Hey There - sorry that you're dealing with cancer.  It's a ghastly, oppressive adversary.  But I think the two most important things it tries to take away from you are your hope and sense of place and certainty.   If you try and keep yourself Tickettyboo :), be really protective of your mental health, you'll benefit over the short and longer term.     The uncertainty and fear it tries to inflict on you is a weird one - because we, none of us, know what our expiry date is.   I knew someone in the final weeks of late stage metastasized cancer treatment, palliative care, expected to have less than a month - and with an immunotherapy trial he lived another 3 or 4 years.   As the old saying goes "It aint over 'til the fat dude sings" (changed it to a guy so as not to appear misogynistic 😉   )   I think half of the battle is staying emotionally strong, finding your centre.   Best of luck, there are plenty of kind and helpful people in this community. ... View more

Hi Mate - no doubt everybody's mileage will vary, but for me the first six months out of treatment were oppressive.  I don't think I had my PEG feeding tube removed until about 5 months out (from memory).  I had mucosa damage, rancid-taste dysgeusia, a bunch of issues that affected eating and nourishment - if your friend can get eating sooner, they may start to thrive sooner as well.   But be ready for significant issues over the entire recovery phase - I'm coming up to my 5 year anniversary and it's only just now that I'm feeling good again ... and that's not because I have NO side effects (I have a bunch, some severe) it's because I've learned to accept them and work around them.   If your friend is only a few months out, they may not even know if the treatment worked or not ?  Be ready for a lot of stress and distress at that time (where you want an all-clear PET scan).  But yeah, even if they're in the clear, they may still need support and understanding. ... View more

Hey Hey!  Now what's this "crazy arsed walk" thing ?!?!   If you could please go back and edit in "inspiring and truly courageous" that would be much appreciated (and very appropriate).  😉   I reckon the question you throw out to the universe is a bit more complex than the obvious, almost cliche assumptions that cancer makes you stronger, wiser (or breaks you).   I think it's like grief - your relationship with your cancer changes over time.  I think, all-in-all it's an absolute shit-show, the club that nobody in their right mind WANTS to join, but once you're in, you go through these phases.   What comforts me about myself, my value as a human being, is that in each phase, I really genuinely wanted to help others, anybody who was a few steps behind me, you know ?   Like grief, everybody will go through the stages differently.  Some will manifest strength where others are weak and vice versa.  It won't look the same for everyone - but here's how it was for me:   To get through the initial treatment, I think you have to park aside the wider existential concerns, and look toward activating your inner personal strength.  You need to find ways to buckle down and get through it, and that requires a certain kind of compartmentalisation.  Yep, there's no getting around the death anxiety and existential stuff that gnaws relentlessly around the edges like a hungry rat ... but for the most part the first phase is fight or flight - survival.   I think then you go into a bit of existential crisis, or at least I did.  You realise that simply surviving the treatment wasn't enough at all.  You learn about recurrence risks, struggle with all your treatment side effects.  You certainly don't "sweat the small stuff", but not because you've risen above it, but because in your current bleak state, you're under-performing, suffering, and at least a little bit waiting to find out if youre going to die.   You try and pick at it, convince yourself you're better, you're going to live, try to find joy in whatever is available to you (for me, my kids and wife).  And you succeed here and there, and you celebrate being alive in those little wins.  But existential crisis is the natural response to the relentless psychological and spiritual attack that cancer makes ---- after you've survived the physical component.   Then, you either die, or navigate to a way to move forward.  For me, that was reaching back into my past, and a time when I was broken and in need of hope.  Escaping a bad home situation (junkie mother, horrible stuff) when I was 15 was like leaving the hospital room where I fully expected to die.  Hope.  Healing.  Discovery.     So I reach back for that, and whammo.  I'm healed.  All good.  All that cancer anxiety is gone.   Win, lose or draw, I'm 100% rock solid.  I think it was as much luck as anything else, I somehow stumbled on the correct spiritual recipe to fix me, and it's like a magic spell.   SO yeah .. my "crazy arsed walk" is what did it.  And I haven't even started yet.  Or rather, I started in December, because "Captain Australia's BIG WALK"  (google it!) is really just a metaphor for facing and overcoming adversity.  I'm not completely done yet, but when I get home from my Brisbane -> Melbourne walk at the end of the year, I plan to call that the butterfly phase (and right now, I'm kinda breaking loose from the cocoon).    For anybody who is interested: Captain Australia's BIG WALK charity page (for the Kids Cancer Project) (i hated seeing kids in treatment): https://captain-australias-big-walk.raisely.com/   The welcome video that explains what it's all about:  https://youtu.be/rYRsXsRpRzQ   A video that shows where I was in December (still broken, 60kg heavy from thyroid radiation damage) and where I am now (mostly healed, dropped 45kg so far):  https://youtu.be/1UTpafavA04   And my page on "the facebooks" if you ever want to hit be up and become facebook buddies:  https://www.facebook.com/CapsBIGWALK   Note:  I start actively promoting in July.  What that looks like is me dressing up as a superhero and walking all over Brisbane making an abject goofball of myself in the hopes that people will be amazed/amused/inspired enough to visit the charity page and make a MASSIVE DONATION.   (Do it now, you know you wanna, go on, go on, do it now !  GO ! GO!  NOW ! Did you go ?  No ??? GO GO GO !)   Shameless charity promotion done - yeah ... although I'm sure in your answers there'll be common themes of personal triumph and suffering, I reckon cancer as an overall experience is a bit like having to face the monster that lives in the cellar.  You need courage and fortitude to push through, but once you do, yeah, you can be so much stronger and braver.   Sorry, and once you reach that plateau, what I'm finding is you absolutely DO sweat the small stuff ... you notice EVERYTHING again.  Little tics in people's behaviour, the wind in the trees, the feel of the sunshine on your face .. stuff you had forgotten in the workaday life before.  But you don't sweat it insofar as getting upset and wound up over trivial stuff, although I reckon if that was core to your personality before, it'll probably remain at least to some extent.   But all-in-all, I guess it's a bit like rebirth, and it's pretty wonderful.     ... View more

