Cancer warrier or cancer bum?

Having had the diagnosis of anal cancer for over three years, I am still here but don't know if I have succeeded or failed? It has taken everything from me --- my career or job is gone over a year now, I sold my car because last spring I wasn't driving and didn't know if I would ever drive again. My Social Security income can't support me, and I have been unable to make new friends here because of isolation in a guest room at my daughter's home--- so where am I?
I am now 69 years old, and with the lousy job market I probably couldn't get anything that pays enough to get another vehicle and insurance. It so happens that my mental confusion from the disease and the treatments has disappeared and I am very alert, and mad at the medical field and myself.
When I began fighting for my life, I didn't know it would go where it is now.
The diagnosis came about in fall of 2006, when I noticed some drops of blood down under. I saw a local doctor who related it was a classic symptom of cancer and so I was sent on to a oncologist, who scheduled the labs and physical exam that confirmed cancer very near to the anus. Nope! It wasn't rectal cancer that is so much more curable by surgery. Unless I agreed to a very destructive surgery in which they removed most of the apparatus to urinate and to have a bowel movement, they wouldn't give me a 70% chance of being here in five years. This kind of surgery would give me two bags, surgery called a urostomy (to hold urine) and a colon surgery to attach a series of bags -- probablyforever -- to collect feces. The thought of it all was so shocking I couldn't even consider it.
At the beginning, they seemed to hurry me along in making these decisions. I started reading pamplets or articles in medical magazines that mostly advertised new medicines the patient could ask her doctor for. The few times I cut out an article and presented it to my oncologist, I was told that this or that wasn't appropriate for my condition. I was never right again.
I did have a series of radiation treatments, but I also got very ill with a strong virus about two-thirds of the way through the treatment and had to quit it. I also had chemotherapy where I sat in a treatment room and had toxic or poisonous medicines run through my system, then had quarts of sterile water installed after to somehow protect my blood vessels from harm. Somewhere in the first year I had a vena cava port installed in my left upper chest to allow liquid medical treatments to pour more easily into my heart so I didn't need to have a needle pushed into my arm for each treatment.
This turned out to be a good surgery in the long run -- it has helped save my arm veins and it is easy for a nurse to do the treatment. But by the beginning of the second year I had more and more difficulty defacating -- it was painful and difficult -- that I had to have to colon surgery done regardless. I needed it but I hated it, and still do.
When I started reading more about alternative treatments and tried to discuss them with medical practioners, I got the 'you are pretty dumb' treatment. They use the term 'complementary treatments' to talk about listening to music, reducing your stress level, and other pretty rudimentary ideas. If they help more than 5%, I'd be very surprised. But when I talked about taking Chinese medications, using acupuncture, or trying the Hoxsey method (available in Mexico), I wasn't given any encouragement at all.
But I have tried them all. What has stopped me from continuing has been that they are all expensive. The Chinese herbs are quite expensive, and going to Mexico and paying cash for motel and medicines (herbs also) took the rest of my money.
I went to Portland, Oregon, to a Chinese doctor and really felt she had a high regard for me. I believe I was helped -- but I can't afford to go any more. When I tried the Hoxsey method, it was both very hard to follow, but the patients there in the Tijuana clinic seemed to be doing pretty well. I would continue to go there if I could afford it. But no, I can't.
One thing I learned was that my first oncologist wasn't giving me strong enough treatments; she even told my sister and myself in our last visit to her office that she 'didn't want to hurt me, so she gave me lighter doses of the medications.' Because her treatment wasn't working (the CAT scans showed the cancer progressing), we changed to an oncologist in northern California. His work was very uncaring and I almost died after his one attempt. I ended up semi-conscious for several weeks, then I was sent to the regional hospital where they ran antibiotics and sterile water through my vena cava port for five days. By the time they shipped me to a rehabilitation center, I hadn't walked in a month.
I was in that center several weeks learning to walk again, but I was pretty much a basket case. I couldn't take care of myself at home, I seemed to be very confused, and I wasn't getting better. So that was how I got here to my daughter's guest quarters.
Now I have to get myself out of this mess -- or why was I trying so hard to survive and be a cancer warrier in the first place?

27 January 2010