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I’m 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life

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Re: I’m 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life

#21
With much sensitivity to the physical and emotional turmoil the author must be experiencing right now, I disagree with his advice:

> Stop just assuming you have a full lifetime to do whatever it is you dream of doing.

Rare and catastrophic events like this that can severely shorten your life are ones you should not plan for. If they occur, that's very unfortunate, and maybe you'll still have a contingency plan that can rearrange your plans to fit the remainder of your life, but he was still right to have arranged his life from the start to maximize his expected (in the statistical sense) impact:

> Before this diagnosis I’d been thinking of my 1st 35 years — aside from being a ton of fun and travel — as preparation. I felt like I was building a platform (savings, networks, skills, experience) that I could then use in my second act to make a real contribution, to “make my mark”

"Most of the time", he would have been right to use the early part of his life to make long-term investments in his development. It's just that this time it turned out to be the wrong choice.

Re: I’m 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life

#22
post #5

Any amount of unexplained rectal bleeding is reason enough to schedule an appointment with a doctor. The doctor is likely to recommend a colonoscopy. Removal of polyps (a likely source of bleeding) reduces the chances of cancer developing and can only be done during a colonoscopy.

Agreed. First thing I thought when I read that. To anyone reading, there is no OK amount of bleeding there, excepting some aggressive tp, and even that can lead to issues. If you have this issue, it is not likely cancer, but many of the causes are deadly if not addressed. Please see a doc.

Fuck. For what seems like years I occasionally have some bright red blood on the TP and occasionally the toilet is red. I don't know why I never thought to go to a doctor. I figured it was from hemorrhoids or something. Generally though, I don't get sick, unless of course I have been and just ignored it.

The last several years I was working to develop a workable "cure" for bipolar (Which it seems I have, but which took a lot of research time and emotional energy.) Perhaps I ignored these things because I couldn't stand the idea of something more.

If there is anything the journey to healing from so called "Bipolar" taught me it was that I have a robust nervous system and can look this stuff head on if I have to.

I'll go get checked out this week if not tomorrow. Thanks for posting this.

Oh, also. I have a friend who recovered from multiple bouts of cancer by eventually for going western medicine and doing vegan diet and reversed everything.

I'd also suggest looking into some sort of psychedelic therapy, perhaps ayahuasca -- the emotional system is the immune system and it really wouldn't hurt. Also, may help with the psychological experience you are having now.

Grateful that you are here and reporting back from the front lines.

Re: I’m 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life

#23

With much sensitivity to the physical and emotional turmoil the author must be experiencing right now, I disagree with his advice: > Stop just assuming you have a full lifetime to do whatever it is you dream of doing. Rare and catastrophic events like this that can severely shorten your life are ones you should not plan for. If they occur, that's very unfortunate, and maybe you'll still have a contingency plan that c…

Your odds of being the 0.00001% are very low, but someone has to be it. He's just saying recognize that. Recognize that all your hopes, dreams, fears, assumptions, etc. can literally be gone in an instant and live accordingly.

I know it sounds ridiculously cliched, and of course you never think it will happen to you, but let me assure you that life really can be taken from you at any time, so live it with that reality in mind.

Re: I’m 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life

#24
post #17

PSA for anyone reading this: Colorectal cancer for younger people seems to be on the rise. They don't seem to know why. My father had colon cancer and was not expected to survive it. I think he was 69 when he was finally diagnosed. He had put off seeing a doctor because he thought it was "just old age" and it was quite advanced by the time he was diagnosed. He did survive it and died, iirc, just short of his 89th or…

Oh we know why! It's just not acceptable to talk about it:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3311490/

Asking people to take responsibility for this one simple thing is taboo.

(I have a Colonoscopy just last week as part of a routine exam at my age. The procedure really isn't that bad. A couple hours on the toilet during the prep, and that's about the worst of it).

Re: I’m 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life

#25

Any amount of unexplained rectal bleeding is reason enough to schedule an appointment with a doctor. The doctor is likely to recommend a colonoscopy. Removal of polyps (a likely source of bleeding) reduces the chances of cancer developing and can only be done during a colonoscopy.

True, but the most likely cause is hemorrhoids! Still, this should never, ever, be ignored.

Re: I’m 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life

#26

Scott, I'm sorry about this. Why isn't the medical community looking for early warnings? relatively cheap tests for hs-crp, IL-6, TNF-alpha could be helpful. Inflammation is the precursor to disease. Do yourselves a favor & ask your doctor for the hs-crp test to measure inflammation.

What makes you think scientists aren't doing that type of research?

Re: I’m 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life

#27
Do your research. I'm not an expert, not even close, but a buddy of mine pushed his wife's curve way, way out. Maybe you can too.

