|
Title:
|
Steve D.
|
|
|
Katonah, NY
|
“My name is Stephen Depp, and I live in Katonah, New York. I’m a retired physicist.
I live with my wife of 42 years. I have one son who’s a professor of psychology
in California.”
Title: A routine colonoscopy
“I was first diagnosed with colorectal cancer about five years ago. After a routine
colonoscopy, standard screening procedure for a person my age, at the end of that
colonoscopy I was told that I had colon cancer in about two parts of my colon. As
a result, within just a few days we went through surgery, took out about half of
my colon, and the pathologist report had shown – it looked as though the cancer
had not proceeded outside of the colon.
About a year later, however, I was diagnosed again with colon cancer. My biomarker
CEA had increased and that was suspicious, and we moved towards a PET scan to confirm
that in fact something was there. And so indeed we went back and found out that
I had a met – a metastasis in my liver. That was now Stage IV, and that was the
time that having cancer really sort of hit. And that’s when I got seriously involved
with learning about colon cancer and what the treatment options were and what I
really should do.
So after the recurrence that I had a year later following my colectomy, I went to
a liver surgeon in a large comprehensive cancer center, and was put on not immediately
a surgical path but a chemotherapy path for about three months.”
Title: Being prepared
“I always came prepared with a lot of questions that I really wanted answers for,
and they knew that. Some of them were able to accept email, that’s also a very nice
thing. But I couldn’t be more pleased with the way my doctors interacted with each
other and with me.
I know other people who don’t get along very well with their oncologist. Go find
another one. Go get a second opinion, a third opinion. I think that’s perfectly
legitimate. I think it’s very important to have your medical teamwork with you,
and in fact, I think you need to kind of manage them.
I had a medical team, both locally, my own oncologist and then I would go into the
city and have another set of doctors there, and it was very nice to have them talk
to one-another, which I would kind of force at times by sending letters to them.
Copying them all – gee, I wondered about this or that or the other thing. And it
was very useful to get them to work together. They were excellent in communicating
with each other.”
Title: Getting support & supporting others
“My wife was wonderful. I tear up thinking – She was an excellent caregiver and
every interaction I had with the medical profession she came with me to all the
appointments, she took notes, we would of course write out questions, she would
take notes. When I began to lose interest in food and happened to look at the food
channel for example, and see something that looked interesting, she would immediately
run out and try to duplicate the recipe and see if she could help in that way.
The life lessons from my cancer journey are sort of many I’d say. I – when you finally
get to a state in your life when you taste your own mortality I think you do look
at things a little differently, you value friendships in your life a little bit
more. I was very fortunate to have a good support group. I dealt with them very
openly about my situation. I got a lot of people to have colon cancer screening
that never had before.
Support groups these days come in many forms. And I think they’re very useful. We
started our own little support group up here, there really wasn’t one nearby. So,
we have a cancer support group in my local environs now. Face to face interactions
once or twice a month with people at various stages of disease, different kinds
of diseases, is interesting and therapeutic, and I think each of us sort of bring
different sort of ideas as to how to cope, what to do, and actually we’ve generated
some now very, very good friends that way.”
Title: Taking pictures
“I started diving in 1960 when I was just about 15 years old, and I’ve enjoyed the
water and diving ever since. When I was in my 20’s in college, I began doing some
photography of what I saw down there, particularly in nice areas like in Florida
or off the Keys, or eventually into the Caribbean, and into Hawaii and Venezuela
and some other areas. So the cameras that I’ve – I acquired at the time, which are
quite old from the ‘70s, are ones that are very convenient and compact, and I use
them with a couple flashes to take largely close-ups of some of the interesting
things I see down there. And when things got a little bit more difficult to find
the time in my later years, I’ve sort of enjoyed the pictures that I’ve taken. And
hopefully now that I’m retired, maybe I will do this again.”
Title: I appreciate every day a little bit more
“The issue of what it’s like now being a survivor for four years, what is it like?
I appreciate every day a little bit more. I am more focused on trying to help others,
having experienced this myself, so I continue to get biomarkers every three months
to see that things are going right, and I get a scan once a year. And I will do
that for the rest of my life.”