Even though stage 3 scares Shelley but she also feels that there is too much emphasis on numbers. Shelley does the best she can so that she won't have any regrets.
Transcript
You know I got copies of all the reports and they were reviewed. My GP (General Practitioner) reviewed them, my oncologist reviewed them, I asked questions and I still am uncertain with the staging, the stage 3 that came with the cancer. Because, all the anecdotal notes and all of the other tests are early stage, small carcinoma, very small and when I look at what is advertised as Stage 0, Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, Stage 4 in terms of size, spreading and lymph nodes, etc., that puts me at a Stage 1. So I’m confused as to why I’m a Stage 3. And I ask that, from time to time, and I get an explanation but I still don’t understand it. So maybe someday I will I don’t know, but I’ll keep asking, because maybe there’s something that I’m just not hearing, which could be.
Well initially, Stage 3 scared me because that’s one more step to Stage 4, which is metastatic, which is closer to death and I’m not ready to die. I have to say that right now, I’m not ready. I’m not going down without a really good fight. I plan on being a grandma, hopefully not for a few more years yet and see my kids get married so I can be a grandma and be involved in all of that stuff. Stage 3 scares me, it truly does scare me and I don’t know why. It’s a number. It’s like a dress size. Yeah I’d like to be a 4, well I’m not going to be a 4 but I like the dress so if I could pick what stage, yeah I’d love to be a Stage 1, and yet there’s no guarantee at any of these stages.
There’s no guarantees, that just because you had Stage 1 you won’t have a reoccurrence. I get that part and that is something my oncologist has said. Just because you’re Stage 3 doesn’t mean you’ll have a reoccurrence. It’s due to blah, blah, blah, blah. Nice. Okay. Thank you. I’m being totally honest here and you know, you laugh at it because, yeah you know the number. And is it because society has always put emphasis on a number, on your weight number, on your dress size number, on the staging of your cancer number? I don’t know. I don’t like Stage 3. I’ll live with it, of course, I don’t have a choice just like I’m going to live in my size 0. It is what it is and if at the end of the day I can say I’ve done the best I can with activity, with my nutrition, with my mental health, with my spiritual health, and if a reoccurrence comes back, I’ve done everything I feel I could do. Have I gone radical? No. Am I going to? No. I’m trying to balance here and I hope to heck it doesn’t come back. But if it does, I don’t want to have any regrets about something I did or didn’t do. And at this time I don’t feel I have those regrets because, as I said, I’m grateful. I’m trying the best I can at this time to do what I can do and I will do anything to be alive and to grow old and hopefully not miserable.
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