I watched my girlfriend suffer through chemo and radiation (she already had surgery a few months before I met her), and then go through more surgery, radiation and oral chemo 18 months later when it was discovered that her cancer had metastasized to her cerebral spinal fluid.
It was believed that she was “cured” after her first round of treatment, but after her debilitating symptoms began and the metastases was diagnosed a year and a half after we met, it took her nine months of horrific suffering from the disease and side effects before she finally passed.
In her last month, when I could no longer give her the care she needed and she was moved to hospice, she gradually lost her mental capacity to the point where she began hallucinating, no longer knew my name or her own, lost the ability to move her right arm and her legs, and finally her ability to speak altogether.
She was a lady of consummate class and accomplishment — an award-winning, internationally renowned professional classical musician, a professor and head of the music department at a Boston area university. Watching her deteriorate and lose her musical abilities including the ability to play her instrument at all, was beyond heartbreaking.
She had a Cadillac health plan through the university where she had been on the faculty for 30 years, and was treated by the best doctors at the best hospitals in Boston.
If I am ever diagnosed with cancer, I will not go through any of that. Not that I could afford it anyway, since I am presently without health insurance and don’t know when I will be able to afford it again.
But even if I could afford it, I will not do it.
So sorry to both of you for your losses.
My father pleaded for chemo, but doctors refused to give it to him. When we lost him to cancer, I decided that, if I ever was diagnosed, I’d try alternative treatments. Well, I was diagnosed. And the very first treatments I checked into were alternative treatments. In the end, I opted for chemo. There are many people who survive chemo and go on for many more years.
I’m not saying chemo is the only way. I’m not even saying it’s the best way. I’m just saying, don’t rule it out if you’re ever in the same position.
I hope neither of you is ever in that position. Hopefully this latest research will give us all a new way to fight it. Again, my deepest sympathies to you both.
Cancer sucks.
I am sorry for the loss of your girlfriend.
I am sorry for your loss.