I would like you to know that my wife Kim has passed away after an almost 2-year battle with cancer. She passed away as peacefully as possible last night (11/8/08) after deteriorating rapidly in the past 2 weeks; she was admitted to the hospital on the night of Halloween (Friday 10/31/08), which was her favorite holiday, and after slightly improving it all went very wrong on the morning of the 6th. It was a very long battle that started with stage IV breast cancer diagnosed in January of 2007, culminating in her passing last night.
In my heart I know that she is in a better place, because my wife was an incredible woman that simply deserved better than the cards she was dealt in this life. We had battled various illnesses with her and 4 major surgeries over the past 10 years, and the cancer was just the final battle. She fought hard and I was able to be the primary care-giver with the blessing of my work, which somehow allowed me to work from home while taking care of my wife. And between my 19 year-old son and myself I believe we honestly did the best we could.
Cancer, as anyone who has dealt with it and/or has been touched by it will tell you, is an insidious disease that can rob a person of any dignity left. Anything and everything that my wife held dear to her in terms of physical-related items and the freedom that we take for granted to simply perform basic humane functions were taken away from her over time. By the time we realized the problem, she was stage IV immediately (breast cancer) and it had already spread through her lymphatic system to her liver and was threatening her lungs. It was awful to watch her go through the ordeal and I hope that she is now free of pain and playing in the ocean water that she so dearly loved. I also hope that she now has a pool to swim in, which we were not able to afford.
The only thing I would add is that I want people to know that Mammograms are not enough to protect oneself from catching breast cancer in the earliest stages. The fact is that my wife was going for routine mammograms and it was not caught. In fact, the size of the tumor was the size of a golf ball (5cm) and the mammogram still did not catch it. Even the surgeon that did the mastectomies was shaking his head, but told us this is not all that uncommon. Over the past year and a half I have tried hard to make sure that if you are a woman, if you know a woman you care for (whether it would be your mom, wife, daughter, etc.), please make sure that they are aggressive in getting checked out for breast cancer.
Breast cancer is the most treatable cancer there is, but the caveat is that it must be caught early. Once it spreads (technically called metastasizes), the chances of a long life are drastically cut. In the case of my wife our Oncologist told us we could expect 18-24 months, and it ended up being just at 21 months. In 21 months my best friend and soul-mate lost her battle and though I will hurt for the rest of my life and long to be with her in any way, shape or form, I know that she is in a better place.
The sad part was that she had gone to our primary doctor 4 years earlier and 'thought' she found a tiny lump, the size of a pea. Our doctor checked it and said he couldn't find anything, but that she should get a mammogram since she was getting close to 40 - which is generally the age they target for women to get mammograms yearly. She went to the appointment and had the misfortune to speak with a seemingly unhappy employee at the diagnostic center, who asked her if this was a "routine or non-routine" exam. My wife responded correctly and said she believed this to be a non-routine exam, because she found a tiny lump that she needed to get checked out. The person there responded in a manner that I'll describe as unpleasant and 'huffy' that our doctor had only ordered a routine exam and that if she wanted a non-routine exam, they would not be able to do that today due to the paperwork.
If you knew my wife, she is not the type of person that would push anyone around and was always a people-pleaser, not wanting to ruffle anyone's feathers or anyone to be upset at her. She also figured in her head, which I believe many women would do in this situation, that our primary doctor ordered a routine exam and that a mammogram (whether routine or non-routine) would discover/show any cancer possible - so she agreed to the routine exam...which was the last chance that she had to catch the cancer at the earliest stages. I was not aware of what had happened at the diagnostic center in terms of the routine/non-routine issue, so I figured she was getting the test done that she needed to make sure this was not an issue.
The Mammogram of course came back clean and like anyone of us would do, she thought "phewww", no cancer and we went on with our lives. She got another mammogram one and a half years later and it came back clean as well. One day in January of 2007 she came out of the shower and said: "Peter, can you check something out for me?" It was a huge lump by now and from the moment I touched it, my heart sank and I knew we were in trouble. We researched on the net like crazy, worrying that night was excruciating. I found articles that described that women can get (and I have known women that have) benign cysts that contain fluid.
The next day she went to her Gynecologist and he honestly thought he would be able to extract fluid from the cyst. The first time he tried and nothing came out, his facial expression changed and then he tried again and the moment my wife saw his expression, she said she knew she had cancer. No breast cancer history in the family, but that's what we were facing. The next step was to go to the diagnostic center again and have a non-routine exam performed, where a mammogram AND a sonogram were performed. The mammogram came back clean...with a golf ball-sized tumor in her breast...unbelievable. The Sonogram of course picked it up, because you could clearly feel the huge mass and it of course came back as 'abnormal'.
A biopsy was performed and sure enough, we were dealing with breast cancer. After excruciating time waiting to talk to an Oncologist, and finally getting the PET Scans done, the result was stage IV cancer that had already done its damage. This could have been treated much earlier had my wife realized that her decision to go along with the doctor-ordered routine exam was a mistake, one that unfortunately sealed any chance on a lower stage of breast cancer that most likely would have saved her life and allowed her to even live cancer-free. It was just a set of circumstances that can happen to any woman out there and I guess this is my attempt to educate people on the dangers of not being aggressive with your own well-being.
