Episode 050: Finding Hope When You are Dealing with Cancer
Feb 01, 2019•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
I know that cancer changes the way you look at things, the way you think about the future, even the way you see yourself, but even when things are tough, there is still the light at the end of the tunnel, you can make it through and have the life that you want despite cancer! And that’s what I’m talking about today with my new friend, Jim Adams. Here are some things that we cover today:
Reflecting on the cancer experience 28 years later
Dealing with the ups and downs of cancer treatment
The transformational role of the support group
Getting the most out of life after cancer
and much, much more!
Links
Finding Hope Podcast
Finding Hope podcast on iTunes
Episode 047: Cancer Caregiver's Journey
Full Transcript
Joe: Jim, I’m super excited to be talking to you because I found your podcast and it just really speaks to me because is where I’m from. Jim, I really want to first of all, start with life, with your life before cancer. Tell me, was that like?
Jim: Let’s see, what was it like? Well, when I was diagnosed, it was back in 1991, and I had a real rare form of testicular cancer. It was called non-seminoma germ cell testicular cancer. It wasn’t in my testes, it was actually a tumour growing from the back of my abdomen. The way it’s been explained to me is, when you’re in the first trimester, this was called the germ cell that travels down your spine and one deposits in each teste. Well, for some reason, one didn’t make it all the way down and it didn’t deposit in one of my testes and it, for some reason, at 25, it just started growing from the back of my abdomen.
Unlike a lot of other people who are not feeling sick, I ended up losing weight, I got misdiagnosed a number of times. I had one doctor tell me that he thought I had chlamydia and I needed to share it with my girlfriend at the time, which was crazy because I didn’t have chlamydia. At one point, I could actually feel the tumour in my abdomen. I could actually push into my stomach and I could feel there’s something in there, something’s not right. Went into the emergency room and they started doing testing and checked me in. They did test after test after test, biopsies, they did colonoscopy, they did down your throat. I forget what that’s called. They couldn’t figure out what it was, so they ended up doing exploratory surgery. Then the way it’s described is this tumour has what’s almost like a yoke sack on it.
Once they opened me up, they were able to figure out that it was germ cell. The funny thing is, the doctor came walking and he said, “We could have done a pregnancy test” because my kind of cancer, it will be positive on a pregnancy test. He said, “If we had just given you a pregnancy test, we wouldn’t have had to have exploratory surgery.” Yes, so they stapled me up and started me on chemotherapy right away. At the time, I had complete intestinal blockage, too, so nothing was coming out.
They started me on chemotherapy, and I had five rounds of chemo. They always told me it would be chemotherapy and at the end there would be another surgery. I had five rounds of chemotherapy and then at the end, I had another surgery, which even to this day, I on occasion go see that doctor and he’s only done one or two, like what he did with me. The surgery started at 6:30 in the morning and didn’t finish until 7:00 o’clock at night. They said the doctor looked worse than I did.
Joe: Wow. That’s rough, Jim. That’s crazy.
Jim: Yes, it was a pretty rough beginning, in the sense of with chemotherapy, it makes you feel like crap. Having had an abdominal surgery and throwing up was no easy task. It was a painful task. At that point, we had the surgery, the surgery there were eight or nine doctors in there when I had it because the tumour, it was bi-lobal, so there were two tumours the size of melons. They were wrapped around my aorta sitting on ...
