WARNING: NEGATIVE POST
After an hour waiting, I spent another 20 minutes listening to a neurosurgeon tell me that the tumor that's doubled in size over the past year could not possibly be causing my
Back pain
Neck pain
Leg pain
Headaches
Dizziness
Nausea
Vomiting
Wasting
Difficult swallowing
Vision problems
Loss of dexterity
...and every other symptom that every other doctor has attributed to the tumor.
He ignored all of my concerns and when I tried to explain how defeated I feel, he indirectly threatened me with involuntary committal.
Not wanting to fight cancer is not the same as suicidality.
I explained that I didn't want another fifty years of constant agonizing pain and all he had to say was that the tumor is likely an incidental finding. Even if the tumor is not the cause of the pain, the pain still plagues my life.
Have I contemplated suicide, absolutely! Would I go through with it and put my family through that, HELL NO! We have the right to abstain from treatment and wanting to die without a fight and that does not make us suicidal. Radiation and chemotherapy are pain inducing poisons.
Since chemotherapy kills more people than it saves, what's so crazy about wanting to die gracefully?
If they aren't going to treat the pain, why should I fight the cancer? I'll take my handful of semi-decent years, thank you. I have no interest in years of fighting a cancer that will eventually kill me. Even if they eliminate the cancer, the treatments will cause memory and other neurological deficits, unrelenting pain, CIN (chemotherapy induced neuropathic) and only God knows what else.
I'll stick with my nontoxic alternative treatments that allow mt daughter to have a father, not an unrecognizable chemotherapeutic husk.
How can they expect me to fight when my pain is so severely undertreated?
Steve, age 23
DIPG (inoperable brainstem glioma (cancer))
Intractable Pain
