There are many getting cancer in the world, but few of them are as brave as you. I really admire your courage, beacuse when I face a fatal disease, such as cancer, I think I will lose my way in my life, or I will sink into a dark grave by myself. But after reading your blog, it shocks me a lot. It seems that nothing is impossible. I think you do win the war so far. I believe that God will help the ones who help themselves. Even if you die in the end, it will still be a big inspiration in the world.

Bless you.

Sent by Steve Lin | 9:12 AM ET | 07-19-2006

I think you are very brave that you face the cancer with a positive attitude. Cancer is a horrible disease and not many people can accept the truth when they get it. Most of them give up the hope and the chance for surviving. But you are completely different from them. You show the life's depth to everyone who has read your blog. There are many obstacles in our lives, and I will face them just as the way you confront with cancer.

Sent by Shelly Wu | 9:17 AM ET | 07-19-2006

This whole disease (and maybe our whole lives) can be seen as being about control - Do we have? Have we lost it? Did we ever have it? How can we regain it?

I have written before. I have stage III pancreatic cancer. I have had surgery, chemo and radiation. Now I have had my first scan. And it came back clean. As stupid as this sounds, it feels like my world is spinning out of my control again. I was all prepared to die, and now it seems like I just might live after all. I know, it is just one scan. It really doesn't mean much, if anything. But, I guess, I didn't expect it — and it has thrown me for a bit of a loop. My world is out of my control. It probably always has been, but I had the illusion. And even though I have lost the illusion of control before, each time it comes as a bit of a shock. How many times, how many different ways do I need to be shown that I really do not have control of my life?

Sent by Stephanie | 9:20 AM ET | 07-19-2006

Your experience has changed my views to life. I am a high school student in Taiwan. And recently, I have faced a lot of stress from my study. I always think how miserable I am. However, I regained my strength and determination after reading your blog. Now I believe that I could do something like you do, being so positive and willing to share my experience with friends. I believe everyone in the world will perish, but their experience and stories will be remembered. I hope I can constantly be supported by reading your blog. May God bless you.

Sent by En-Ching | 10:33 AM ET | 07-19-2006

"It may not work, but you might as well keep trying." The words resonate for me, as a fifty-two-year old with Hepatitis C Virus (HCV), currently undergoing treatment for either 48 or 72 weeks (the docs haven't decided yet), treatment that has a 50% possibility of reducing the disease to a level where the 25% of my liver that still works will be able to continue to function.

As I weighed the treatment options, I kept thinking that I have to fight this with all I've got. And in the case of HCV the options are only the treatment that I am receiving, or no treatment.

I am only one of millions in this country with this lethal disease that lurks in our liver for up to thirty years before it wreaks havoc, but I am not the only one who keeps trying because you might as well do something. As you so eloquently write, all of us with a life altering disease try to control something to make us feel better.

Thank you for voicing my thoughts. And keep on fighting.

Sent by Lesley Mellor | 11:01 AM ET | 07-20-2006

Leroy, I am amazed that almost every blog I read— and I have read every one that you have written— touches on something that I am experiencing at that time. There have been a couple that haven't, but most of them do. I have a co-worker that is going through a divorce after twenty years and is devastated over it. She's avoided me ever since she found out about my cancer returning, up until the other day. She finally came over and told me how sorry she is, etc. She, too, said "of course my problems cannot compare to yours, health is everything". Weird that you should mention that particular subject at this time. Anyway, I felt the same as you do, Leroy, I told her that everyone has their own crisis in life and everyone's is important to them. Of course, secretly I thought to myself, my crisis is life and death yours is not, but I didn't come across to her that way. I offered advice and compassionately listened to her. But after that it made me think. I don't know what is tougher— maybe what I told her was utlimately the truth after all. Divorce is a lonely place to be, very lonely, you no longer have that special friend, that support person, your spouse, that friend you could always rely on in the past... I have a sister who lost her husband to cancer after over forty-five years of marriage, she was totally devastated, lost, and most of the time, she still is, after four years. What made me contemplate all this was, I started a journal when I was diagnosed, and I was writing my entry in it this morning and wrote all the horrible stuff that happened to me yesterday, I started chemo yesterday and was given a 24/7 pump, I wont go into that nightmare here, but I did in my journal, seven pages of self-pity, and thought about my sisters grief over losing her husband. I would rather do this than have to deal with what she did, it started to make me feel better, then I read your blog of July 20 and I felt even better. Thank you Leroy, I knew I could count on you. I look forward to reading them everyday— don't ever stop and I mean that. Isn't it amazing how cancer can make us look at life, people, and situations so differently now at least it does for me, so analytically and compassionately, it feels as though I'm looking through a filter of some sort, its weird, maybe you can describe this better than me, I sure hope you can and it not that I'm losing my mind. Take care Leroy, I'm counting on you.

