On 1/15/2016 7:30 PM, metalhead wrote:
Ti> One of my best friend a fishing partner. Found out he had cancer
Can someone please tell me...
How do people feel when they have cancer? Like, my stomach hurts, could it be cancer? Or like if your skin develops a black spot, it can be cancer?
People with cancer.. Are they all suffering horrible pain constantly? I just wonder what it's like, so I can recognize it if it happens to me.
When my father had cancer, we didn't talk directly about what he was
going through, but my mother and I discussed some of it. My dad and I
mostly just spent time together when he felt up to visiting.
First, a little background: he was a workaholic, alcoholic, meatcutter.
Most my my childhood and teen years he was a manager at the local
supermarket, so he would work 10-12 hour days, five or six days a week.
When he wasn't working, he was fishing or working around the house, or
working on the car. During deer season, he worked extra hours processing
deer in a shop he built himself next to the house. He was a bit of a
oldschool hardcore guy; I'd walk into the shop sometimes and watch him
cut meat, a beer nearby and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. A true master, I guess; his work was always clean and he somehow never injured himself on the equipment. The one injury I can remember was after he was likely already sick, he nipped the end of a finger off on a saw. We had
to make him stop working on fence that evening, even bleeding through
his bandage he kept swinging that arm.
That right arm - actually, his shoulder - had been causing him more and
more pain. The doctor thought it was arthritis of some sort, since he
spent nearly every weekend since childhood fishing. He even took my mom fishing on their honeymoon, and when we were younger my brother and I
were dragged along every weekend until we were sick of it. Soon as I was
old enough to stay home, I refused to fish for five years straight I
hated it so much (I've since mellowed.) Throw in all the household
repairs, construction projects, side work, arthritis seemed a natural
fit, and we didn't think anything of it.
The doctor prescribed over the counter medicine. Then something
stronger. Next came an x-ray, which did not reveal anything abnormal. Meanwhile, his pain steadily worsened.
Also, for many years my dad had a chronic cough. Nothing too abnormal,
since he was a lifelong smoker. However, the last year or two it had
been getting worse, although it was a slow progression so none of us had really paid it any mind.
When the shoulder pain got so bad he couldn't take it anymore (and that
was something - my father had an incredible pain tolerance), the doctor finally ordered an MRI. Turns out he had a tumor in the shoulder... in
his lungs... in the bone of his leg... and, in the bone of his skull.
The theory is, it possibly started in his lungs, and spread from there.
I forget the name of the cancer, it was some complicated sounding name
I'd never heard, but it was an aggressive form of cancer not specific to
any part of the body.
So, as best as I can relay how it feels, sometimes it does not feel like anything at all. Just like in the movies, it can sneak up on you slowly
and masquerade as something else. This is why regular doctor visits are recommended, but even then a doctor can miss something. In my father's
case, he was so used to his chronic cough, he didn't think anything of
it. His is probably an extreme case... he pretty much lived life to the fullest, aside from his alcoholism, and had all the risk factors:
excessive drinking, poor diet, would burn in the sun all day w/ no
sunscreen (he'd be bright red the first week, dark brown all summer),
and two packs a day.
If I recall, he lasted about one year after the diagnosis. A well
muscled guy with a pot belly, he wasted away the first six months and
spent the last six months in a wheelchair. He never complained about
pain to me, although you could see it in his eyes.
Sadly, he seemed more alive that year than most of my memory of him: he
had to give up the alcohol. So I cannot really be sure I saw pain in his bright, alert eyes. We had some nice honest conversations, though. I
recall him confiding in me some of the things he did in the early 70's
before my brother and I came along, such as the once or twice he tried
cocaine and acid. He joked that he's on the GOOD stuff, now.
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