Hello everyone,
My name is John Marcus (aka Tanktrax). I'm the "mystery" member in Australia that the "Call To Arms" campaign refers to.
There has been an ongoing discussion in the moderators thread for a long time, but I thought it's time to be more public about my story.
I was diagnosed with cancer just over a year ago now. It's a particularly aggressive form of cancer. When admitted to hospital my tumour marker count was over 12,000. My doctors said they had never seen counts so high and that I was extremely lucky to still be alive. In fact, they said if treatment hadn't been started, I would have been dead within weeks.
Treatment started with radiotherapy on a major tumour to try and take pressure off my spinal nerves that was affecting other organs in my body. After that, they commenced strong chemotherapy to try and get the cancer under some form of control. Unfortunately, my system reacted badly to one of the chemo drugs. This put me in the intensive care unit (ICU) for four weeks. In ICU, I lost all body fat and my muscles wasted away. I couldn't walk and I weighed only 50Kg when I came out of ICU - my recommended weight for someone my height is at least 75Kg.
With the delay to my chemo treatment because of the ICU, the cancer had spread and caused nerve damage to my left foot, bladder and bowel. I was 100% incontinent, which made things very unpleasant and depressing. So much so, I considered self harm. Thankfully, I received excellent support.
After another 14 weeks of treatment and physio, I could walk again with a walker and later with just a walking stick, and the incontinence was "manageable". The doctors then let me go home for a while.
Unfortunately, the cancer was not under control and I returned to hospital on Xmas day for a new round of chemo cycles. This time, with a different group of chemo drugs. After four cycles, the cancer was under control and I was in remission - things were looking up. The big downside was a side effect of the strong chemo drugs that damaged the nerves in my feet and hands - called neuropathy. This put me back to a walker because I have no feeling in my feet and that affects my balance. The lack of feeling in my hands isn't as bad, but makes it impossible to build my model kits. The doctors say the neuropathy will clear over time.
Since I was in remission, the doctors could concentrate on the planned stem cell treatment that, if successful, would cure me. This treatment involves harvesting your stem cells, storing them, then hitting you with a massive dose of chemo to completely kill the cancer cells. This process makes you very ill, and they then use your harvested stem cells to aid in recovery.
Unfortunately, after two harvest attempts, there was no success. I'm in a "catch 22"… My cancer is so aggressive, that they need to use very strong chemo doses to knock it down to do the stem cell process, but the strong chemo also kills the stem cells.
So…. after a long year of chemo, side effects and feeling very sick… the doctors gave me the bad, but not unexpected, news. They are unable to cure me. My life span is expected to be around 12-18 months and I will continue on low end chemo to try to keep the cancer under some control for as long as possible.
The purpose of this story, and the campaign, is not about me - I am at peace with what is happening to me. It's about helping the many others that have and will get a form of cancer. Each time I go into the, always full, cancer ward, it saddens me to see so many people being treated - especially the children and teenagers.
So join in with the campaign and lets all stick it to cancer! :v