MSN Messenger chat user seeking new chat friends. I am 51, have stage 4 bowel cancer and will die sometime this year. I have already lived a lot longer than the oncologists expected but have stopped chemo and now only receive palliative care. I am a practical thinker & a realist but do try to find the silver lining in most grey clouds. If you are interested in becoming a chat friend please private message me and we can see if we click and take it from there. I hope to hear from someone Deb
5 Comments
wombat4
Contributor
Hi Deb, First I would like to say how sincerely sorry I am about your bowel cancer. Although I am not a sufferer myself, I was a carer to my lovely wife of 40 yrs, who like you had bowel cancer. My wife was a GP all her working life and retired in Dec 08 age 55 to take up her hobby of writing novels for a living. She had 2 books published by Mills & Boon and a contract for another 2. We were both blood donors and in dec 09 gave blood to the red x. My wife could not get over the fatigue that followed, so we went to the docs, had blood tests and scans, I remember the day as if it was yesterday, sitting in the docs office and he said, " its cancer, bowel cancer stage 4 and its terminal,it has set up secondaries in your liver that are inoperable. Its palliative care ". That and what followed were the worst days of my life. She had the op to remove the primary and then chemo for 2yrs for the secondaries. She had been retired for 12 mnths. When we started the chemo, the oncologist said, this chemo may kill you but if you dont try it, you have 4 weeks to live as we cannot wait to start it. We had 48 cycles in all, one every 2 weeks, I was with her at every one. I loved her, and still do. We had various combinations of chemo over the 2 years. The chemo stopped working in nov 2011 and was stopped. My wife was so tired from it all. There was one other chemo that could be tried, but she said no, she had had enough. On her last trip to hospital she said to the oncologist,"will it be long", and he said, "no". Her liver was under so much stress that it stopped working. I took her to hospital dec 19 last and she died peacefully dec 21. age 58. I have tears in my eyes writing this. Colin
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Deb1960
Occasional Contributor
Dear Colin, Please look for private message I have sent to you. Deb
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maddie86
Contributor
so sorry to hear about your diagnosis.. my fiance has also got terminal bowel cancer he is only 24.. it sucks big time! i sometimes think that how can this possibly be happening? why us? i guess its all questions that we all want to know... he is having chemo atm but it really gets him down as he feels sick every fortnight.. if you wanna chat just pm me 🙂 xo
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glenys48woods
Contributor
Hi Deb, My story is on line and I am a survivor with breast cancer. The first thing I said to myself when reading your post is HELL. You must be scared and not wanting to die with this type of cancer. I don't know what to say to you also. Wombat - he will help you as I haven't been in this situation but it was his wife that had bowl cancer the same as you. We are all in different situations but I feel for you as I want too. Sending 000 hugs your way. Glenys.
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Deb1960
Occasional Contributor
Hi Glenys, Thank you for your reply. Firstly I must say that I am not scared, my step-dad died from bowel cancer 14 years ago so we have been through this already. Although no one wants to die from cancer we have to accept that cancer is becoming more prevalent in Australia and other Western countries, to the point that it is expected that one in two of us will have cancer of some kind by the time we are 85. Luckily for most people their cancers are curable, caught early enough bowel cancer has a very good cure rate. Mine however was not found until it was very advanced. We all will die, a fact no one can escape from, I see no purpose in being angry or scared, this is how things are. Making the best of the time I have left is a much better use of that small amount of time. Deb
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