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Dulcinea

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    Waukesha
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  1. i realized today that i haven't been on here to make any updates. as of yesterday, i have completed 2 of the 4 rounds of chemo. i'm in the clinical trial, and randomized into the arm that gets the avastin. and through an organization called "cleaning for a reason", i qualified for, and was matched up for 4 housecleanings (apartment, actually) - once a month for 4 months. they were here yesterday, and my apartment is lovely. i rented a rug doctor, and my son is going to help clean the carpets while it's nice and clean here. side effects. the nausea sucks. seriously. it's worse after round 2 then it was after round 1. chemo brain. i think i have it. i could have sworn i called my dad last night, got his answering machine, and left a rambling phone message what was just over 2 minutes (i looked at the phone when i hung up) i talked to them tonight. apparently i did not leave a message. i talked to them. i'm so confused, i think it must have been that my brains checked out for a while. i sure hope i didn't do any knitting! so that's where i am. sort of dreading round 3, wanting round 4 to be over, dreading any more scans, and wanting the reassurance that there isn't any cancer growing inside me. and i haven't had a cigarette for 13 weeks and 5 days.
  2. thank you for this - you seem to be the closest to me in age, diagnosis, treatment and overall health - so this makes me feel better. i just keep telling myself - i'm 25% of the way through.... i can do this! yesterday, after chemo, my daughter and i even did some black friday shopping....... it was ok!
  3. i realized i had never followed up! 10/6 - i had the surgery. they removed the lobe with the tumor and the hot lymph node. it was attached with what looked like a string to the chest wall, upping the stage to IIIA. they removed a small portion of the chest wall, as well as mediastinal nodes 5, 7, 9 and 10. pathology came back good - margins, while extremely narrow, were clear, as were all of the mediastinal lymph nodes. 4 rounds of chemo is next - cisplatin/gemzar, on 21-day cycles, and i qualified for a clinical trial with avastin, for which i was randomized into the group that gets it. first part of chemo was last week - the 17th. all 3 drugs, 7 hours in the chemo suite. aside from some persistent nausea, for which i have 3 different scripts, i'm mostly ok. gemzar again on Friday, then wait out the rest of the 21 days. watermelon is my best friend right about now - i can eat, i get fluids, it doesn't trigger the nausea....... but so far, so good. been working from home since 10/31 (my doc thinks i'm crazy) and i go back into the office on 12/1.
  4. I had a lobectomy on 10/6, removed the lower left lobe, as well as some lymph nodes and a small section of the chest wall. pathology came back good, margins on chest wall, while narrow, were clear, as well as nodes 5, 7, 9 and 10 - all clear. my oncologist has recommended a 4-cycle regimen of cisplatin/gemzar - 21-day cycles, so both meds on day 1, and then gemzar on day 8. additionally, i apparently am a good candidate for a phase III clinical trial for avastin - that would be 12 cycles, plus all the 'stuff' they do. and the closer it gets, the more nervous and scared i get - i don't know what to expect, but get a lot of "you'll be fine, it'll be fine" from my parents as well as the oncologist. anyone been on this regimen? can you share your experience? what you experienced, how the side effects were, how they were managed, were you able to lead a life, aside from chemo? help?
  5. thanks - and i do blunt pretty well, too. reality is that i'm 53, and while i was a smoker for a long time, when i was diagnosed, i quit. (wanna get a smoker to quit? tell 'em they have lung cancer) and aside from this little detail of lung cancer, i'm ridiculously healthy - low blood pressure, low cholesterol, not even anemic - when i had the pulmonary function testing, prior to surgery, i came in at 95%. so i started out really healthy - my dad was diagnosed, at 73, with pancreatic cancer - 5 year survival rate for that one is 4%. december 1 will be 7 years, and he's still going pretty strong. i want to be like him when i grow up.
  6. I just added the signature line, once I worked out how to do it. I've been crawling all over a couple of cancer sites since this whole thing came up - here's what i know, so far: my cancer was staged as 3A. I had 1 nodule in the lower lobe of my left lung that, at surgery, was slightly larger than the 2.6x2.1 we had estimated from CT scan. there was also 1 lymph node, in the same lobe, that came up 'hot' on the PET scan, hence the removal of the entire lobe. Once they were in there, it was determined that the nodule was attached to the chest wall, which moved my staging from 2A to 3A - they removed the entire lobe, the portion of the chest wall, as well as lymph nodes 5, 6, 7, 9 in the mediastinal (?) while the margins on the chest wall portion were extremely narrow, they were clear, as were all 4 of those central lymph nodes - so the determination was that they 'got it all'. the chemo, as well as the clinical trial drugs, are to try to keep me cancer free - i get scared when i see 5-year survival rates...
  7. Hi everyone - I am newly diagnosed - adenocarcinoma, 1 tumor in the lower lobe of the left lung. Diagnosed on 9/9, I had a thoracotomy on 10/6. I return to work on 10/31, though working from home for a month, have a follow up with the surgeon on 11/2, meet with the oncologist for some baseline testing on 11/14, and start chemo on 11/17. They’re putting me on a regimen of Cisplatin and Gemcitabine, in 21 day cycles. Both meds on day 1, and Gemzar on day 8. I also qualify for a clinical trial of Bevacizumab (also known as Avastin), which prohibits the growth of new blood vessels to any existing tumors. my oncologist is pretty emphatic that at this moment in time, there is no cancer in my body - that they removed it all. but i'm one scared puppy. i don't know what to expect (except the worst, of course) with chemo, i'm a single mom, i'm scared of the cancer reappearing... my kids are scared, i'm scared, and it's really hard to have to be brave all the time!
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