Sent by Ruth White | 11:07 AM ET | 07-20-2006

My wife and I so appreciate your writings. I am a dentist/artist and in my fourth year of chemo for lung cancer. I am doing well and during my first year put together a picture book of what it was like called "Thoughts on Chemo." I had hoped to get it distsributed by a drug company but they kept losing it so I put it online for anyone to use.

The URL is here.

I hope it will be used in the same way that your writings have...to find you're not alone and how valuable those who are around you are. Stay the course!

Marshall Turner

Sent by Marshall Turner | 12:46 PM ET | 07-20-2006

Hi Leroy,

I feel that I know you personally as I've been reading your NPR My Cancer e-mails everyday ever since you recently entered the Gate of Cancer again. I sure look forward to getting your daily reports. Many, many thanks.

Well, I'm a grandma, age 65. I used to sew and crochet many years ago but now, I must prefer to be on a computer. No, I just don't have time to play games, but I do research, write to our relatives and friends...things like that. That's how I came acros your articles about My Cancer.

I've never done a blog before in my life, but what else is new. I don't have time right now to go very far into my husband Ken's cancer world. Ken entered through that Cancer Gate back in 1990. He got AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia). I have no idea where that came from. As I've been his wife since we were 21, I entered that yucky scary Gate with him. Sure makes a person rather nervous when you enter a doctor's door that says the words "Hemotologist/Onocologist" on it. I'll tell you more on that stuff later. But I will tell you this.....Ken has been "cured" of that leukemia since his autologous bone marrow transplant back in 1991.

However (seems like there's always a "however"), at that time, the City of Hope in Duarte was checking donated blood for AIDS but not Hep C. Therefore, you guessed it. Ken entered another "world"....the World of Hepatitis C, and that's really super yucky stuff too. Ken has a genotype IB which is extremely difficult to get into remission. And he has moderate cirrhosis of the liver, and Ken never drank more than one beer with a pizza once in awhile. Genotypes of Hep C just happen to be like bone marrow. It really depends on what country your ancestry comes from. Ken is German, Dutch and Scottish. Well, his German part must be really stubborn as Ken has gone through 3 ROUNDS of interferon, and that Hep C is still there running around in his blood. His Hep C just totally refuses to go into remission. The last round consisted of giving himself an interferon shot everyday for a year. And Ken lost 25 pounds again plus some of his hair and had a whole lot of yucky days and weak days, etc. But that Hep C is still there. His liver specialist doesn't have any more tricks up his sleeve at the moment. His liver specialist comes from Egypt, and he goes over there one month each year to do research. Guess that Hep C is tremendously rampant over there. Yes, Ken could get a new liver, but that would only buy him time as that Hep C is still in his blood and would gradually infect that new liver too. So, getting a new liver is not a cure...it just buys some time. Anyhow, Kens bone marrow needs a rest for awhle. The main thing is to protect his liver as much as possible. A person only has one liver.

Interestingly enough, in my journeys with my husband, Ken, I've found that both at the City of Hope which is for cancer and in the Hep C World, that at least 50% of those "loved ones" of the patients just don't hang around to support the patients. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. Also, I discovered that the patients who didn't have an advocate/support person were most likely to die. I fully realize that we all die, however, those who were left alone, died sooner.

