Dealing with Cancer & recovery
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Oct 2014
Location: Staten Island
Posts: 2
Dealing with Cancer & recovery
Hey all, I'm a 26 year old recovering Heroin addict with a "little extra" to deal with. Stages 3 Brain Cancer, along with chemotherapy, which makes me sick and exhausted for most if the month. Does anyone have any advice? Some days I just get a case of the "F' it's"!
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Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Dallas, Texas
Posts: 2,459
I don't really have any advice except to say I am sorry that you have to deal with so much right now. I totally get why you would have the case of the "F"-its. This is a great place for support. Take care!
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Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: northern michigan. not the U.P.
Posts: 15,281
Hey films, Tom here. Or Steve. Or tomsteve.
I was diagnosed stage 3 metastatic melanoma In 2006, 13 months into recovery. There I was gettin comfortable with myself and life on life's terms and doing it clean and sober, starting to enjoy life and now I'm told I have a serious cancer that could very well kill me?? Now that there's something I never experienced before and it sure did baffle me and scare me. I didn't get clean and sober to die!!!!!,
Here's what a good friend said to me when I confided in him iust how I was feeling about it:it was time for me t let God and the doctors do what they do best and keep my nose out of it.
So I worked hard at that.
I'm about 3 or so years, I went through a pretty serious surgery to carve out cancer, a clinical trial that was stopped due to recurrence, another surgery to carve out the recurrence, then the cancer decided to get pretty serious and started spreading from the primary locationso a round of chemo, surgery after that to carve out what chemo didn't kill, another round of chemo which came real close to killing me, another surgery to carve out a tumor that popped up on my arm, then another surgery into my back this time as the cancer got into the bone of the t6 vertebrae....hhmmmm...oh..in between it all a crapload of PET scans, MRI's, Ct scans, blood draws.....pretty much every friggn test available.....and here I sit 8 years later..... Still clean and sober.
How I did it??? Welp, I did some serious trudging at times. To be content with it all the time wasn't the easiest thing to do, but I kept my Faith in God. There were times I did some serious screaming at God and even had some pretty harsh words for him,but He never left me.
I also had a support network of friends both online(they were/are the ones that had battled the same cancer) and face to face.
I thnk those tithings plus remembering that no matter what a drink or drug wouldn't helped is what got me though it.
Many times I had to leave one set of footprints in the sand and make sure those footprints weren't mine
I had the f it's a few times( a few times could be an understatement) when I was going through the chemo. Sick and tired of being sick and tired and I just wanted to give up. Man.....3 days int the 1st round and I was sicker than I had ever been( might even have been able to add up quite a few times I'd been sick and that wouldn't compare). That's when I had to get down to going through it one minute at a time.......
I also had to be open with my oncologist and his nurses about the side effects I was feeling tolet them give me meds to combat the side effects. Yup,I was in recovery, but it was a time for me to let them give me what they could to help get though it. Also helped to have a friend in on it to keep check on me to make surei didn't start abusing any of the meds.
Don't know if anything I said was helpful buti hope so. Feel free to drop me a PM (think theres a certain amount of posts necessary before that can be done) iffen ya feel like it. Fighting cancer is a lot easier with the support of others that have done it.
Prayers your way.
I was diagnosed stage 3 metastatic melanoma In 2006, 13 months into recovery. There I was gettin comfortable with myself and life on life's terms and doing it clean and sober, starting to enjoy life and now I'm told I have a serious cancer that could very well kill me?? Now that there's something I never experienced before and it sure did baffle me and scare me. I didn't get clean and sober to die!!!!!,
Here's what a good friend said to me when I confided in him iust how I was feeling about it:it was time for me t let God and the doctors do what they do best and keep my nose out of it.
So I worked hard at that.
I'm about 3 or so years, I went through a pretty serious surgery to carve out cancer, a clinical trial that was stopped due to recurrence, another surgery to carve out the recurrence, then the cancer decided to get pretty serious and started spreading from the primary locationso a round of chemo, surgery after that to carve out what chemo didn't kill, another round of chemo which came real close to killing me, another surgery to carve out a tumor that popped up on my arm, then another surgery into my back this time as the cancer got into the bone of the t6 vertebrae....hhmmmm...oh..in between it all a crapload of PET scans, MRI's, Ct scans, blood draws.....pretty much every friggn test available.....and here I sit 8 years later..... Still clean and sober.