She has stage 4 lung cancer, it's spread to her brain. If she gone to Stanford, like she wanted, they would have done whole brain radiation to try and blast the brain tumors. The problem with brain tumors is that there is that barrier that keeps bad stuff out of the brain and it only lets small stuff through, chemo tends to be large.

My buddy started researching and asking questions (he's business/sales but I think he's an engineer). The 5 year survival rate is less than 1% for stage 4 lung cancer. So he started asking doctors and hospitals "what's your 5 year survival rate". Everyone pointed him to national stats and he said "no, I know those numbers, what are yours?". El Camino Hospital publishes their numbers because they are much, much better: 15%. I know, 15% isn't great but it is a boat load better than under 1%.

So they went there. El Camino has a different approach to this sort of situation, they use some chemo (avastin maybe?) that is small celled and gets through the brain barrier. They also did pin point radiation.

The results: it's 2 years out, I think 2 years and 1 month, and my buddy's wife isn't fine but she's damn close. She's on an every 3 week chemo cycle, she typically gets 11 good days and 10 crappy-bad days. They both retired (I still pay his health insurance which is a big deal) and bought a travel trailer, do 2-5 days trips up and down California. They are fully aware that they are trying to cram all of their retirement into a few years and so far are doing a great job, their doctor loves it (apparently a lot of cancer patients sit on their butt, just waiting for the next chemo session).

If she had gone to Stanford, while the radiation would have likely wiped out the tumors, it also has this little side effect called dementia, happens very quickly. So this outcome is much, much better and it only happened because my buddy did his homework.

And one sort of cool thing happened: this all started before my company imploded and I gathered the team and said "I want to send Bob on vacation. We've only got so much runway left so if you don't want to use some of that money on Bob, I get it, I won't judge, I'll pay for the vacation myself." It was unanimous, they wanted the vacation to be from the team (I was so proud of them, that's the team I wanted). So we sent them back east to see the fall colors, they had a great time.

It's worth stating that I've watched my mother-in-law and my father die of cancer (and while my love for my dad is pretty obvious, I loved my mother-in-law as well, we got along great). The thing that I've learned is the second you know you have something that is life threatening do whatever you want to do RIGHT NOW. I pushed for the vacation thing for Bob because my mother-in-law didn't want to have friends over "until she was better". I deeply regret not just arranging to have all her friends come in. She died pretty quickly.

So I don't want to be morbid, or show any lack of hope, but there is the possibility that OP is in the best shape he's gonna be. So use that time to have some fun, build some memories, whatever you think is good. If you kick cancer's ass you'll have some memories to look back on, if you don't, your family will have some to hold onto. Do not listen to the doctors, they tend to be overly hopeful and give you a false sense of hope (I get it, it's kind of all they can do, but we would have liked a more realistic view. They let my mother-in-law think she was going back to work).

Good luck, cancer sucks.

Edit: explain that lots of patients don't live between chemo sessions and a typo.

Re: I’m 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life

#28

With much sensitivity to the physical and emotional turmoil the author must be experiencing right now, I disagree with his advice: > Stop just assuming you have a full lifetime to do whatever it is you dream of doing. Rare and catastrophic events like this that can severely shorten your life are ones you should not plan for. If they occur, that's very unfortunate, and maybe you'll still have a contingency plan that c…

awww... little sick boy thinks he gets to be a preacher now, to warn us all about mortality.

you're all idiots.

Re: I’m 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life

#29

My brother was diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma (cancer) at age 35. Basically was given about a 10% to live. 180 servings of chemo/radiation later we started lining up hospice and he prepared to say goodbye to his 2 young kids and wife. Last ditch effort was an experimental drug. Out of 150 people in the trial, he's the only one alive 12 years later. 6 years ago he started a company that is about to hit 8 figure…

My dad was diagnosed at 42 with a rare type of GIST(gastrointestinal stromal tumor) that at the time had 6 known cases in the entire country. Doctors literally gave him 3-6 months to live, maybe 12 with really intensive chemotherapy. Fortunately, he was offered to sign up for an experimental test of Glivec against GIST(Glivec was a known drug at a time, but for something completely unrelated) - with a caveat that he could end up in a control group and be given placebo. He didn't. Glivec was found to be extremely effective against that specific type of cancer and my father has lived another 8 years completely GIST-free(died at 50 due to another cancer that has developed independently of GIST and taken him within 6 months of diagnosis).

So yeah. I know this maybe isn't a super happy story, but not every super bad prediction ends up being true.

Re: I’m 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life

#30

Any amount of unexplained rectal bleeding is reason enough to schedule an appointment with a doctor. The doctor is likely to recommend a colonoscopy. Removal of polyps (a likely source of bleeding) reduces the chances of cancer developing and can only be done during a colonoscopy.

I'm almost ashamed to ask but what's "explained rectal bleeding"? An unusually large/solid movement causing direct damage?
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