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Perceptions and misconceptions of being diagnosed like in my case, stage 3 colon cancer. I did
not know anything about cancer in the sense that I never really had family members or
friends that had died from it. My grandmother did die in my father's side when I was 10
years old and she was a smoker and just kind of expected and then my grandpa was also diagnosed
on my mother's side, I believe in his early 60s with colon cancer and again I was very
young. I was probably middle schooled of beginning a high school and he survived in another probably
17 or 18 years after that, so I never really thought of cancers being anything, but what
it was. You know, in the case of my grandmother, she smoked, that is what happens. Well in
my case, I kind of never really thought about dying. It was never really in my thought process,
but when you have to get down to it and the doctor says to you, "Well, you got the choice
of chemo or not, why did you do chemo.?" Well, in my case, he says if you take chemo, the
statistics are 51% survival rate, if you do not take chemo, it is 47% survival rate. Well,
I wanted my 4% and knowing what I know about chemo and all the difficulties in the port-a-cath
and the veins, and those issues with those, I still do it again because I am going to
make the assumption that I got my 51%. You know, I got my little number and it kept me
alive. To that end, I did have a friend of mine in high school who went to our 20th year
of union. He was diagnosed a little bit after me, but his stage 3 colon cancer eventually
got to his liver and his lungs and I think few months after our 20th year of union, he
passed. So, you never know. You know he never drank, never smoked, and was a cross country
runner. He was, you know, the best guy you could ever meet and he is no longer with us
and you know, so stage 3 colon cancer means a lot of different things to lot of different
people and if I say anything, it is, for me it has been 10 years. They never tell you
are cancer free, but the doctor does not want to see me anymore and I do not want to see
him, so we are good with that, so I think that is kind of it for that.
For an interactive tool to learn more about your colon cancer and your personalized treatment
options, go to MyColonCancerCoach.org.