My Reaction to Learning About an Extrapleural Pneumonectomy

I really didn't worry that much about the surgery itself. I was more concerned about getting rid of the cancer. And I'm not sure that I was really prepared for how difficult that surgery was. Even though the doctor told me that it was as big as any surgery that a person could possibly have. But I was willing to accept that. Let's just get it done was my attitude. I think that is the right attitude to have about it, but the surgery, it was difficult. There's no doubt about it. It was difficult to recover from, but it was not insurmountable. Doctor Sugarbaker told me after a period of time, he said, I'm so glad that you're doing as well as you are. He said, so many of my patients just lay there and die. And he said, there's no medical reason for it. They just die. And I think I understand perhaps why. It would have been so easy to just give up, to just lay there and stop breathing. In my case, I just kept going. I did not quit. And, I think that one needs to keep in mind that if I can get through this next minute, this next hour, this next day, it will get better. And it did. Each day, I would get a little better and a little better. And, over a period of days, weeks, months, I continued to get better to the point where I would look back and, you know, after a month, two, three, and say, wow. I can't believe. Just seems like just the other day, I was only able to walk ten steps, thirty steps, a hundred steps. Now, you know, I walk in a quarter of a mile, half a mile. I can walk a mile. But, there was a point when I could not even imagine that. Now, I can't walk as far as, you know, someone who's in reasonably good shape and, you know, all of this. But I can walk around as much as a lot of people, and I have to stop, you know, and, catch my breath and, you know, more often than the average person probably. But I can still get around and do most of the things most other people my age do. And so it's, it's amazing now to look back and think how far I've come. And I think that people need to to know that it's possible. As bad as you may feel, as little as you were able to do, it will get better. If you just keep plodding along, keep going as far as you can go each day, keep pushing yourself, but don't push too far. And that's something I was told over and over and over again. Nobody knows, except you, how far you can go. And so, you know, push yourself as far as you can go, not too far. What happens when you go too far? Takes you a couple of days to kinda get back to where you were. You can easily wear yourself out so you're not, you know, able to do much for two or three days. And you can easily over exert yourself lifting things like this. Don't do too much of that. You'll regret it. You'll learn real quick not to do it. Do what you can do and and try to do a little more than you did yesterday. If something happens and you fall back, you know, for some reason, you get sick again, have another hospital stay, whatever happens, it's gonna set you back. And that's really frustrating. That's hard to deal with sometimes, you know, because you feel like you work so hard to get up to a point, and then you get set back. But just you don't think about that. You just start where you're at, and start working your way back up again. And I'm a firm believer, really, that most people live about as long as they want to. And, as long as you don't give up, you're likely to keep moving ahead. It's, you know, when you decide it's not worth it anymore, that's probably when, you know, when you're gonna stop getting better. And I don't mean to put a lot of pressure on somebody or give the idea that, oh, somebody just died because they quit or whatever. It's not really true, but you're not going to continue to get better unless you want to continue to get better. And so a lot of it does come down to the attitude. Also, there are some people that are at a point in life when, you know, they decide that because of age, condition, whatever, that it's not worth it, and that's okay too. Everybody has to make a decision about what it's worth to them to do that treatment, to go through this surgery, to you know. And for everybody, that's going to be different. And I think what's coming to mind, the reason I say this is, their loved ones need to respect that too. Because, you know, there are times I can completely understand that there are circumstances where a person may say, you know what? I'm not going to do that. It's not worth it to me. And that can be a perfectly rational decision.