Hello everyone,

Like maybe most people here I guess I have stumbled across this forum by luck, as I was doing my own research on the web about Adenocarcinoma, I saw the link to someone else’s cancer research forum post who is in a similar position to me and although I know it is a sad time for all of us in a way it gave me a bit more relief to know there are others out there who are in the same boat. 

My partner is a 52 year old male who I would say generally lived a healthy lifestyle. no smoking, minimal sugar, organic foods, usually go to the gym 3 times a week, no work stress as he has not been working since 2007. Sadly he has been diagnosed with stage 4 Adenocarcinoma at the beginning of February 2018 which the doctors say has started in the lung and spread to a small area on his spine and a very small area on his liver - so small that they cannot fully confirm that it is the cancer because they cannot do a biopsy due to the size.

the whole journey for us began I would say August 2017 where he started feeling pain on the upper back and out toward the right shoulder, this went on for nearly two months which brings us to the end of September 2017. Although the doctors have not linked that pain he was having to be cancer it feels like to me that this is where the whole journey began as he was unable to do a lot of things because of the pain.

so the back pain eased of after taking two months of pain killers and at the beginning of October 2017 he started to develop a cough. After going to see the GP and October being a month asscociated with winter flu he was told to just sit back and see it through for a few weeks which he did. End of October now and the cough is still there and maybe even getting worse, so he went to the GP again and suggested that this does not feel right having a cough for 4 weeks. GP again said coughs can last for 6-8 weeks just depends and was sent away again. By this stage in November the cough became so bad it started to take control of his daily life and prevented him from doing things, at that point he did say to several times that he has a feeling it is more than just a cough. He then went to the GP again mid November and this time was a bit more reluctant to believe what the GP was going to say, anyway he managed to get a X-ray. When the X-ray result came it was end of November and the cough seemed even worse, even then the GP looked at the X-ray and said oh it looks fine there is nothing to worry about, but somehow he managed to get himself referred to the chest clinic, only downer is that the chest clinic appointment was for 16th January 2018 which was  6 weeks away! From the end of November the cough gradually kept getting worse, he maybe visited the GP three times again throughout December as the cough had now become painful, even after all these visit the GP still was not able to work out that this was not a normal cough and said that my partner will have to wait until the chest clinic in January. So Christmas passed and new year came around, we had booked a holiday to Thailand for the end of January 2018 before any of this began last summer and even though he was feeling very bad from the cough we still hoped we would be able to go away as the flight was 19th January and his chest clinic appointment 16th January.

Sorry guys if I’m blabbing on but I feel if I say the full story it will help others understand the full scenario that led to the diagnosis which I still feel could have been stopped from spreading if my partner was able to see the chest specialist earlier.

The 16th January 2018 came around and my partner went to see the chest specialist at the local hospital. They did another X-ray on his chest and then compared it to the previous X-ray the GP had done in October 2017. The most current X-ray showed his whole lung was white and this raises the alarms for the chest doctor, he then looked at the X-ray the GP had taken and told us that it did not show anything. The chest specialist told my partner that even on that X-ray there is a sign of something which is not right and that the GP should have noticed this! This was very infuriating for my partner as you may imagine because of the amount of times he went to the GP to raise concern that what was happening to him was not normal. I understand that many people may try it on with their GP’s so get that they cannot just listen to what the patient may think they have, but I genuinely feel that the amount of times my partner went to the GP about the same thing should have raised some sort of alarm, as prior to the back pain he hardly went to the GP. This is where I personally feel so let down and feel for my partner as I truly believe that the cancer has only spread to other parts from November 2017 as the X-Ray in October was no way as bad as the one the took in January at the Chest clinic.

Now the chest doctor was very concerned and thought that it may be TB, so they decided to take him into the hospital to start treatment for TB (tuberculosis). He did maybe a week of the medication and was put in a isolated room so that the TB could not pass onto anyone else. During his time at the hospital they did many scans/tests and it was one of the scans which shows some sort of nodules of a small part of the spine and one nodule on the liver. They wanted to know what those were, and my partner was now on his second week of the TB medication however the cough was not getting better at all and usually with TB you would feel some relief from the cough after 2 weeks of the medication. The doctors then came to a conclusion that the nodules on the spine where some sort of bacterial infection similar to acne and started him on antibiotics to treat that. However still the cough was not getting better and the fluid (which was the white parts on the X-ray) was not reducing even though he was taking the TB medication. I guess this then prompted them to do more test and sadly

that is where they came to the conclusion and found that it was cancer cells not a bacterial infection and the cough was probably not anything to do with TB. At this point the stopped the TB medication but said it could still be pneumonia and kept him on the antibiotics course for 6 weeks Just incase.

So now he was let out the hospital early February with a appointment booked with the cancer ward in two weeks. I guess these two weeks gap between the appointment was a confusing and difficult time as with the little information the doctors had already told us about the cancer type and where it has spread to, we began looking to google for answers - which I found can be a scary place to look as they are mostly generic answers and I knew that each cancer case was individual to the person it was affecting. So the 2 week wait felt a bit like a grey area if that makes sense.

So finally the appointment with the cancer ward came and that was it, he was told he has stage 4 Adenocarcinoma and as it has spread this type of cancer is not curable just controllable with chemo and medication. This day was very difficult for all of us and I just felt like our whole world has crumbled in. We were a very active couple a year ago, travelling a few times a year, spend weekends doing things in London even weekday evenings at times, we had to cancel the Thailand holiday and we also had another holiday to Spain in May 2018 which we cancelled as we can not say if the chemo will be finished by then.

So bringing us up to today, my partner has had his first chemo session Friday 9th March and has been told that they aim to have 3 months of chemo every 3 weeks and possibly more if needed. This is part of the reason I have stumbled into this forum as I was researching on the side effects of the chemo as unfortunately my partner is really struggling with it and is in a lot of pain so much that he mentioned that he is not sure he wants to go through with it if he has to go through this pain every time he has the chemo. But the chemo is the only thing he has which can help control or reduce the cancer and without that I’m not sure how long he will have. When he said today about not having more chemo it really made me scared because I want him to be able to fight is as long as possible and I know he can because he has always had a strong mind and he has supportive people around him it’s just the unbearable pain he is going through because of the chemo. It makes me feel so useless that there is not a lot I can do to stop the pain and I can see that it is really taking its toll on him.

I guess I don’t have a specific reason for posting this very long hello message but after writing it I do feel like I have let some steam out which was being held within me. Going through other posts I can see there are a very friendly and knowledgable bunch on people signed up to cancer research forum. Reading a few other post about others similar experiences really helped me today about some of the fears I had from reading on google about life expectancy for stage 4 lung cancer patients as it showed me that there are lot of people who do make it past what the doctors originally tell them and that each patient is individual depending on many other aspects such as age, lifestyle choices, stress etc. After reading those forum posts about others experience and situations that I should write ours (my partner and mine) as it may help someone else who is in a similar situation and trying to find reasonable answers. 

I hope I have not over done it with the length of this post which makes others not wanting to read it but if you do read it thank you and if you ever need a chat please let me know.  And again so sorry if I bored you with all the minor details. 

One day cancer shall be no more!!