Andrea

Best of luck!!! I hope your recovery is fast and easy!

I would say about 8 years ago I went to the ER with such severe stomach pain. The dr said I was nuts, go home. My dad said that he knew his daugther, and mental would not be causing me such pain. My dad wanted a CT scan. The dr said no. My dad said "I want to see you document in her chart right now that the patient says she is experiencing severe pain, clearly is in distress, and that because you want to keep costs down you are refusing to do a sipmle ct scan". Two seconds later I had my CT. It was a kidney stone. So now I learned that if in my gut I really want a test, I say "please document that you refused to give it" and then they worry about med mal, and I usually get my way Very very rarely did I use this technique, but it worked.

Melinda, I think it just depends on the doctor. From what I am learning, most doctors don't do it routinely. However the doctor we had in NY did do chest xrays on my parents annually routinely. I am not sure if it was b/c they were former smokers or not. I think this is an issue that the medical community debates about.

Thanks so much I am going to pass this link on to her.

Just to share what happened with me on the wait and see approach---this was 1 year before my mom was diagnosed: I had an abdominal ct-scan for kidney stone and it showed a "small infiltrate in the lung" and suggested a radiograph for follow up. I had the radiograph which was normal,but my dr said those are not 100% certain. So he set me up with quarterly chest ct-scans for two years to check for growth. I got all paranoid, I went to a pulmonologist and had my chest ct scan---the infiltrate was GONE, so it was not cancer. BUT another one showed up on the other lung, waited 3 mo nths, and that one was gone too. Point is, they told me they were positive it was not cancer, but they were practicing defensive medicine and followed up. I didn't have go to back once all was clear b/c cancer does not disappear suddenly. Apparently it is common for small stuff to show up on scans which is why they don't cut right away for something very small. In my mom's case--well there was no question what it was.

Karen, Just a thought, could the tip of the iceberg have been waiting for the results of whether there was cancer in the heart fluid? I know that I for one would have went off the deep end waiting. I hope that this good news (KAREN POSTED UNDER ASK THE EXPERTS--NO CANCER FLUID) will make things a little easier :)

WWWOOOOOOOHHHHHOOOOO!!! Can you hear the cheers Karen? Well maybe not, Becky is closer to me, she has more of chance of hearing them. YAYAYAYAYAAYAYAYAYAYAY!! What a relief!

Thank you for that!!!

Karen I really hope the move will take some of the physical stress off of you. As beautiful as I am sure your home is, commuting adds a lot of stress to even people who don't have major problems. When are you moving? Is there a date yet? How is your mom doing now? You have more going on than one person should have to bear and it is total stress on a caregiver, especially the primary one. Hang in there!

Teacake--i just want to say what an awesome clan you all are!!!

Hi all, I have a question about treatment for Stage IV, mets to brain and liver, for the husbnd (age 60) of someone near and dear to my heart (she is like my second mom). The beast presented as dizziness and he went to hospital on Sat where he was ultimately diagnosed. The recommended treatment is decadron for a week to reduce inflamation, then radiation to shrink the brain tumors, then chemo. The question is--what can be expected as side effects/how will he feel from the decadron and brain radiation? Thanks!

Melinda, Oy You have too much going on. First I have to say how lucky Geoff and his family is to have you. Your mom has to be sooo proud how you stepped up to the plate, acted as "wife" before being married and took care of things. You are a very special person. I can't say don't worry about your mom b/c that would be pot calling kettle black. Can you maybe talk to your stepdad and see if he knows anything? Was your mom close to Geoff's mom? I know that my mom's diagnosis deeply effected my mother in law, so maybe your mom is feeling the loss and wants to see her daugther? As for the wedding issue, you can PM me anytime about that if you want to talk---we were engaged in August, wedding planned for Feb, diagnosis in between in Nov and had a "quick" wedding in Nov and still went ahead with the Feb wedding since it was mostly paid for, but it was REALLY hard to be a normal bride and care about normal wedding things. It ended up being a good day, but it was hard. Please please keep us posted and let us know what is going on with your mom. And I am also really sorry about your aunt Take care of yourself!

