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Title:
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Pat S.
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Syracuse, NY
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“My name’s Pat Steer and I live in Central New York with most of the rest of my
family. I have three brothers and a sister, and I write, and cook, and I also train
and show dogs.
I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer about four years ago and I’d had a few gastrointestinal,
stomach bug, flu type symptoms, which were about the same time that I would normally
have had my annual physical.
The main symptom that I had that told me that there might be something wrong was
that I lost a lot of weight in a very short period of time. I lost 18 pounds in
about six weeks. And when I saw my doctor for my annual physical my blood work was
a little out of line. In fact, so far out of line that he ordered a colonoscopy
–
When I was initially diagnosed, unfortunately, I was told that surgery wasn’t an
option. I wasn’t in an emergency surgery situation, but I was also in a situation
where the cancer had compromised my liver to the point where if they didn’t get
some form of medicine in to help the liver regulate, I wasn’t necessarily going
to make it to surgery. My oncologist is a really well respected oncologist and his
patient-manner was something that made me feel very comfortable with his advice.”
Title: Playing on the same team
“A cancer diagnosis is always a big thing to absorb, and I would really encourage
people that get a cancer diagnosis not to try to go through it by themselves. Bring
somebody with you to your appointments. It’s absolutely the best advice in the world
to have somebody else take notes for you.
It is important to have everybody on the team working together, regardless of where
they are. Locally I’m treated by an oncology practice, and all of the doctors in
that practice also see my primary care doctor and my gynecologist in the hospital
where they have privileges. But they communicate with each other because I remind
them that they have to send reports to my gynecologist, my primary care doctor,
my neurologist, my counselor.
In the treatment hospital that I go to in New York, which is a cancer specialty
hospital, all of those doctors work together, they have the same email address,
they look at the same test results. They tend to play nicely with each other, and
as the patient, the most effective thing you can do for your treatment is insist
that you’re the one in charge, and you have to be the person who’s willing to say,
“You have to work with all of my other doctors or you don’t get to play on the team.”
Title: Going through chemo like Suzie Sunshine wasn’t gonna work
“I have a hard time when people say, ‘You need to be positive. You need to have
a great ‘you can do it’ attitude all the way through this.’ There are gonna to be
times when chemo makes you feel like you can’t do this. Sometimes those times might
be 20 seconds after they start the first drip, and sometimes it can be in the middle
of the cycle when you think, ‘I’ve done all this work and I just feel crummy and
I’m not gonna get any better. And when am I gonna see some results?’
You can tough anything out for a certain period of time, and you can put on a good
face when it’s appropriate to put on a good face. But for me, going through chemo
like Suzie Sunshine just wasn’t gonna work.”
Title: I love to cook
“I love to cook. It relaxes me. I collect cookbooks. I read them like they’re novels…
I make soup all the time, and one of my favorite soups is one of the simplest things
in the world. It’s just tomatoes and mushrooms and whatever herbs you happen to
have in the cupboard. It’s the Italian version of Stone Soup, where you start with
a potato and a pot of water and see what else falls out of the cupboard. And if
it’s an excellent day you’ve got some sausage and can have a good dinner or lunch
in half an hour.”
Title: This is a marathon
“I think when you’re diagnosed with cancer a lot of things come at you really quickly,
and one of the things I wish I’d known in the beginning is that this is not a short
sprint. This is a marathon. You need to pace yourself. I learn better by knowing
or finding out as much about what I’m doing as possible, and I wish I’d known how
many resources there were. I’m still discovering resources.”