Sure, it's right there in the original post:  https://youtu.be/1UTpafavA04   You can also reach it on the fundraiser webpage:  https://captain-australias-big-walk.raisely.com/   Thanks for your interest - I'm hoping I can help at least one person, and in my most happy dreams the funds raised helps to save the life of even one child. ... View more

Hey Hey -- you're probably right, and even if you're wrong, eat good foods means FEEL GOOD, and that's worth pursuing.   But yeah, I think the science is heading toward immunotherapy, and there are super-foods that are supposed to boost the body's autoimmune response.  Problem with cancer is that it's a mutation that bypasses the body's normal internal defenses.  We have these hunter-killer genes that respond to bacterial infection etc by going all kung fu on it .. burning it out .. whatever it takes.  BUT .. apparently they don't notice cancer - although there are some fascinating autoimmune therapies and natural agents that some scientists say help this inner army to 'see' cancer.   Yeah, I vote 100% stock up the pantry with paw-paw and all that good stuff.   🙂   Oh yeah, and for those videos I made, you can find them both on here: https://captain-australias-big-walk.raisely.com/   Or here are the individual links: About my BIG WALK:  https://youtu.be/rYRsXsRpRzQ Walking toward HOPE:  https://youtu.be/1UTpafavA04     ... View more

Sorry - ha, the eleventy-first thing ... well that's a Hobbit tradition of starting a Mad Quest on your birthday, which usually involves a long and strange journey.  Sorry, I first read Lord of the Rings as a child, and loved it, and since the movies made it mainstream popular, I thought I could get away with nerd references 🙂   Bilbo Baggins set out on a journey when he was in his older age, and left on his eleventy-first birthday (Hobbits are long-lived, but count weird, so 111 .. )   I don't have any magic rings or dragons to fight though - for me the BIG WALK is a simple metaphor for hope.  Finding it, sharing it, walking toward it. ... View more

Glad to hear you're still kickin', April.  Good on you.   Those side effects are garbage, no doubt about it .. but I think you can overcome it.  All the best, mate, teachers are wonderful and precious, can't lose a single one of them ! ... View more

Thank you both for your kindness.  Yep, mine was an invasive, stage 4 head and neck cancer.  6 months to live prognosis with a 40-60% chance that chemoradiation could eliminate the disease.  And I got lucky.  Anybody struggling with cancer could take heart from that:  it's not over.   I think cancer has a crippling effect - it's a mental and spiritual attack just as it is physical, and many of us probably put that to one side and focus only on the math of survival.   Having come through the tunnel, I realise now, 100%, that it's hope that matters most, above all things.  Even without cancer, having a heart filled with hope for the future will enrich your life immeasurably.   I've searched my heart, and the thing I want most is to be able to tell people that.   Keep your hope alive.  You can get through this.  All those  people who were lost and struggling, without an anchor, as I was, just diagnosed, no idea what to do, grieving, scared.    I was in that situation, and I'm here today.  Take a spark of hope from that.  Nurture it.   And then the broken people who lost their hope along the way - it doesn't even have to be cancer, it can just be that all-time-heavy-weight-champion LIFE.  It can have a tendency to punch you until you fall over.  But you have to have the heart to stand up again.  The main reason I made that video (aside from trying to help the Kids Cancer Project) is in the hopes that even one person, broken as I was, can see it, realise that it's a pathway available to them, and slowly climb back to their feet and take flower.   I'm actually kinda excited to complete the video as the year progresses.  A broken old man strutting out to show off his brand new shiny ABS, I think that will be hysterical 🙂   ... View more

Thanks for your kind words.  From around July, I'll be seen walking around Brisbane dressed up as a superhero, trying to promote the charity and drum up some donations in advance of the big walk (which will take place from 26 December ... my eleventy-first birthday ... until .. sometime in March).  Should be good for a giggle 🙂 ... View more

Hey, thanks so much for your kindness, Linda !   The dark places - anyone who has had to face cancer can relate to that.   I really hope that someone can see the high points as well, and take hope from that - because it's available to us, if we're lucky, brave and loving enough to get there. 🙂  🙂   One time on these forums (around valentines day) I remember writing a post that "Love is the Opposite of Cancer", and it resonated at the time.  It still feels true.  But you know what ?  Now I think it's HOPE.  Hope is the opposite of cancer.   Or maybe Love and Hope are the same thing.   All the best ! ... View more