[The Yeti]

Mate I really hope you beat this, my mum has smoked from the time she was 16 now 64, she gave up around 5 years ago for around 9 months but found she suffered extreme depression and other illnesses as a result, she used to joke that one day she had had enough of feeling like crap, lit up a cigarette and never felt better, that was until January last year when she had a seizure less than 2 minutes from parking her car which she had just driven with 3 of her 5 grandchildren in.

She hadn’t been herself for a little while but we all (herself included) put that down to the fact my dad, her husband had passed away suddenly 4 months earlier. The doctors investigated and found she had 11 brain mett’s ranging in size from 7mm - 24mm a further full scan found a massive legion on her left lung, lung capacity test found that she shouldn’t have been able to breath un assisted but claims she has never felt short of breath (Aside from smoking she has always been fit and active and an outdoors person) after many specialists, tests & biopsy’s, they decided that there really wasn’t much that could be done with the lung and the brain mett’s were the issue at the moment. The doctor basically said with treatment she had around a 20% chance of making 12 months with a reasonable quality of life, without it she would have around 8 – 12 weeks. so they attached it with a big hit of radiation. Closely followed by chemotherapy, (her first dose was my 39th birthday and I spent the night holding her while she threw up the dinner she had made for my family) her first scan showed a small reduction in the size of some of the mett’s so they continued with chemo and as the months rolled on her quality of life improved. In January this year they did another scan, they found all of the mett’s had reduced in size substantially (some weren’t able to be detected at all) BUT the mass in her lung had started to increase (again she hasn’t been short of breath she is back tending to her horses, gardening etc and is never short of breath) so there was a meeting of the minds with radiologists and oncologists and a few other people with ist at the end of their title. The end result was the oncologist wanted to try more radiation, the radiologist believed there was merit in the idea BUT the location of the mass was such that there was a risk of damage to the spine and / or oesophagus, a little sole searching amongst the family and she decided she was now on bonus time anyhow as she had passed the 12 month mark so shed give it ago, now were only in May but she did the radiation she’s had a scan and there has been a shrinking in the mass and at the moment she has no further treatment until July but things aren’t looking bad, she won’t beat it we are all at peace with this, our aim is not so much time as time but with quality of life and currently she has that (but she’s only as shadow of who she was) she still spends lots of time outside but she can’t do many of the things she once did, she has had her licence suspended as a result of the first (and only) seizure and I doubt she will ever have it again (though she refuses to sell her car and has kept the registration and insurance current).

I can’t help but think had she stayed strong when she gave up that she might not be in this position now

I haven’t typed this as a woe is me story I’ve typed is hoping to give you motivation to stay strong

I would go to the doctor and get that blood checked out and while you’re there see what they can do to assist you in giving up