I know just what you mean, and to continue even further... People somehow do the same and to a greater extent when you are grieving. I lost my husband 3/27/06- It is difficult for others I guesss to find the "right words" but life does go on for them and for me - even though it stinks.

Sent by Alison Abrams | 10:55 AM ET | 07-20-2006

Hi Leroy, a friend of mine sent me info about this site and your blog... I was diagnosed with colon cancer in May, had surgery and ended up with a colostomy. I'm a forty-two year old, freshly-divorced woman with three teenage daughters. And life is good... I just started chemo (yuck!!!) and feel like 'Im caught in a low budget sci-fi movie. I wouldn't change it though, too much good has come from this experience. I have been so blessed, all of my life, and taken so much for granted. You might say I'm trading in my rose-colored glasses for something better... cancer-colored glasses. These glasses have helped me to see how loved I am, as well as reminding me that I have a huge capacity to love and not to hoard or squander that gift. This sounds a bit twisted, and writing is not my best skill, but I wanted to let you know that I appreciate your open approach to your cancer experience. I will continue reading!! Thanks.

Sent by Ticker Bostic | 10:56 AM ET | 07-20-2006

I just started reading your post through a link from one of my fave blogs.

As someone who has a very dear family friend who has been fighting lymphoma for the past four years, I have stumbled through the whole your problems vs. my problems— issue with his daughter who is around my age and one of my dearest friends.

It took me a while to get that what she really needed was not for me to treat her like a patient I was counselling because her Dad's sick, but just as my friend.

I wish I had known earlier just how important it is to cancer sufferers and their families to keep their sense of normality and have everyone view them as the same.

Thanks for reminding me of that, and thank you for sharing your story.

Sent by Tash | 11:00 AM ET | 07-20-2006

I had lost track of you until someone told me the cancer had returned, and you were writing a daily blog about it. Hang in there, and thanks again for all the help you gave me when you were at Nightline. I always liked reading your daily previews for Nightline — your honesty and humor stood out. May both help you through this latest illness.

I'll read the blog daily now.

Sent by Tom Krause | 11:54 AM ET | 07-20-2006

Your column today made me think of some lines from Dan Barry's wonderful memoir, "Pull Me Up." He's just been diagnosed with cancer and is returning home, inching towards the Lincoln Tunnel: "Shouldn't they have a special lane for people like me? I asked, my voice breaking. Shouldnt they have a special lane for people who have just been diagnosed with cancer?" On the one hand, we feel, or others feel about us, that cancer has set us apart. On the other hand, life goes on, traffic jams and all, with or without us, relentlessly.

I'd also like to recommend Caitlin Flanagan's "To Hell With All That..." Both books (also by journalists, coincidentally) conclude, completely unexpectedly to me at least, with accounts of the author's cancer diagnoses. We are so not alone.

Sent by Mary Ann Carcich | 12:51 PM ET | 07-20-2006

Leroy:

Your comments and your honest perspective are a breath of fresh air every day. I enjoyed meeting you at the Rescue Squad last week and hope you'll ride with us again soon.

Sent by Harriet Winner | 1:11 PM ET | 07-20-2006

I'm so glad I found this site. I was listening to the radio on my way home from work and heard two cancer survivors speaking who mentioned this site. It's been seven years since my first bout with cancer and reading the columns by Leroy Sievers brought tears to my eyes once again, making me relive the emotions I have gone through three times now at this point, twice with cancers of my own and once when my husband had gastric CA. We are still so very happy and excited to be here, thankful to God for our survivorship and grateful for each and every day. Life is pretty damn sweet, no matter what you've had to face and go through. Chemo, radiation, "the look" from medical personnel as well as friends and co-workers, baldness, diarrhea, the awful side effects — all start to fade away until something jogs the memory if its been a while since your cancer. We will never be the same ever again - thanks God! No more taking things for granted, being complacent, apathetic - never again. Each and every day I try to retrieve some memory of the events, so I will never again take life for granted!

Thanks for sharing.

Sent by Diana Nelson | 1:13 PM ET | 07-20-2006

Leroy - you are so right. Life does go on and we want to make sure it goes on as close to "normal" as before, which included having to deal with the same problems that you had before, as well as the problems of your friends and family. We might not be quite up to handling some of the physical demands as we were before, but we can do the best at handling what we can. I'm still new to this - diagnosed a month ago with Stage IV colorectal with honking big liver metastases. It's scary, but I appear to be responding well to the first two chemo treatments I've received, and am extremely thankful for it. I'm also extremely thankful for all the support that has been coming in from friends that I haven't heard from in years. So, I want to start paying it back already. I now have a new friend in a patient who has just been diagnosed with colon cancer and is frightened. I will do anything I can to help him get through this, since I'm going through it now and am a few steps ahead of where he is. You're right - life goes on and so do the problems in it. When we can step forward to help others, particularly those who are dealing with cancer, it makes us better people too.

Your work is an inspiration to me. I'm trying to write my own blog, but you do such an incredible job, it's hard not to just sit back and admire your stuff.

Sent by Bob Maimone | 10:37 AM ET | 07-21-2006

A little more than a year ago (August 15, 2005 to be exact) a surgeon told me that I would probably not survive the surgery he was to do the next day to excise my cancer, several of my organs and a part of my abdomen. I surprised everyone and lived through it! I have completed chemotherapy and radiation, continuing to work and attend a university, often driving 600 miles round trip to school and sitting through 3-day classes within days of treatment. Next month I am graduating and am now looking for a new career.

No one really knows what my chances are . . . they couldn't stage me because I was so sick when I finally had surgery. However, I have decided to live everyday for what it offers and it has been wonderful so far!

