my heart is fine but wouldn't find out what was causing the original pain.
Starting last year, the pain started increasing even worse. The doctors said that it couldn't be cancer because there isn't any pain usually with it. Well after so many tests, and blood tests, endoscopy, colonoscopy, ct scan, pet scan and the finally since I'm a heart risk, the VA docs decided to do an needle aspiration and even with that, there was no reason that they could find why I was in pain. Starting about this January, I got so that I couldn't keep food down, it was becoming hard to swallow and I started losing weight.
I finally asked my VA doc to do an X-ray and there it was, two, not one Squamous Cell (non-small) Carcinoma of the left lung. One was about 7 cm and the other was 3 cm, I think that was the measurements they used, in other words quite large.
So now here I am, a cancer patient that has been in pain but not due to the therapy. Go figure. Now I'm just waiting to see if all this is going to do anything for me. I'm a heart risk so operating has already been ruled out. So, it's a waiting game, though they finally know what is wrong with me.
So as far as the treatments, I have noticed a little hair loss and I just had my third treatment.
I'm in it to win it, so I'm not giving up, but I do find it hard to fight being so weak.
Thanks for listening, and I'll try to be more prompt with my daily experiences, but I felt I was just repeating the same thing.
Good luck to you all who are fighting cancer too.
Best regards, DragonKing (Dave)

Happy for you!

I had my lower left lung removed with incision the size of yours and i was in hospital for 5 days with a drainage tube for 4 of those days and the pain isnt fun but with regular pain relief it was not too bad and once at home i could sleep on my sides because that hurt for about 2 weeks but after that it was tolerable to sleep either side and i kept up with a ventolin puffer and the breathing was easier but havent needed it since those first two weeks and that was back in january this year so i hope your recovery goes as well for you ...stay positive ..

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