***CRIMSON RED DAILY THREAD***

[cbbama99]

Nice. Your neck of the woods?

[ricky023]

I love that pic, it is so peaceful. Is that in the West Virginia area? RTR!

[BAMAWV]

I love that pic, it is so peaceful. Is that in the West Virginia area? RTR!

Suwanee, GA

[Leroy]

I'm on my way to Tallahassee this morning to begin another round of chemo treatments.  This is going to be a tough one and some of the side effects of this drug will be nasty and some of the effects can be fatal.  My prognosis is not good with or without treatment and it's been a tough choice for me deciding whether or not to go through these treatments but the doctor says that it could extend my life for another 3 months...maybe that will be enough to let me get to see Bama get #16...so I've got to try it.  Please remember me in your prayers today...thanks ~ RTR ~ Leroy

[pmull]

I'm on my way to Tallahassee this morning to begin another round of chemo treatments.  This is going to be a tough one and some of the side effects of this drug will be nasty and some of the effects can be fatal.  My prognosis is not good with or without treatment and it's been a tough choice for me deciding whether or not to go through these treatments but the doctor says that it could extend my life for another 3 months...maybe that will be enough to let me get to see Bama get #16...so I've got to try it.  Please remember me in your prayers today...thanks ~ RTR ~ Leroy

Praying for you Leroy. 

[Old Tider]

Special prayers for you, Leroy.  You have that great desire and certainly will see Bama take another one.

[SUPERCOACH]

I'm on my way to Tallahassee this morning to begin another round of chemo treatments.  This is going to be a tough one and some of the side effects of this drug will be nasty and some of the effects can be fatal.  My prognosis is not good with or without treatment and it's been a tough choice for me deciding whether or not to go through these treatments but the doctor says that it could extend my life for another 3 months...maybe that will be enough to let me get to see Bama get #16...so I've got to try it.  Please remember me in your prayers today...thanks ~ RTR ~ Leroy

[Leroy]

My chemo session went well today with no adverse side effects yet. They said the worst ones usually occur during the first treatment if they are going to occur at all. I'll be receiving another dose weekly for the next 7 weeks and then evaluate whether it's helping or not.

When I went back and read my post from this morning I realized that I made it sound a little worse than it is...it is bad but it sounded like I had 3 months to live or something...and hopefully that isn't the case. 

What I've been told is that a person with cancer that has progressed to the state that mine has will live an average of another 7 months without this course of treatment and an average of 10 months with it....but I like to think that I'm more than just a lil bit above average 

Thanks to everyone for the prayers...they are working 

[SUPERCOACH]

Leroy, do you mind if I ask what kind of cancer you are dealing with?

[SUPERCOACH]

Of course we understand if you would prefer to keep those details private.

[ricky023]

God is in charge of you because you are his child. He has the healing for Cancer and will give you joy. God Bless my friend, we love you and will always pray for you and with you. RTR!

[Leroy]

Leroy, do you mind if I ask what kind of cancer you are dealing with?

In July of 2011, my voice became hoarse and in August I lost my voice.  I was referred by my primary care doctor to an ENT in September and when she scoped my throat she said that she was 99% sure that I had vocal chord cancer but that she would need to perform a biopsy to confirm that. I had the biopsy done on 9/28/11 to confirm that I had cancer.  It covered my right vocal chord, part of my left one, and had already spread to the thyroid cartilage below the vocal chords.  So, when it was first diagnosed it was Stage IV Laryngeal Cancer.

PET Scans and CT Scans suggested that it hadn't yet spread out of the throat area and I began radiation and chemotherapy treatments in October, 2011.  The radiation was 5 days a week for 7 weeks and the chemo was weekly doses of Cisplatin for 10 weeks.  My last treatment was the morning after the national championship game in January, 2012.

Over the course of the next few months I had several follow-up PET scans and the cancer appeared to be gone...until a PET scan done in June, 2012, indicated activity in my lungs.  A follow-up CT scan in July confirmed that I had several very small suspicious nodules in my lungs.  Another scan in September showed the nodules had all doubled in size and I had a needle biopsy done a week or so later on one of the nodules that confirmed that it was cancer....not lung cancer but Metastatic Squamous Cell Laryngeal Cancer.  My throat was and is still clear of cancer.  If the cancer had only spread within the head and neck area there would be a 30 to 50 percent chance of a cure...but once it has spread outside the head/neck area there is really no cure and the 5 year survival rate is less than 5 percent.

Last October I began chemotherapy with two different drugs, carboplatin and taxol, with infusions every three weeks for a total of 6 treatments. Following this course of treatment a CT Scan showed that the nodules were pretty much stable, not really growing but not shrinking either, just changing shape more than anything else. My blood counts were all very low and I was very weak and had received about as much chemo as my body could handle so we put treatment on hold until May when I had another CT Scan.  That scan showed that all the nodules had doubled in size since the scan that was done in February.

The chemotherapy I'm taking now will not cure my cancer, but it is hoped that it will slow down the progression of the disease...right now, I am fighting to be one of those 5 percent that I talked about up above.

[pmull]

Leroy you have been in my daily prayers since you first told us about your illness over a year ago. Keeping fighting and hang in there. The odds are not in your favor but nobody gave Alabama a chance against Miami in 92 either.

I will continue to pray for you my friend. I wish I could do more.

[Hannibal Lecter, MD]

Leroy, God bless you, and I will continue to pray for you.  Thank you for sharing your story as I feel more educated having read it.  Do you still have a decent quality of life or do you struggle with breathing?  Again, like Supercoach, I do not want to intrude and will respect your privacy unequivocally if you do not wish to share.

[SUPERCOACH]

Thanks for sharing this Leroy.  I will continue to pray for you.  I believe you are indeed among the 5%.

I have also been reading about this and trying to educate myself a little bit.

I have another question for you, but only if you don't mind.  Have they determined definitively whether the spots in the lung are a result of the throat cancer metastasizing, or is it another primary tumor site that developed independently?  How did they come to that conclusion?

From what I am reading, with your history it is generally assumed that it spread from the throat cancer.  But there is some research that shows that about 40% of the cases in the study where actually second primary sites that developed independently.  I only mention this because the difference is crucial to the prognosis and the treatment options.

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