two sheds jackson

Thanks so much for all the support guys. This is a cheap, shameless plug and I'm a bastard for doing it, but heres the footage of me at the state finals of RAW Comedy:

Quick update; - Finished treatment. - The chemo worked brilliantly. By the fourth cycle (I had six all up) there was no cancer showing in the scans at all. Pretty much everyone was shocked about that. They're not saying I'm cured, because they can't once it's spread through the bloodstream, but they can't put a limit on how long it could stay dormant for, and obviously I can try the same treatment again if and when it comes back. - Back at uni, doing comedy again (entered RAW Comedy this year and made the State finals), so I'm basically back to normal. - Now it's a matter of getting scans every month or so, but if it stays stable for a while, they'll make it every few months. Basically the longer it stays stable, the less regularly I'll have to have scans. So yeah, it's a bit touch and go for now. Pretty bloody stoked with how it's gone, actually. With the obvious exception of being diagnosed with the [censored] thing in the first place, I've been pretty lucky; things have gone way, way better than anyone would have expected when I wrote the OP. Bring on the footy!

Just got back from a pretty big night out, I'm a bit [censored], so I'll keep this as brief as possibl so as not to make too much of a [censored] of myself. Thanks to everyone whose given me support via this thread or in PMs (and to everyone I havn't gotten back to yet, especially AFI and It's A Nightmare, I'm sorry and will do so in the next couple days, swear to God). Just thought I'd give a brief update. As I said, when I was originally diagnosed, they did an x-ray and found a bunch of small dots (which turned out to be tumors) in my lungs; the largest was about 4x4cm. Since then I've had two bouts of chemo, which actually hasnt been too bad, I've lost my hair and for the first three days after each treatment I've felt pretty tired, but I havn't got sick from it, and three days after I get a dose I feel completely normal. Anyway, I had a CT scan the other day to see how the treatment is going, and it went way better than expected; alot of the dots arent even showing up anymore at all, and the biggest tumor has shrunk by more than half- the doctor said about the biggest tumor "we think it's still technically measurable, but we're not even sure about that, definitely less than a cm", so yeah, after two treatments the biggest tumor is barely measurable. And I still have another four treatments to go. The doctors didn't expect anywhere near this good of a result; when I started treatment, they told me that if the tumor didn't shrink but didn't grow, they would consider the treatment extremely successful (and by the sound of it, they would have been surprised even by that). This is after two doses. I have another four to go. The type of cancer I have is slow-growing, and slow-growing cancers don't generally respond that well to chemo (although this one obviously has). But it's also a pretty rare cancer, and it's a bit of an unknown quantity since theres not much data available yet (from what I remember, the specific type I have accounts for about 2% of salivary gland tumors, and of that 2%, only 10% turn out malignant: I pretty much did the opposite of winning the lottery). So I figure [censored] it, every illness in the world was incurable at one stage until somebody survived it, and I'm [censored] well going to survive this [censored]. Again, thanks so much to everybody for the encouragement, I'm feeling [censored] terrific right now.

