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I am Mary. This is my memory of “the day the earth stood still.” My husband, John, will give you his version of “the diagnosis” in later posts. I have a sort of gestalt view, where days get mixed up, but John’s view will be more detailed.

John & Mary -- John's Story

John & Mary -- John's Story

John has never smoked a cigarette in his life. I say that not because it makes him more “worthy” of good health or that I think smokers “deserve what they get” (because they don’t, by the way). I tell you this because the diagnosis of lung cancer came entirely out of the blue, the mother of all sandbags.

It started as a cough in the spring of 2005. Ironically, I was coughing, too. We thought nothing of it because, if both of us are coughing, it must be a cold, right? At worst, it must be some sort of mold or dust in the house, right? Wrong. My coughing was the result of a weird but well-known side effect of blood pressure medication and once it was adjusted, my coughing disappeared.

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DOCTOR TALK

by Caregiver on January 25, 2009 · 0 comments

in Doctor Talk

INTERACTION WITH THE PERSON MOST KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT YOUR CANCER AND YOUR TREATMENT

When I think of the communication between doctors and patients at the time that cancer is diagnosed, I remember the great scene between Debra Winger and her oncologist in “Terms of Endearment.” Debra is lying in her hospital bed and the doctor says, “Dear, you have a malignancy.” After he says a few more lines of dialogue, she stops him and asks, “Could you say that again?”

No one is ever prepared to hear the words, “You have cancer.” When my husband was diagnosed, the world seemed to stop turning. The doctor’s mouth continued to move but the sound didn’t seemed to be turned on. Looking back, there are so many questions we just did not know to ask. Invariably, they were the ones we wished we had and the ones we were asked over and over.

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