Well, I married my spouse "for better, or for worse." And as a journalist, I know that you've seen a lot of s—- happening. I could be nice and ladylike and say that junk happens. Well, that really doesn't describe the world called REALITY. So, I pray that you have an advocate/support person who will help look after you, take care of things and cheer you on.

Oh, I have some important advice for you if yore not already doing this. Ever since Ken was at the City of Hope, we've always asked and gotten a copy of the report of his blood counts. It was an everday thing when he spent his time at the City of Hope. That way we knew and still know what and why things are going on with him. And that really helps. Most of the people that I've run into don't do that. They just totally depend on their doctors. Well, really, a person just can't do that. When it comes right down to the nitty-gritty, a person has to fight for himself with some help from am advocate/support person. Therefore, it is really important to know exactly what your body is up to. Just some really helpful advice for you.

Now, I need to go do errands and be in that other world for awhile. I plan to talk with you later.

Bye for now,

Priscilla

Sent by Priscilla Blush | 12:49 PM ET | 07-20-2006

I love your blog — I just started chemo again — lost count of how many times I've been in the recliners. But I'm almost 52, been fighting for three years and 3 months. It gets so close to being gone —dead— but my ovarian cancer is so tough. Not tougher than me luckily — I am also the anti-chemo person — esp. with my wig — my real hair is dull and, well, dull. I am working fulltime on my off weeks and parttime on my chemo week. Good luck to you. Everyday is closer to a new drug or a cure.

Sent by Terri Horne | 12:57 PM ET | 07-20-2006

Leroy,

I have been working on the material our crews have gathered in one more dangerous place, the Israeli-Lebanon border. I know you would be there if circumstances were different. How has your take on world events such as this war changed, if at all? Personally and professionally.

Mike Proser

Sent by Mike Proser | 1:49 PM ET | 07-20-2006

One last comment, Leroy. With HIV meds, it's the same thing. You take what you must to live, to stay strong, to get strong, to get better, hopefully so, but it's so toxic to the body that you have a type of feeling sick that you have no words for. None at all. Nausea and diarrhea are the least of it.

The fatigue that sets in is like nothing one has ever experienced before, with these toxic drugs— be they chemo, or HIV meds. (In many ways, these two sets of drugs are similar in what patients go through.) The weariness that makes you wonder where youre going to find the strength for your next breath.

And yes, you must keep on, and keep pushing.

Yet, in the back of your mind, you know there will come a time when it's been "enough," when there is no more "push" left in you.

Added to my diabetes, hypertension, and HIV, now, this year, is COPD, and with that, oxygen dependency 24 hours-a-day, with a BiPap machine for sleep apnea, and nebulizer treatments every twelve hours.

Obviously, a RN cannot run around a hospital wearing oxygen, from room to room.

Nor do I have the energy, either.

Just four steps up my porch, with my arms loaded with groceries, despite wearing oxygen, and I'm gasping for breath.

Thus, I'm facing disability, with right now a 40% cut in my pay, which will go to 50% next month. And that's just what I get from the hospitals insurance pollicy, where I worked. I'm still waiting Social Security's decision.

Meanwhile, there are bills, some of which I could not pay. I would have lost phone and much else had it not been for credit cards, and that is a dangerous move.

I'm only 48, but I know, quite clearly, I won't live to be 65, so 'Im going to have to get my 401K soon, and at least then I can pay credit cards off, my pharmacy, hospital bills, and even my car loan. If it's as much as I think it is, I'll just have my mortgage left, and maybe I'll be able to get by.

Whats worst of all of it is the public. They see those of us with "differences" about us, ones theyre not accustomed to seeing, like my portable oxygen tank, and my inability to sustain a walk through a super Walmart, so I use one of their carts. I either get stared at, or I get treated like as if I'm invisible.

It almost makes you want to not ever go out of the house.

If people only knew.

Sent by Robert | 8:22 PM ET | 07-24-2006