I'm not really sure what's possessed me to post this thread; I don't really know anyone here, and theres not much anyone can do to help me. I hope it doesn't seem like an appeal for sympathy, because that's not what I'm after. I guess there's just alot of things I need to verbalize and get off my chest, and some things are actually easier to say to a bunch of strangers than to the people you care about most. Early in the year, I found a lump just in front of my ear. I went and saw a doctor about it, and he assured me it was only a cyst, but told me to watch it for the next month or so and to get an ultrasound if it didn't go down, not because it was possibly cancerous, but because the type of cyst he diagnosed it as can get painful if left untreated. It didn't go down, so I went to a radiology clinic, had an ultra-sound and was told that it was not a cyst but a tumor in the salivary gland; I was told not to worry about it too much, that the overwhelming odds were that the tumor was benign, but that I would need a biopsy to confirm it. I was [censored] myself at this point, and absolutely rushed to get a biopsy, but it still ended up taking about a month to get one; the health-care system is a joke: the radiology clinic told me I needed a referral from a GP so that I can go back to that same radiology clinic and get a biopsy, and so I went to the GP, got the referral, went back to the same radiology clinic and, when I was literally on the table about to have the biopsy performed, the doctor read through my file, saw that I hadn't seen a private specialist, and told me I would need to go back to the same GP, get them to give me a referral to a private specialist, who in turn would have to give me a referral for the biopsy. This was important, they explained, because it would eliminate the risk of performing a biopsy if I do not need one. I'm still kind of ashamed of myself for having fell for it; everybody could see I needed a biopsy, but theres obviously some tacit general agreement in place between these types of clinics and private cancer specialists to do this type of thing, because it's the specialists bread and butter. I ended up paying the specialist $140 for a five minute appointment in which he told me precisely what the GP and radiology clinicians told me; that I have a tumor and need a biopsy. If you're EVER in this situation (and I hope to god none of you ever are), and you're about to have a biopsy done and the doctor tells you you need a specialists referral, please, in the politest possible way, say "either perform the biopsy, or have me arrested and thrown out of here". Don't fall for their [censored]. Anyway, eventually I had the biopsy done, and it came back benign. However, by this point the tumor had grown huge, had begun to impinge on a nerve and I had some restricted facial movements. I was told that in the operation to remove it, they would have to take the facial nerve, meaning I would lose movement in the right half of my face. This was obviously a massive, massive blow, especially given the type of field I want to work in- I'm 23 years old and have been trying to figure out what to do with myself since I was 18, but have turned things around dramatically in the last year. About a year ago I switched to a media course majoring in radio, after basically flunking out of a very unfulfilling BA course. I'd put together two really good semesters, getting a credit average in one and a distinction average in the other, and was actually enjoying uni and becoming passionate about radio, but there was a chance my speech would be effected after the operation. I'd also started taking an interest in stand-up comedy, having entered a comp at the start of the year (the Raw Comedy competition for peoples who are in the know) and done well, and performing a few shows since then, I'd begun to seriously consider making a real commitment to it, maybe even making a career of it if I'm good enough. I do a character-based routine, and its obviously a bit hard to play a range of characters with half a face. So, going into the operation, I was feeling a mixture of huge relief (because I'm not going to die) and utter devastation. Days before the operation, I was told that they'd perform a nerve graft, taking nerves from my leg and putting them in my face, so there was a good chance I would regain most of my facial movement over the course of two years or so. This lifted my spirits a bit. Had the operation on the 22nd of last month. When they cut me open, they found out the tumor was actually either malignant, or a highly aggressive form of benign tumor. They conducted an extremely aggressive, 14 hour operation -the swelling hasn't even fully gone down, yet- and I was in hospital for 7 days. It took a while to get used to not being able to move the right side of my face, but either the graft worked better than expected or the damage wasn't as bad: I was told that I would be unable to close my right eye, but I have full movement, I was also told that my face would drop (similar to alot of stroke victims) but that hasn't happened. If I'm not being expressive, I basically just look normal. So that was a relief, but now I'm once again worried that I have a life-threatening illness, even though at this point they were pretty confident they got it all. I healed quicker than expected; was up and walking around on my third day in hospital (the doctors said they'd actually never seen anything like that) and could have probably been discharged on the 5th day, but they kept me in as a precaution. It's not uncommon for people to spend 10 days in hospital for that sort of operation, apparently. Anyway, a week after being discharged, I had a PET scan and they were absolutely shocked to find a whole bunch of little dots in both of my lungs. It's been an absolute nightmare since then; I went into hospital a week ago and had a lung biopsy (pretty full-on stuff; they perform a sort of keyhole surgery where they go in, take out a bit of your lung and stick it under a microscope) and it confirmed that the cancer had spread to my lungs. I was told that what I have is terminal and inoperable, I asked for some idea how long I had, and the doctor told me it was impossible to say, but on average, about a year or two. The last week or so has been absolutely indescribable. You know how, with victims of trauma (Vietnam vets, refugees etc) they say that going to sleep can be absolute hell, because you're letting go of all your ability to distinguish past from present, fantasy from reality, and you find yourself thrust into this sort of hyper-realistic nightmare where you have to relive the experience? I've kind of been the opposite; when I WAKE UP I'm thrust into a nightmare, reality itself IS the nightmare. I know that sounds kind of like a sob story, but I desperately needed to say that, and I couldn't say it to my own family, because it would [censored] torture them to hear it. I actually havn't even been coming on here much (I used to come on every day and stay up to date with all things Melbourne-related), the reason being that I found it completely depressing; the line of thinking was, "Melbourne will be a fantastic side in 5 year time, and I wont even be around to see it". Reading all about Watts, Jurrah, Scully etc just depressed me. Went to Peter McCallum yesterday and talked to the chemo doctors. It actually went pretty well. They stressed that the difference between "incurable" and "untreatable" is not just semantic; they can hit this thing with chemo and, if it reacts well, it is absolutely impossible to say how long it could stay down for; it could be any number of years. The only thing keeping me going in the past week was the hope that I'd hear something that would give me some hope -a story about someone who lived with this same type of cancer, a prospect of a cure, anything that gave me some hope that I might grow old. I kind of got that yesterday; at least I feel like there's a bit of a fight now, and I'm not just sitting around waiting for the inevitable. Again, theres no particular point to this thread and I wont be upset or embarrassed if nobody replies, I just really felt the need to get the story down in words.

Which, of course, would hurt much more than a punch to the head by Jack Watts. Sorry, just had to.