Candy

Continuing to pray and sending good and positive thoughts!

Wishing you an uneventful 3 days of chemo Cindy. Don- praying extra hard for Lucie's results to be perfect! Hope to see everyone posting in the good news forum!!!!

Welcome to the board Dona - I know you and your Mom can do this. Somehow you and she will get through this. Come here often, it helps when your feeling down and on the days your feeling great it helps everyone else!

Yup, Thanks says it all! That was a great and uplifting post!

Jane, What a wonderful story to read. We all need to hear often about the many miracles that are out there! They help me get through the days that I am down! Hooray for your sister's wonderful and continuing recovery!!!!!

Its good to vent and this is the place for it. We all hate this garbage disease! It sounds like Gene is working hard to beat this stuff! I hope tomorrow is a better day!

Hi Kathy, I will be thinking about you and saying a lot of prayers this afternoon. Post as soon as you can, I will be waiting to hear!

We also had a great weekend. Our "rollercoaster" just happens to be up right now. We went to the fireworks Friday night at Tanglewood and got home at midnight, my brother and his wife came to visit (our first visit with them since Hugh got sick as they haven't seemed to want to be around us) on Saturday. They came at 5:30 in the morning and we went fishing in his boat on one of the small lakes in our area. We caught a bunch of fish and then came home and had a barbeque (steak, not fish as we always do catch and release). Then we went to the races Saturday night. Its one of Hugh's favorite things to do. By the time the races were over at 11:00, we were all BEAT exept for Hugh. He wanted to stop to get pie on the way home and didn't suggest it because we were all looking so wiped out. Hugh and I got up early Sunday and cooked a big breakfast for my brother and then cleaned up (my dishwasher is BROKEN! Thank goodness its getting fixed today!) After everyone left I went to bed and slept for 3 hours. Hugh actually did lay down with me but he watched TV but didn't sleep. He is feeling great. I pray it lasts for a long time! Our youngest son is going in the Airforce and is moving from next door August 1. I was delighted to hear yesterday that our other son is going to move into the house. We will miss Jeremy and his wife so very much, but having Jamie next door will be nice and I won't be looking out our window at strangers which would make me miss Jeremy even more. So, it was a great weekend, I hope everyone had a good one!

Great News Ray! You are doing awesome! With your attitude you will be unbeatable!

That's good news Don, glad to hear Lucie is feeling a little better!

I love to hear good news! Hooray!!!!

Awesome News!!!

While I am not a doctor, I think what they told you is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. My husband was strong and healthy to begin with and the chemo made him sick and weak. It shrunk his cancer immensely. I know that sometimes they say someone who is very weak may not be able to begin chemo until they are strong enough to handle it, but that doesn't have anything to do with whether or not it works, only the persons ability to tolerate it. I would get another opinion.

My husband is on Arenesp but he gets it weekly. It has helped bring his blood counts up. I wonder why your only getting it every other week? I hope you start feeling better. My husband said the tiredness was the worst he had ever felt.

Saying prayers for you and your Mom and will be looking for your results in the Good New forum! This wait for scan results is the worst!

Any words I say to you wouldn't be enough to tell how much I respect you. Shannon, you are a strong woman, an inspiration to all of us in this situation.

Carleen, I was so happy to read your post. Good news is always so wonderful and going out for a 7 hour afternoon is certainly good news and no small thing. Your right, we really need to appreciate those "cancer-free" moments. We need to try harder to have them and let it go once in a while. (Yeah, that would be easy, huh?) Yesterday morning I was giving myself a pep-talk in my head while I was making my toast. Something like: "Candy, you don't get up every morning and worry about how many more days you will live, it doesn't consume you even though you very well know that each day COULD be your last, why do you let it consume you with Hugh? Why can't you just appreciate today and let the rest of it go?" I wish I could say I got something out of that talk with myself but I didn't. I'll try to take my advice to myself better another time. Anyways, great news - I'm sure you and Keith will have many more great days to come. Remember the effects of chemo are just temporary - a necessary evil to get rid of the bad stuff. You guys can get through this to get to the other side!

Our Onc put Hugh on Celebrex (400 mgs/2x/day) as soon as he finished his last round of chemo. I don't know how much it will help or if it will work but I'm willing to try anything.

Great News!!!!!

My husband said he had never experienced a tired that was anything like it. I once heard someone on TV compare chemo fatigue to a feeling like trying to run while you were neck deep in water. There were days when my husband slept all day long. Sometimes he would simply lay his head on the kitchen table and sleep there because he was too tired to get up and walk to the bedroom. Sometimes it was because his counts were low but other times it was simply the chemo. And he didn't have the radiation on top of it to deal with. So yes, the fatique is a normal part of it.

Today Hugh is continuing to build a fence with an arbor in our front yard. He has dug all the post holes by himself (by hand) and it has taken him about a week thus far. He is slower than he would have been a year ago, but the weather here has been in the 90s and humid as heck. Last year he probably would have finished the fence in a week, now it will probably take him a week and a half or maybe two weeks. But he isn't working on it during the weekend either because we save the weekends to do stuff together. We went fishing Saturday night. There is life after chemo! Hugh's schedule was 3 days on and 2 1/2 weeks off. His normal chemo week was last MTW. He has already got a lot more energy - he is building the fence, mowing the lawn, gardening and last week he repaired our son's lawnmower! He is still a bit frustrated with the lack of muscle in his arms but it improves every day. He takes no pain meds anymore and feels good. Tell your wife we are cheering for her!

You've come to a great place. There is a lot of support here. It helps! I felt much the same as you when my husband was diagnosed. I was sure he would be gone from me before the year was over. He is feeling really well right now and I have learned from this board that this can be beat. I don't go anywhere else online anymore. I have given up surfing and looking for statisitics. I come here and I listen to what his doctors tell us. I have never asked how long Hugh has to live because I don't think there is a statistic in the world that can tell me how long my husband will live. He is an individual, he has a great attitude and that's important. I don't remember much of December either. Christmas was a nightmare. I have gotten myself more together now. I still have bad days but the advice I have gotten from here has helped so much.

Cancer sucks and the chemo is as bad. I used to tell Hugh to visualize his body creating healthy cells while he slept. You have to be tired because there is a war going on inside you. The chemo killing all those bad cells and your body working to regenerate healthy ones. Being tired really drove him crazy. He has always been a water-drinker and that didn't change when he was doing chemo and he didn't suffer dehydration. He constantly has either a glass of ice water or ice tea in his hand. Being down is part of it, you can't help it. I hope this week is better!

My husband was diagnosed in December and I felt that there was no hope at all. I did research on the net and the statistics were grim. I stumbled into this site by accident when one day in despair I typed "Lung cancer survival stories" into a search engine because I needed to find something positive. It has been my saving grace. Hugh is feeling very well right now, as a matter of fact today he is building a fence/gazebo in our front yard. He started it last week and though he doesn't yet have the stamina to go as quickly as he did a year ago, he is moving pretty fast and I would guess the fence and gazebo will be done by Friday. Not bad considering 6 months ago he couldn't even walk from the house into the car without resting. And considering he just finished chemo. One thing I learned from this board is that there is ALWAYS hope!

Carleen, "Ditto" to what everyone else has said! I have a hard time feeling good about anything except "gone" so I know your feeling crummy about this, with the roller-coaster of this damn disease, how can you not get depressed? Just try really hard to stay in today and out of the tomorrow "what-ifs". I haven't done medication as of yet, but they probably help. I'm thinking about you.