Karen, Are you still with the HMO or can you go anywhere? I cannot even emphasize enough how wonderful they are to my mom at Newport Imaging. She is always greeted, now even by name. A few months ago my dad had to get a bone scan as a precaution b/c something showed up on an MRI for shoulder pain and the PET tech recognized my parents and was all concerned that they could both have cancer and went over and talked to my mom and asked why he was getting tested (it was a false alarm for my dad). Also have the most awesome bestest greatest oncologist at Hoag and pulmonologist at Hoag if you need since it is fairly close to you. Dr. Neil Barth, the oncologist, is just so wonderful and his staff is super super super nice. My dad even told the doctor that my mom perks up just visiting with them all

To follow up on the mediastonoscopy issue, what the surgeons at Cedars Sinai in California did on my mom was a mediastonoscopy after the PET showed the cancer confined to her chest. A lymph node did light up on PET, but sometimes they are false positives. The advantage of doing the mediastonoscopy is that they can go in, test the lymph nodes right there and if negative, they keep going and remove the tumor right away. Otherwise, as was my mom's case, they biopsied the tumor, closed her back up b/c the lymph was positve, sent her home for a few months of chemo and then she went back for surgery. It is more invasive, but the benefits we were told was possible immediate removal of tumor.

Beth I can almost envision two people trying to cram them Too funny. Thanks for s haring

Karen, are you looking for PET facilities in the area? Newport Imaging in Newport Beach is where my mom goes and she loves them http://www.newportimaging.com/

Don you are the voice of reason. I just realized what an idiot I am and I am actually laughing at myself and the reason I am laughing at myself is b/c I too found LCSC from google way back. Duh As a matter of fact, I am sure that is how most people find this website. I guess I was just so excited to see this website which I feel apart of when I was searching coughs that I forgot how I came across this place m yself

Karen--have not heard about anything from Japan. Here is a link to an article where Hong Kong talks about turning LC into a chronic illness http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/2 ... -5550r.htm As for Tarceva, it is a personal decision, but if the oncologist is recommending it, you might want to consider it. My mom's oncologist talked about possibly putting her on it even though she is NED. The logic about using Iressa and Tarceva on people who are NED is that it could possibly lower risk of recurrance (no hard data on it). However, when people like my mom have such severe side effects from Iressa, the risks outweigh the benefit of taking it.

Karen, First of all NEVER EVER feel that you cannot vent about anything! You said you have been accused of talking about your stressors too much. My response to that is that this is a SUPPORT website, so you can vent as much as you want and need I was once accused of the same thing and I decided to adopt a saying Katie once said which I cannot remember now, but it was someting like quack quack, splish splash, off your back. I thought it was funny she said that b/c suck a duck is my saying and it relates to quack. You have every reason to be depressed and to be honest, I would be shocked if you weren't--how can you not be scared. You are human, right? Not like those robot women in Stepford Wives (which I saw the other day on video). You have to worry about Dave, Faith, working, moving, blah blah. As for weight, I won't even go there b/c my ob/gyn is going to kill me about my weight if i dont kill myself first with it Anway, you are NORMAL. Personally I agree with what others said, Dave is scared and you are the one person he can take it out on You are NOT alone!!!!!!!!!! Love you!

Nothing to say except I wanted to say that I love the new picture of Heather and BeckyCW It is fun to actually put faces to the name

Cheryl, Good news about the Walmart dinner. Are you going to have a big one? I am so sorry about the job You did make a good point though, you do have your license, you could solicit people I bet you would be great at helping people with cancer and all the related issues. You are a super strong person, keep hanging in there. I am so sorry about all the dog poop going on with your job. I firmly believe taht what goes around comes around and it will come back to haunt them!

All I can say is wow!!! What a blessing!

Welcome to the club no one wants to be in I am so sorry about your mom. I bet she is looking forward to seeing her grandchild though and that is the best support you can give your mom! Please keep us posted and take care of your little baby inside!

Nenette, Hi. I am so sorry that you have to find us My mom was the same age as your mom when diagnosed and just so you know there are a lot of us "kids" around your age on this website helping cheer our mom and dads on. I know how scary this is for you and your family. I hope that you will read a lot of the stories here and see the hope and see how wonderful some people are doing! If you ever want to whine, vent, cry, yell, scream, rant, etc, feel free to do it here! You can also PM me or any of the neurotic "kids" on the website to talk about those issues.

Me being me was worried over my cough that is lingering a week (found out today chest xray was clear, but my mental state, well my parents say the verdict is still out ). Anyway, as I was googling away about various articles, all of a suddent I see "Lung Cancer Support Group" and it linked me to a posting of someone here. It was pretty neat :) At first I was like wait a minute, who else is calling themselves LCSC, but it was no imposter, it was the real deal So we come up on Goggle searches. Yay!