True Life Story: Chemotherapy
In the video above, Jim shares his personal story of discovering he had testicular cancer and the journey through chemotherapy treatment that followed
In this video, Jim shares his personal story of discovering he had testicular cancer and the journey through chemotherapy treatment that followed.
Duration: 5:01. Last Updated On: Nov. 8, 2017, 6:14 p.m.
- 00:00 [MUSIC]
- 00:05 Well, this is when I'm almost finished chemo.
- 00:09 It's myself, I'm the bald one, my wife and
- 00:12 my almost, well I think that was at my son's first birthday.
- 00:15 I am married ten years, have three children.
- 00:19 Ages, all boys, ages seven, four and two.
- 00:22 I was just a typical focus driven person thinking all I need to do is work, and
- 00:27 I was working hard by day, studying for my certified financial planning by night.
- 00:33 But I started having a sharp, occasional pain in my stomach.
- 00:38 At one point, went to the doctor.
- 00:40 He said I think you've got the telltale signs of an appendicitis.
- 00:44 As they were prepping me for surgery, they did blood work, and
- 00:47 they said I don't think you're having an appendicitis, we think it's just a virus.
- 00:50 So, went home that weekend, kinda replayed the surgeon's report to me.
- 00:56 My wife at the time was a registered nurse, so she kinda knew a little bit
- 01:00 more about this than did, so we went back to the doctor.
- 01:03 Soon thereafter and he asked me to go see a urologist.
- 01:09 And the doctor looked at me and said I had testicular cancer which
- 01:13 had metastasized into about a six by five sized tumor inside my stomach.
- 01:19 About a, it's was about the size of a small grapefruit.
- 01:22 He asked me to show up for surgery the next morning at 5 a.m.
- 01:26 In the beginning I was asking my doctor a lot about what are my chances?
- 01:31 Do I have an 80% chance of living?
- 01:31 50% chance of living or what?
- 01:34 And of course they just kind of hedged.
- 01:35 They can't really say because they don't know.
- 01:37 They gotta see how well you go through the chemo.
- 01:38 What I bad did fear what that I wouldn't be around to
- 01:42 experience a lifetime of marriage with my wife and help raise my child.
- 01:47 And before I went to bed one person had called me.
- 01:50 A girl who, whose mother had
- 01:54 gone through years of breast cancer before she finally lost the battle and died.
- 01:59 And the girl told me,
- 02:01 said before you go to surgery next morning I wanna tell you something.
- 02:04 She said God doesn't just pick anybody to fight some battles with him.
- 02:08 So, and in a way, now, you're in a special club.
- 02:11 From that point, I felt no longer a victim, but I kinda felt almost empowered
- 02:16 as if, okay, this is something I got to do, so let's go do it the best I can.
- 02:20 So I've slept very well that night.
- 02:21 It was probably the most peaceful time in my life,
- 02:24 going through what I had to go through, because it was just, at that point,
- 02:29 everything just became extremely black and white for me, and what I needed to do.
- 02:34 [BLANK_AUDIO]
- 02:37 So I went through five days of chemotherapy, about eight hours a day.
- 02:42 And then I was off for two weeks.
- 02:44 And then I went five more days, and
- 02:45 I did four cycles of that over the course of, from April till mid June.
- 02:51 You sit in La-Z-Boy chairs, kind of in a big room lined up across the board,
- 02:56 all looking out a window, and you just kinda sat in a chair all day long for
- 02:59 eight hours, and just let the medicine drip into you.
- 03:03 Which gave you a lot of time to sit and think.
- 03:06 Of course you slept.
- 03:08 I did lose my hair.
- 03:10 I became increasingly nauseated as the week went by.
- 03:15 So along about Thursday night, I get sick, and maybe Friday night I kinda peaked.
- 03:20 But by Saturday morning I was coming out of it.
- 03:23 As I hit my third and fourth cycle of chemotherapy from having had all that in
- 03:28 your body for so long, the, the nausea became a little bit more intense.
- 03:33 But fortunately with the pharmaceuticals, and drugs, and
- 03:36 everything such as they are today.
- 03:38 There's an awful lot of anti-nausea medicine and, or
- 03:41 techniques that they can use to try to keep a lot of that down.
- 03:45 [BLANK_AUDIO]
- 03:49 The overwhelming part to me was when I finished with my last round of chemo.
- 03:55 I had taken my CT scan, and it was well.
- 03:58 Looks like everything is gonna be okay, but for now.
- 04:01 But we'll see you in six months.
- 04:04 So, to me, that was just when everything just kinda hit me like a ton of bricks.
- 04:08 Because you go through lots of emotions.
- 04:11 Everything from every little twinge you feel.
- 04:14 Every little pain that you may feel in your body every now and
- 04:17 then, you begin to wonder if that's something else coming back.
- 04:20 When everybody tried to go back to their quote,
- 04:22 unquote normal lives, I think that's when everybody in my family,
- 04:25 my wife included, just kinda collapsed and took a deep breath because of
- 04:28 the emotional roller coaster that they had been on.
- 04:31 Chemotherapy was much harder on them.
- 04:34 From an emotional standpoint than it was on me.
- 04:37 Having had cancer was perhaps the best thing that ever happened to me.
- 04:41 Not because I was a bad person before, and I'm a better person now for it.
- 04:45 But just simply because it made minor things in my life seem to
- 04:48 be more important.
- 04:50 A sunny day, spring in Atlanta, various things like that you just kinda stop and
- 04:55 take in.
- 04:56 Whereas, up and
- 04:57 to that point, I probably would of just blitzed by him and try to keep on going.