For those that read this in its entirety I want to thank you and I have the hope that somehow, some way this will help prevent even just one such situation from robbing a life that could be saved. Thank you.
In my heart I know that she is in a better place, because my wife was an incredible woman that simply deserved better than the cards she was dealt in this life. We had battled various illnesses with her and 4 major surgeries over the past 10 years, and the cancer was just the final battle. She fought hard and I was able to be the primary care-giver with the blessing of my work, which somehow allowed me to work from home while taking care of my wife. And between my 19 year-old son and myself I believe we honestly did the best we could.
Cancer, as anyone who has dealt with it and/or has been touched by it will tell you, is an insidious disease that can rob a person of any dignity left. Anything and everything that my wife held dear to her in terms of physical-related items and the freedom that we take for granted to simply perform basic humane functions were taken away from her over time. By the time we realized the problem, she was stage IV immediately (breast cancer) and it had already spread through her lymphatic system to her liver and was threatening her lungs. It was awful to watch her go through the ordeal and I hope that she is now free of pain and playing in the ocean water that she so dearly loved. I also hope that she now has a pool to swim in, which we were not able to afford.
The only thing I would add is that I want people to know that Mammograms are not enough to protect oneself from catching breast cancer in the earliest stages. The fact is that my wife was going for routine mammograms and it was not caught. In fact, the size of the tumor was the size of a golf ball (5cm) and the mammogram still did not catch it. Even the surgeon that did the mastectomies was shaking his head, but told us this is not all that uncommon. Over the past year and a half I have tried hard to make sure that if you are a woman, if you know a woman you care for (whether it would be your mom, wife, daughter, etc.), please make sure that they are aggressive in getting checked out for breast cancer.
Breast cancer is the most treatable cancer there is, but the caveat is that it must be caught early. Once it spreads (technically called metastasizes), the chances of a long life are drastically cut. In the case of my wife our Oncologist told us we could expect 18-24 months, and it ended up being just at 21 months. In 21 months my best friend and soul-mate lost her battle and though I will hurt for the rest of my life and long to be with her in any way, shape or form, I know that she is in a better place.
The sad part was that she had gone to our primary doctor 4 years earlier and 'thought' she found a tiny lump, the size of a pea. Our doctor checked it and said he couldn't find anything, but that she should get a mammogram since she was getting close to 40 - which is generally the age they target for women to get mammograms yearly. She went to the appointment and had the misfortune to speak with a seemingly unhappy employee at the diagnostic center, who asked her if this was a "routine or non-routine" exam. My wife responded correctly and said she believed this to be a non-routine exam, because she found a tiny lump that she needed to get checked out. The person there responded in a manner that I'll describe as unpleasant and 'huffy' that our doctor had only ordered a routine exam and that if she wanted a non-routine exam, they would not be able to do that today due to the paperwork.
If you knew my wife, she is not the type of person that would push anyone around and was always a people-pleaser, not wanting to ruffle anyone's feathers or anyone to be upset at her. She also figured in her head, which I believe many women would do in this situation, that our primary doctor ordered a routine exam and that a mammogram (whether routine or non-routine) would discover/show any cancer possible - so she agreed to the routine exam...which was the last chance that she had to catch the cancer at the earliest stages. I was not aware of what had happened at the diagnostic center in terms of the routine/non-routine issue, so I figured she was getting the test done that she needed to make sure this was not an issue.
The Mammogram of course came back clean and like anyone of us would do, she thought "phewww", no cancer and we went on with our lives. She got another mammogram one and a half years later and it came back clean as well. One day in January of 2007 she came out of the shower and said: "Peter, can you check something out for me?" It was a huge lump by now and from the moment I touched it, my heart sank and I knew we were in trouble. We researched on the net like crazy, worrying that night was excruciating. I found articles that described that women can get (and I have known women that have) benign cysts that contain fluid.
The next day she went to her Gynecologist and he honestly thought he would be able to extract fluid from the cyst. The first time he tried and nothing came out, his facial expression changed and then he tried again and the moment my wife saw his expression, she said she knew she had cancer. No breast cancer history in the family, but that's what we were facing. The next step was to go to the diagnostic center again and have a non-routine exam performed, where a mammogram AND a sonogram were performed. The mammogram came back clean...with a golf ball-sized tumor in her breast...unbelievable. The Sonogram of course picked it up, because you could clearly feel the huge mass and it of course came back as 'abnormal'.
A biopsy was performed and sure enough, we were dealing with breast cancer. After excruciating time waiting to talk to an Oncologist, and finally getting the PET Scans done, the result was stage IV cancer that had already done its damage. This could have been treated much earlier had my wife realized that her decision to go along with the doctor-ordered routine exam was a mistake, one that unfortunately sealed any chance on a lower stage of breast cancer that most likely would have saved her life and allowed her to even live cancer-free. It was just a set of circumstances that can happen to any woman out there and I guess this is my attempt to educate people on the dangers of not being aggressive with your own well-being.
For those that read this in its entirety I want to thank you and I have the hope that somehow, some way this will help prevent even just one such situation from robbing a life that could be saved. Thank you.
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