SS: the last 9 months

[Napoleon54]

Suckage: I had cancer.

More suckage: I had a severe reaction to one of the chemotherapy drugs and was in a coma for seven weeks.

Not so suckage: I didn't die!! That really would've sucked, I've heard there's no beer in hell. :dead:

[gear02]

Holy crap...

welcome back! I'm glad you pulled through! :)

[Prngr44]

Holy... coma for 7 weeks? As in totally out for 7 weeks?

Do you remember something like that at all or is it pretty much completely out of the memory bank?

Hope you get better, and yes, thank goodness your alive!!

[Napoleon54]

49 days, so yea, 7 weeks plus a few. It was a medically controlled coma induced by heavy doses of sedatives and paralytic drugs. They put me under in order to give my body a chance to heal itself up. I remember a lot of really crazy dreams but not anything real, aside from maybe three or four periods of a few seconds each, just short glimpses of reality. Don't remember anything painful or uncomfortable. The nurses said that's a good thing 'cause they had to do a lot of unpleasant things to me. I was almost dead for most of it, and would've been if not for the life support stuff. Not-so-suckage: When I woke up I had hair again, that was really nice. Eyebrows and everything.

[Memo]

Welcome back to life dude :)

[jstreet]

Wow, glad you are OK. 49 days - I bet that's some crazy dreams.

[guiseppewv]

Glad you made it through all of that!!!

What type of cancer did you have? What hospital were you in?

Glad you are doing better!!! :)

[DarkFury]

Wow... now that's a story you don't hear everyday.

Gratz on beating the odds.. :thumb:

[Napoleon54]

What type of cancer did you have? What hospital were you in?


Alrighty, here goes the whole story I guess.

In December I was diagnosed with early stage Hodgkin's Lymphoma, which in itself is usually not that big of a deal... if you're going to get cancer you'd want it to be Hodgkin's. The causes/ risk factors for it are largely unknown and it's completely gone now. I was on chemo for 6 months (from Jan 25th - June 29th, no surgery or radiation) and sailed through it without much trouble at all. Soon after the last infusion my lungs developed a severe reaction to the Bleomycin (part of the ABVD chemo cocktail I was on). I was hospitalized on July 17th and put in the coma on the 19th. Both of the ICU docs who cared for me later told me that my chest CT (taken sometime in August when I was in the coma) was the worst they'd ever seen, and they routinely see chest CTs from people who die the next day. At the worst point in mid-August I was on 19 different IVs, a ventilator, feeding tube, had chest tubes on both sides (tubes inserted into the sides of my chest to suck out the air that was leaking from my lungs into the chest cavity), a heart catheter (to give realtime monitoring of blood pressure, pulse rate, etc), all sorts of telemetry, BIZ monitor for neural activity, and they had me on some weird inflatable bed that tilted side to side every two minutes to keep me from developing pressure ulcers. Also in mid-August they convened an ethics committee to decide wether to pull the plug on me or not. Three doctors were consulted: one said "he ain't coming back", the second said "I dunno", and the third said "let's give him another week.". Fortunately three days later I started to recover and by (I think it was) Sept 4th I was well enough that they brought me out of the coma. I had lost at least 40 pounds (180 --> 135ish), most of it muscle loss, and was too weak to even lift my arms. They told me I might need a lung transplant (assuming I'd ever be strong enough to survive it) and might be on a ventilator for the rest of my life, would be out of work at least a year, all sorts of grim predictions. Three weeks later I was able to start walking again, (albeit only about 10 feet at a time, with a walker), and was discharged to a rehab center. The rehab place absolutely sucked so I left and went to live with my parents 3 hours away outside of Syracuse. Two weeks after that I came home to my second floor apartment where I live by myself. The day after that (Oct 16th) I went back to work full time and went for a 2.5 mile walk with a friend. So in short, I'm already in much better shape than the docs thought I'd ever get back to, and the rate of recovery has been just amazing. And I'm not done getting better yet, still gain a little every day. I'm very very thankful to not be stuck in a bed for the rest of my life.

I was at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo. I've been very very very impressed with everything at Roswell and strongly believe that if I had been anywhere else I'd probably be dead. Top shelf care all the way. Major props to Roswell!

Thanks to my father who stayed with me every single day, all two-plus months of it, and my step-mom who was there for the first month (before they decided that one of them needed to go back to work) and each weekend thereafter. They stayed at my apartment here in the Buffalo area, 3 hours away from their home. I'm extremely thankful for having them.

Thanks to cruelpupet and all the friends and family who visited me while I was in the hospital.

Thanks to everyone here for the welcome back wishes. :wavey2:

[kgsilvas]

Amazing story. Sounds like it's a NSS ending to a SSSSS event.

[Jenny]

Wow! What an ordeal! Thank goodness it turned out the way it has and that you are recovering as fast as you are! Congrats & good to have you back!

[InfiniteNothing]

So uh, how are your kids.

[Napoleon54]

So uh, how are your kids.

well, uh... :|

The chemo I was on has "only" a 5-10% chance of causing complications in that area, but I bet it doesn't seem insignificant to that one person out of 10 or 20. So I had some half-kidlets put into cold storage before starting chemo. Poor chilly little tykes, at least they're not getting mutated though. :toxic:

[Jeffbx]

Dang, I was going to post about how much it sucked that I'm stuck doing budgeting here at work for the next week, but now that doesn't seem like such a big hassle after all.

Glad to hear you're on the road to recovery!

[Cheesypuff]

WOW...just read everything...

I'm glad everything was ok. I've always wanted to hear what people think of when they're in a coma. Thanks for the knowhow.

but holy hooozies! glad everything is going great.

[johnnymk]

Truly amazing story.

You must be thankful that you are alive and functioning well.
God is truly watching over you.

[Nija]

Didn't you also get jumped last year and put in the hospital for that too? (Or am I mixing up Suckages'?)

Good job on beating the cancer n' stuff.

[mcs328]

I always wondered who took care of the bills or the work stuff if you're incapacitated. Glad you're doing ok. Wow.

[jaja]

We all should feel appreciated of being healthy. Glad to hear you are well.

[Houdini]

Glad to hear you made it through and thrived after such an ordeal. Your willpower was surely a huge factor in your recovery. Congrats! I'm sure we could all learn some things from you re: appreciation of life, etc.

Very happy to hear that you're ok!

H

[chrissy]

Wow! Glad you are feeling better! You definately had someone watching over you!

[yippiekiyeh]

Welcome back!