How I did it??? Welp, I did some serious trudging at times. To be content with it all the time wasn't the easiest thing to do, but I kept my Faith in God. There were times I did some serious screaming at God and even had some pretty harsh words for him,but He never left me.
I also had a support network of friends both online(they were/are the ones that had battled the same cancer) and face to face.
I thnk those tithings plus remembering that no matter what a drink or drug wouldn't helped is what got me though it.
Many times I had to leave one set of footprints in the sand and make sure those footprints weren't mine
I had the f it's a few times( a few times could be an understatement) when I was going through the chemo. Sick and tired of being sick and tired and I just wanted to give up. Man.....3 days int the 1st round and I was sicker than I had ever been( might even have been able to add up quite a few times I'd been sick and that wouldn't compare). That's when I had to get down to going through it one minute at a time.......
I also had to be open with my oncologist and his nurses about the side effects I was feeling tolet them give me meds to combat the side effects. Yup,I was in recovery, but it was a time for me to let them give me what they could to help get though it. Also helped to have a friend in on it to keep check on me to make surei didn't start abusing any of the meds.
Don't know if anything I said was helpful buti hope so. Feel free to drop me a PM (think theres a certain amount of posts necessary before that can be done) iffen ya feel like it. Fighting cancer is a lot easier with the support of others that have done it.
Prayers your way.
Member
Join Date: May 2014
Location: liverpool, england
Posts: 1,708
sorry to hear of your situation, i have never had cancer but i am a single parent of my son who died from stomach cancer aged just 16 years old
it knocked me and my other kids for six i will never understand to this day what on earth has just happend,one min i had a boy that was full of life then i had to watch him waste away right before my eyes and there was nothing i could do to save him or anyone else could do either
i found that your going to either be lucky or unlucky with dealing with cancer and who survives it or not
but i know there are countless people and kids suffering with it daily around the world, its the most heartbreaking illness there is, when i hear people complain about such small problems in there lives i very often tell them to go and visit a hospice with dying kids in them and see how they feel about there own problems when they come out
after my experience of having to watch helpless over my son and see him suffer the way he did and he was only just a boy it really has hardened me up towards nonsense problems in life
i hope things go well for you my only words of comfort are that your still in there with a chance
good luck to you
it knocked me and my other kids for six i will never understand to this day what on earth has just happend,one min i had a boy that was full of life then i had to watch him waste away right before my eyes and there was nothing i could do to save him or anyone else could do either
i found that your going to either be lucky or unlucky with dealing with cancer and who survives it or not
but i know there are countless people and kids suffering with it daily around the world, its the most heartbreaking illness there is, when i hear people complain about such small problems in there lives i very often tell them to go and visit a hospice with dying kids in them and see how they feel about there own problems when they come out
after my experience of having to watch helpless over my son and see him suffer the way he did and he was only just a boy it really has hardened me up towards nonsense problems in life
i hope things go well for you my only words of comfort are that your still in there with a chance
good luck to you
Member
Join Date: Oct 2014
Posts: 1,850
Hello and I'm so sorry. Cancer is a scary thing to deal with. I had a brush with it as well in my early 20's. Luckily, it didn't come back after 18 years of scopes. I had a level 1 and was so blessed to catch it early. I worried I would never see my son grow up, he was only 3 at that time. I know the terror hearing those words invoked though. And I never had to take treatments. I'm praying you will be ok, and be healed. Every few months at first I had to be checked, then as the days rolled into years, I still dreaded going for my scope every year. The Lord blessed me and saw fit to give me more time. I am praying for you now. My family really tried to console me on that one, and the support there was great. But, unless you face this as its happening to you, no matter what anyone said or did didn't help me much. I think they were freaked out by it. There are cancer support groups too, something I wish I would have been a part of back then. Prayers and good thoughts to you 718. Pm me if you ever want to/need to. 
Member
Join Date: Oct 2014
Posts: 1,850
Thanks tomsteve and desypete for sharing. Not trying to hijack this thread by any means. But your experiences and strength really help shed some light, and hope, for people going through cancer. Thanks so much. My heart, thoughts, and prayers go out to anyone who is dealing with this, or has.
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Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 5,937
Originally Posted by 718Films 
Hey all, I'm a 26 year old recovering Heroin addict with a "little extra" to deal with. Stages 3 Brain Cancer, along with chemotherapy, which makes me sick and exhausted for most if the month. Does anyone have any advice? Some days I just get a case of the "F' it's"!
As others have said you'll never want for support or someone to listen at SR.
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