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"Cei care au privilegiul de a sti, au datoria de a actiona" (A. Einstein)Articole din http://www.youandmemagazine.com/Cancer: The Diagnosis
My personal definition of diagnosis lies somewhere between defiance and death.Do you remember where you were during September of 2001? When asked this question, many immediately thinkof a day known as 9/11. For my family and me September 24, 2001 is the date painfully etched into our memories.This is the date my husband received the diagnosis of stage four rectal cancer. Life changes drastically whensomeone you love hears that he or she has cancer. This six-letter word suddenly becomes very personal toeveryone involved. The insulting, gut-wrenching, invading disease moved into my children’s and my life swiftly, weall learned that illness, and death knocks on everyone’s door at some point in life. The familiar words “only the gooddie young” were not so amusing any longer.Initially I anticipated my husband facing recovery from hemorrhoid surgery. For those women who have been or aremarried to the common male, most know that recovery from a head cold can be traumatic. I knew that hemorrhoidsurgery was not going to be a piece of cake for my husband. Of course, I did not expect a life-threatening cancerousgrowth to be just inside the sphincter muscle of the rectum either.We entered the white, sterile hospital room to begin preparations for my husband’s colonoscopy, which includedremoval of any hemorrhoids found. The procedure was going to be quick, simple, and I just needed to be there todrive him home. I waited across the hall from the outpatient surgery area in a waiting room. No more than twentyminutes passed, when the face of our surgeon appeared through the open doorway. His ashen face stuck out frombehind the light green scrub colored attire. His face grimaced when he reached to shake my hand and lead me to asmall chapel down the hall. Suddenly I felt my legs weaken and I knew at that moment I was glad my father haddecided to sit with me at the hospital. He followed his youngest child down the hall to hear the surgery findings andthe eventual fate of his son-in-law as well.None of the three individuals sitting painfully still in the hospital chapel could have expected to be discussing theanticipated short future of my 39-year old normally healthy husband.Our surgeon had given him a death sentence, serving as judge, jury, and executioner. I asked the doctor if he hadspoken with my husband and he said that he had, he would not say how much he would remember or understooddue to anesthesia. I was not sure if I wanted to see him or talk with him yet. I did not know what my reaction wouldbe or even should be. Sorrowful feelings for him, our children, his mom and dad, brothers, and sister flooded myalready beaten body. My mind kept spinning like a merry-go-round with no stop button.Following the first of two colonoscopies, I remember going home with my husband and resting before our childrengot home from their day at school and daycare. We talked, worried, and held each other until we both woke to theidea that everything we had heard earlier in the day was just a misunderstanding or bad dream. We could not havepossibly heard the doctor correctly, a tumor…cancer…how could this be? The sun was still shining and the calendar indicated the next day would be our oldest son’s 19
th
birthday.Those first few days become a blur, constant flurry of motion, moving from one day of life to another. The generalsurgeon referred us to this doctor, who sent us upstairs to the radiologist, he suggested meeting with the radiationoncologist, which in turn put us in contact with the hematology/oncologist. The “gist” I was getting was the pain myhusband was suffering from in his lower extremity had spread to my entire body.Raised in a two-parent, middle-class household, rural farming community, I do not recall bad things happening toanyone. My description of my childhood would be a cross between
Leave It to Beaver 
and
The Waltons
. My parentswere normally in good health so my husband’s diagnosis was so devastating it was nearly too much to ascertain.Cancer was something I read about in the newspaper or hearing of an acquaintance in the community suffering withthe disease.Decisions were made regarding my husband’s treatment and we relied completely on the doctors’ suggestions. Ibecame very acquainted with Google and Yahoo search engines scanning for any information available about futureoptions. At this point after the diagnosis, my husband and I truly believed we had a future. We held to our beliefs
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and trusted the upcoming chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery were all going to work like a Kansas tornado. Wehad hopes that this cancer would be just a distant nightmare in the years to come.Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary offers the description for the word diagnosis as the art, or act of identifying adisease from its signs and symptoms. My personal definition of diagnosis lies somewhere between defiance anddeath. We are all born with the natural ability to fight from the moment we are born and our first breath outside thesafety of our mother’s womb. How we challenge life’s diagnosis and ourselves is a personal journey for us all.(Five years have passed since rectal cancer defeated my husband. We, as a family, did not give up without a fight.Many tears shed, many lives changed, and dreams left unfinished. I have often pondered the lessons taught or gained from our experience. I believe I would not have become a hospice volunteer. Every six-week grief supportgroup that I participate in gives me a sense of peace and belonging.)by Karen Mullins-Lamb
Biopsy: The Waiting...
