by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | Sep 17, 2011 | Uncategorized |
I’m in Baltimore for the 2nd annual Heat it to Beat It walk! I’m getting better at knowing where I’m going and using the light rail, a commuter train. The walk is held in the center of Baltimore, the Inner Harbor, but hotels there are very expensive, so I stay near the airport in a nice hotel that is 1/4-1/5 of the cost of an Inner Harbor hotel ad use public transportation to commute. Only $3.50 buys you an all day pass to use all of the trains and buses…can’t beat that ($40-$50 one way commute to the harbor via cab). After walking miles downtown today, I attended a very nice and well-attended reception for the walk at Mercy Medical Center tonight. I got to meet some other great survivors! One is an 11 year survivor. She also initially received a terminal diagnosis, and after her first HIPEC surgery it recurred three years later…and she received a second terminal diagnosis. She had a second HIPEC surgery 7 years ago and has since been cancer-free. The walk is tomorrow, and so far 671 signed up prior on-line, more signed up tonight at the reception. Will let you know the grand total when I know! I will post pictures of the walk when I return home (forgot my card reader).
by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | Sep 8, 2011 | Uncategorized |
We are approaching the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11. I read that there may be terrorist attacks planned for the anniversary, possibly car bombs in DC and NYC. It made me worry, made me feel sad. I remember how depressed I felt after the Sept. 11th attacks. I was supposed to be in NYC on Sept. 11, 2001, but instead went there Sept. 5th and 6th. I saw the Twin Towers and took pictures of them just days before they went down. I was there again sortly after and visited Ground Zero. We lost 3000 Americans that day. The whole country was saddened.
But I think now….I’ve been in the cancer community for 10 years. We lose 500,000 Americans a year to cancer. The same as losing 3000 Americans every other day, but we don’t feel the shock and sadness at that statistic as we did the Sept. 11th statistic. Cancer terrorizes us too. It is a much bigger enemy. I think of the saying, “one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic”, and it really is true. It’s how our minds work.
I looked it up once, we spend a fraction of the money on cancer research as we do on fighting terrorism. Makes no sense….
by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | Sep 3, 2011 | Uncategorized |
Don’t know if I’m being sappy or indulgent or sentimental here, but please bear with me!
Before my cancer diagnosis, I bought an apple tree. We’d had a large above ground pool in our backyard, which we’d removed, and I wanted TREES in our back yard to fill the space. I thought a fruit tree would be nice, so bought a self-pollinating green apple tree. After a few years, it actually had lots of apples, and they were the best apples I’d ever tasted. One year, just after my cancer diagnosis, I notices we had a worm problem with the apples, so I decided to spray the tree with insecticide. A few days after I sprayed it, the leaves started dying, and I realized my mistake…I’d sprayed it with herbicide instead of insecticide. Soon branches started dying. I pruned the tree many times hoping that when I removed the dead wood, enough of it would survive to keep the tree alive. As I did that, I felt I was “debulking” it, much like my own cytoreduction surgery. In the end, all of the branches died, and I had only a dead trunk. I cut down the trunk, I’d killed my apple tree. It was gone.
But the next spring, a small shoot appeared where the dead trunk had been. The tiny leaves looked a bit like my old apple trees leaves, so I tried to nurture it. The next year the leaves came back again. Over the next several years, I nurtured the small plant, and it grew to a small tree. No blossoms, no apples, but I kept nurturing it anyway. I wasn’t sure if it was a tree or a big weed, but I kept it.
This year, my tenth anniversary cancer-free, my tree bloomed…and it has apples again! I picked one, and it tasted GREAT!
My apple tree now reminds me that when all hope seems gone, just a small bit of hope can grow. It can become whole, be fruitful. That even after devastatingly hard times we can be reborn.
As a side note, I looked at my apple tree today, and many apples were gone, there were only three remaining. Balanced on my fence-top was a half-eaten apple. We have raccoons and squirrels in my yard, and they never cared about the apples before, but now my apple tree seems popular!! But I don’t mind…..I think hope is something to share. As long as they leave me a few….
by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | Aug 29, 2011 | Uncategorized |
One thing I noticed as a cancer survivor, my perspective in parenting changed. I’ve recently communicated with other cancer survivors who share my view. Many non-cancer patient parents fear their kids growing up and becoming independent and not needing them. They wish for days when their kids needed them, wish they were still young, dependent on their parents, in a sense.
Not long after my diagnosis, when my kids were 10 and 11, I wanted so much for them to achieve independence and adulthood. I wanted them to be able to survive and thrive without me. I wanted them to have dreams and ambitions and goals that surpassed their need for a mother. I didn’t want to be central in their lives anymore. After I was diagnosed, one of my daughters told me she would want to kill herself if I died, as she couldn’t imagine living without me-she wanted to go to heaven where I would be. That scared me. She had so much to offer, so many gifts to give to this world. So much purpose left to achieve.
A cancer-survivor friend I recently spoke with had a very aggressive cancer, and is now 5 years cancer-free. Her children are age 14 and 8. She said she pushes them towards self-sufficiency and independence. She never wishes to go back to the old days when her kids were younger. I am the same. My husband and I were empty-nesters for a year, and I didn’t have any of the issues of grief and loss other parents have. I celebrated my kid’s independence. I was thrilled my kids were making a life of their own away from me, that I wasn’t central anymore, that they had hopes and ambitions that didn’t include me. Now I think parents that want their kids to remain dependent on them are kind of selfish. I want my kids to fly on their own wings! I’m so glad I was here to give them values, dreams and hopes as they grew up. But my ultimate goal is that they can live a full life without me. As long as I am here, I want to have a good relationship with them…but I don’t need them to need me as they used to.
by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | Aug 18, 2011 | Uncategorized |
I’ve written here before that I am on the board of a new medical organization, the American Society for Peritoneal Surface Malignancies. Peritoneal surface malignancies are cancers, like appendix cancer, that spread into the abdomen. The state of the art treatment for these cancers is HIPEC or EPIC, chemotherapies administered directly into the abdomen. IV chemotherapies have limited effectiveness on these cancers, where as HIPEC snf EPIC can often allow for prolonged survival, as in my case….I am 10 years cancer-free.
We have some mountains to climb, though. We need to make this therapy recognized as effective and covered by all insurances (some won’t as they consider it “experimental”). We need to gather information to help document it’s effectiveness. We need to make the medical community more aware that this treatment is available. We need to know how soon patients see a specialist after diagnosis and how they are referred to specialists (self referral, MD referral etc.) and what treatments they receive before seeing a specialist. That information has never been compiled. There is a great need for this information to help promote specialized treatment for those diagnosed after us.
To help overcome these mountains, the American Society for Peritoneal Malignancies is creating a database, PROGRESS, of information answering these questions. Hopefully the answers will one day be compiled and published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, which will increase awareness and advance our cause in the medical community.
I’ve had several patients ask me how they can help in this regard, and here is a great chance! I have a PROGRESS questionaire and I am asking patients who have or will receive EPIC or HIPEC treatments to PLEASE participate!! You confidentiality will be maintained. It is really important we get patients and their surgeons to participate!! If you would like to participate, please email me at carolyn@appendix-cancer.com and I will email you the form and help with any questions you have. Again, PLEASE help!!!
