freeio
Senior User
Joined: 20 Dec 2004
Posts: 116
Location: Guntersville, Alabama
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 Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 7:52 pm Post subject: Some thoughts on doscovering the "New Normal" - po |
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In September of 2004 the diagnosis was cholangeocarcinoma. The Whipple Procedure surgery was in October, radiation consumed December and January, and chemo took February and March. Now, all of that is over, the CT scan is clear, and I don't have to go back for a while.
I am very grateful just to be alive. The new challenge is to find out what the "New Normal" is. It was easy enough to see something happen and say, "well that must be because of the treatments," but with the treatments over, that excuse is rapidly losing its significance. Now I get to find out what it means to have that much less digestive tract to use, with its new configuration.
This must be a common situation, the post-cancer discovery of what had changed. I know I "got off easy" with merely a long ugly scar somewhere that no one sees, and nothing missing which is necessary to live, or cosmetically an issue. Nevertheless, this is something which was never discussed by any medical professional that I saw. What will be normal once the surgery and treatments are done?
As I said, I am very glad to be alive. Life has, however, changed permanently.
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whipple procedure, Oct. 21, 2004
28 days of radiation
56 days of Chemo using Xeloda
diagnosed as progressive recurrent pancreatic adenocarcinoma (Stage IV) Jun. 20, 2006
was treated with gemcitabine, oxaliplatin, and tarceva, which all failed.
Cancer blog: http://diehlmartin.com/cancer.html |
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merianne
Regular
Joined: 06 Dec 2004
Posts: 16
Location: lakeland
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| Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 9:22 pm Post subject: New Normal |
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The new normal will be in all likelihood a date in which you can say, I used to feel like this, now I feel like that. I used to eat this food, and now it does/does not agree with my digestion. I used to have this pain, now I have that pain and this pain occurs when the weather changes and that pain occurs only when I do this.
We all tend to mark time as being before or after a major event in our lives. Cancer whether it was life threatening or merely inconvenient for a while, is a major life event. It is to those professionals who did not mention it. Some of those people have had and will later have their own Day of when the earth stood still for a few minutes while they contemplated their own mortality. It is a private moment and that is probably the reason they could not find it within themselves to discuss it because they knew that they could not tell you how to feel about it.
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If the world ended tomorrow, there would still be today. |
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