I am in the suspended time between being frightened and knowing whether I should be really frightened.The suspense is not killing me but it is interesting to see how all this is playing out over time. Last week, I was goingfor the routine yearly annoying but boring mammogram. This week I have been in day surgery, had a long wireinserted in a body part, been radiographed until I am sure I am glowing, though they assure me not, and finally beentold to go home and wait for a telephone call tomorrow. A telephone call! Somehow I think that is pretty crude, butthen what insurance company will pay for an office visit to "talk?"So I am in the suspended time between being frightened and knowing whether I should be really frightened. Cancer is not something I really want to think about right now but here is the possibility and then again, there is thepossibility I am over reacting, like I did when I left town before the impending hurricane last year. Nothing happenedhere because the darn thing turned and maybe this will be the same. Who knows?The pathologist presumably knows or will know by late this afternoon; too late for a call. He or she will read theslides made from my "stuff" and will spend, what, maybe five minutes, looking around that minute universefor stray terrorist cells. Cells that a week ago, no one knew I might have. Might is the operative word. Maybe.On the strength of maybe, I weekended with my inner most fears, ate nothing after mid-night Sunday and got afriend to drop me off at the door of the ambulatory surgery clinic. I live not far from a major, major university medicalcenter. Their new ambulatory clinic looks like a corporate architect was given the wrong assignment and too muchmoney. I wondered at the marble and glass and soft carpet. The lighting was beautiful and the sweep of thecheck-in counter probably cost a couple acres of some endangered rain forest.I was checked in with a bar coded bracelet and sent out to wait for a van to take me back across the street tomammography, at the older clinic building. I had been there for a whole day last week. I knew it well. Sameroutine, put on the gown, bag the clothes, sit here, wait. But this time there was a more delicate procedure to lookforward to, the dreaded guide wire.A very nice German resident or fellow whom I had seen last week, came in and actually stayed with me for the moreexcruciating parts. These involved compression and needles at the same time you are reclining on your side withyour elbows covering your face and your hands reaching for something to hold onto that isn¹t there. Try makingconversation while doing that for half an hour. We did though. When I got ready to leave, I said, "Thank you." Hewas searching for the right idiom and started with, "my pleasure." That didn¹t ring true for him and he sputtered "noproblem," as he closed the door.So now I'm in a long white gown over my black pants, in a wheel chair, because of the wire sticking out from my leftbreast and bent over under a gauze bandage under the gown. I must look odd with my plastic bag of the rest of myclothes and my purse in my lap. Next thing I know, I am draped around my shoulders with another flat sheet, thebetter to hide my predicament and ward off street germs, I guess. I am wheeled down two floors and parked at the
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outside valet parking entrance while a van is called. It takes awhile. I have visions of the OR staff pacing back andforth while in the background ka-ching, ka-ching makes a melody for the insurance company. We are all waiting onan $8.00 an hour van driver who decided to take a coffee break. Ka-ching.Finally, my chariot arrives; I alight from the chair, arrange my toga and step into the van. The short drive over ispainless but slow in the medical center traffic. I step down and enter the marble and glass surgery center with whatdignity I can muster given my bags and rumpled toga. I announce my arrival by holding out my bar code. Then, Igrandly sweep to the public rest room to deal with all that fabric, among other things. I fold and tuck and toss inthe mirror. I think I resemble Electra when I emerge.The rest is pretty grubby. I had only local numbing though it was a full scale surgery. My fear of hurling for two daysis greater than my fear of being awake during the procedure. In fact, the whole team and I had a nicediscussion of who was going to win the million dollars on the Survivor show on TV. Everyone had an opinion. Myphysician, a young man in whom I have explicit trust, was chatty and casual. It was like someone else lying there.Recovery was uneventful, as my chart notes surely say.So I'm home and it is two days later and I¹m sore where all the bruising is. I've had a couple of Tylenol and one or two of the stronger pills. My family has called, friends brought me soup. Now it is me and me and me and myself and the waiting. Mostly I want to know what is next. Maybe nothing. I hope nothing. But a tiny part of me wants allthis to result in something. You know? Not necessarily something bad, just some final thing. Maybe astatement that I'll never have to go through this again; I'm clean forever; no possibility of cancer. I know it won't belike that. Whatever the answer, I will not be able to forget. I'll pick up the telephone tomorrow and mylife won¹t be the same. Yeah, I'm scared. One foot in front of the other is my motto and that is what I am sure I willdo.But I feel temporarily suspended from my world. I have been working but it seems silly. Sorry, boss, but there are lifeand death things going on out there. Out there, over there, all those medical folks made me part of their world. The technicians, receptionists, physicians, lab techs, my German friend, the scrub nurses, and recoverynurses, they will be doing this medical stuff next week and the next, and the next. I only had to do it once, but it hasmessed me up. I'm lonely for that crowd. I want them to gather around me and tell me they did their best and thatI'm okay. A smile, a joke maybe. What I have is the waiting... for a telephone call, a distant voice. It just seems tooefficient.by Janice A Farringer 
Colon Cancer Death Sentence Reversed
"The GI doctor performed an exploratory colonoscopy and found a tumor that had completely blocked your colon."
What a peaceful dream…
Gentle waves rock me to that place you go just before falling asleep. The sun sooths my skin as thewind whispers her lullaby of rest. I don’t have to be anywhere anytime soon. Here, on my imaginary raft, everything is warm, soft, peaceful, comfortable… perfect.
Still dazed with anesthesia, I notice discomfort radiating from my abdomen.
What is that-
Struggling to reach fullconsciousness, I move both hands toward my abdominal area.
It’s lumpy…What is that-
I wondered. Exceptfor the pain in my abdomen, I had always been in good health.
Fighting through the Morphine haze
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