Sent by Jeanne Ellen Podolske | 2:34 PM ET | 07-21-2006

Leroy, I just found your blog and have to comment. In 1980, I was diagnosed with Hodgkins' Lymphoma...ordinarily relatively easy to treat. I kept relapsing for 8 years before a bone marrow transplant...18 years later, here I am. In the process I have lived a life, albeit with a bit more insight and appreciation than most. The most important realization for me was all the things you CAN accomplish in spite of it all. Carry On!

Sent by Dave Litt | 2:38 PM ET | 07-21-2006

Dear Leroy,

My diagnosis came on Sat. 1-14-06 after coughing up blood. I was told in the emergency room that I had lung cancer. My body ran hot blood throughout, and I asked the Doctor who he thought he was talking about, not me!

The diagnosis was confirmed with a bronchoscope and a biopsy the next day, Sunday, and by Monday when another pulmonary doctor confirmed all the tests, I let go and let God take over. I have not suffered any pain, I don't remember the sickness of 35 radiation and 15 chemo treatments. I, like you, have good days and bad days. Once I gave my cancer over to God, I never took it back. I don't think about the cancer, I just believe I will be healed. If not, I'm a winner either way because of my faith in Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I also have had an extremely supportive family and friends and caregivers at the Cancer Center. I chose to go to a small out-patient center with a world-renowned Doctor and have met with a whole new fantastic support system. I have truly been blessed with prayers from all of my patients (dental front office) and cards galore.

I want this same peace and contentment for you, Leroy. There is everlasting life for each of us with God. That new life is described as being more wonderful that this life could ever imagine. We will meet with those who have gone before us and live in harmony with God and all his creations. Just do as I did: LET GO AND LET GOD TAKE OVER IN THIS SITUATION!

God Bless You in Your Journey,

Jan Goodpaster

Sent by Jan Goodpaster | 2:39 PM ET | 07-21-2006

I have stage 4 colorectal cancer w/ liver metastasis. This is a strange journey, one I am not entirely sure I can share with my loved ones. I am scared it might rob them of the hope I see in their eyes. The hope which I sometimes don't believe in. I would like to follow your path for awhile...thank you for inviting me to share.

Sent by Cherie Brown | 3:39 PM ET | 07-21-2006

Hi Leroy,

I've been reading your blog over the last week or so, and I am grateful that you have the ability, the gift, to put down in words what many of us cannot.

You, of course, know what I do with my days, so you can imagine what it was like, early on, in training. I remember my brother-in-law struggling with his days he would live inside the lives of his patients to such an extent that he would take on their symptoms for a few days.

We all grew with experience, but working in and around hospitals keeps illness and mortality close in your mind. I recall Mary Oettinger's mom saying "life is terminal" many times under trying circumstances. I thought it was a rather pessemistic aphorism at the time, but I was young and had seen little of the world.

My girlfriend from medical school days never wanted to enter into philosophical talk about "what happens after we die", saying that "I can't imagine a world without me in it!" I couldn't figure out how serious she was, but I knew the world had existed for a long time before I was born and would likely go on long after my time is through. This point escapes many teenagers.

It is great that you took a ride with the paramedics. It's so easy to forget about all of the people in all of the hospitals and clinics in the world, all trying to do one thing: recover and get on with their lives. Until we are ill ourselves, or get involved in the care of the ill, that world can go on entirely unnoticed like an alternate universe.

I tried to watch "Grey's Anatomy", but it's just too silly. As you know, that's not how medicine works, though I wish it did at times, especially the hot lady docs.

I think of you often, and I pray for your remission, but I also understand that you are ill and that it's serious.

I'll keep you close in my thoughts. And by the way, we do attach extensions to the operating table...no hanging feet!

Steve

Sent by Steve Denney | 3:41 PM ET | 07-21-2006

The day that I was diagnosed with breast cancer I came home and began a journal. Although I am not a writer, I was absolutely compelled to write every day for over a year, not just about having cancer but my relationships, my love for swimming and sailing and even the weather. Now I have a brutally honest chronicle that I am being urged to publish. (A small publisher has accepted my fist book but no agreement has been inked.) I am feeling somewhat reluctant.

Do you have any regrets about putting your personal experience into the public domain? If so, what would you do differently? Because of its honesty, what I have written is not an uplifting inspirational read but was described by the publisher as "hair raising." I am concerned that my blunt expressions of my feelings of victimization and (unfounded) hopelessness could do more harm than good. I certainly would not want that to happen.

I would appreciate your comments.

Debbie

Diagnosed May 4, 2004 and still around

Sent by Debbie Huntsman | 3:17 PM ET | 07-24-2006

Life is a journey. Yours is a trek. As a chemo volunteer, I appreciate your slant. You're a good man, Charlie Brown, to share yourself. "If I can't have it the way I like it, then I'll accept it the way I have it."

"And if perchance thine eye should weep mine eye would catch the tear"

A friend,

Sue

Sent by Sue | 11:25 AM ET | 07-26-2006

Hi Leroy,

I was diagnosed with breast cancer three days before Christmas 2005. The tumor was so large the surgeon and oncologist both agreed that I needed to have chemo before surgery in order to stop its rapid growth. I have completed all my chemo treatments and now await surgery to remove my breast in five days.

I found that a positive attitude was absolutely essential in order to get through treatments. I still do not watch anything on TV or read any books that are sad or depressing. Give me a laugh, a comedy or a great book anyday.

I worked throughout chemo, only taking off the actual days of treatment, not because it was important for my job, but because it was important for me to have other things to focus on other than my tired body.

Keep your positive focus! Thank God for all your friends and the support they offer. This illness just shows us how precious life really is.

Sent by Donna Sauer | 11:28 AM ET | 07-26-2006