My First Hurricane, Survivor Stories, Cancer survivor
was not what I was planning on after graduating college
On my first day of awakening, 28 years ago when I was told I had an active 6 pound tumor; a cancer between my abdomen and spine that was doubling every 2 months. We found it 2 months before it would have been too late, the cancer would have been 12 pounds 2 months after it was discovered and 24 pounds 2 months later. I had less than 6 months to live. It would have been too late for treatment if I had waited an additional 2 months to see a Doctor. I had no insurance just out of college.
I am 99.99% to the 10th degree cured of testicular cancer. You are never told you are 100% cured. The regime of chemotherapy for my cancer was just discovered 12 months earlier by a Doctor/Scientist who I heard had later died from the same cancer. It was too late for him because the cancer had progressed into the final stages of the cancer and possible had spread into other areas of his body. Yet, I ask myself why God had cast me away aside when I was in the fourth and last stage of the same cancer. Maybe because my 6 pound tumor had not spread throughout my body. It was localized between my abdomen and spine. My nurses and doctors were the best in world in my opinion.
My cancer to some degree changed my life. But humans tend to get back into the Rat Race and so did I.
When the Doctor told me I had cancer my reply was, Doctor Hines, I skydive almost every weekend and I face death with every jump; so, I will face my cancer the very same way, with a "Positive Mental Attitude. (PMA)" -W. Clement Stone
From October 1982 to March 6, 1983 I had an operation and 4 five day in hospital intensive chemotherapy treatments were scheduled. I was given 3 different chemicals - chemo. My cancer treatment was one of the two harshest chemo regimens at the time. I lost all my hair in a week.
About half, 3 pounds of my tumor was gone the first week of treatment. Why, because I had a PMA.
To all of America who are unemployed or homeless, I would like to say that having and finding a job or having a place to live that is your own can be the most important and strongest fabrics holding the thin threads of our struggle together. In between my third and fourth chemo treatment I went to 3 weeks of insurance licensing training at Combined Insurance Company of America. This training gave me a path to walk on and kept my mind away from the worries of my demise. In February of 1983, I weighed 103 pounds with no hair; no beard and I looked like death warmed over.
I passed the insurance licensing and sales course and in the beginning of March of 1983 the day before I started my last 5 day chemotherapy treatment in the hospital at the New England Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
Little did I know that my daughter Emelia would be born exactly 8 years later on the exact day I entered the hospital for my fourth and last treatment. Emelia's mother got pregnant 3 times in 8 months and Emelia was born 9 months later. The Doctor's told me different probabilities 8 years before but they did not realize my grandmother, Emelia, my second mother had 53 grandchildren from 6 children of her own. Go figure! Always believe in the future. Your children are your future.
I signed myself out on the 2nd day of my fourth and last 5 day chemo treatment. Everyone was upset at me. My doctor later said it was water under the bridge. -Dr. David Parkinson. Months later the doctors realized that I only needed 3 rounds of Chemo to be cured. This medical knowledge may not have been discovered as soon as it was if I had not checked myself out of the hospital prematurely.
Both of my hospital stays cost society over $1,000,000 in today's dollars. Both times I was uninsured. I had to claim bankruptcy in 2004 and was approved for 4 credit cards in 2006 to early 2007.
The reason why I may have developed this cancer is because during the late 40's, 50's until the early 70's my mother along with millions of others took a drug doctors prescribed to mothers called Diethylstilbestrol (DES). As a result over 10 million children were born under the loving care of this drug. DES was developed to protect the fetus from premature birth but then why was it taken off the market 25 years later? I heard hearsay that the studies had never proved that DES prevented miscarriages to any major degree. My mother might show some proof since she had 8 children and 6 miscarriages while taking DES. Our family was written up in a case study in the New England Medical Journal in the mid eighties in which it stated that up to 5 of the eight children had side effects from the drug DES.