My heart goes out to each and every one of you, and to your loved ones.

My beautiful loved one, known here as "Birdman518", passed away from a very rare form of metastasized melanoma to his very gifted brain, on Oct. 9, 2024, I do not have words to describe the depth of my sorrow. He was 68 years young.

My Birdie's first symptom that anything might be "wrong" was on Aug. 18, 2024 when he noticed a slight drool from one side of his mouth, as if he had had Novocain. We went immediately to our local ER, thinking maybe he had Bells Palsy. A CT scan revealed 6 tumors in his brain. The droop was, in fact, a stroke, from which, incredibly, he recovered and had no others (anti-seizure med and steroids).

I took him to Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa where he was immediately admitted to ICU for more scans. After 4 days of this, Birdie asked for the truth, if ANYTHING they were proposing (MRI of the brain, mapping of the tumors, radiation of the tumors, brain surgery) was going to make his life better than it was "right now". One very honest doctor admitted that it would not, and that his type of melanoma was so rare they had no immunotherapy to try against it, although they were willing to "guess" and try "something".

He asked if anything they were proposing to do for his brain was going to address the tumor that was found in his liver. The answer was, "Not now".

He asked, "How long?" and was told by the very honest doctor, "You are unlikely to be with us in a month".

My Birdie told them that he was going home, where I cared for him with the help of hospice until he passed away 5 weeks later.

Things for which I am grateful, even in this terrible loss:

I am grateful that Mitchell was in my life for 42 years.
I am grateful that he did not have any pain throughout all of this.
I am grateful that it was not sudden death, so that I could process all of it with him.
I am grateful that he spent his last weeks with just the two of us and not in the hospital where the outcome would have been the same but much worse for both of us.
I am grateful to Mitchell that he trusted me to care for him and that he made that choice, although I would have stood beside him with whatever choice he made.
I am grateful for the support this group offers to each other in such a kind way.

I honor Mitchell by keeping on each day even with a broken heart.

My best to each of you,
Lauren

It breaks my heart to hear you're so unhappy that you'd rather not consider your options other than refusing surgery and further treatment. There are no guarantees in life--I didn't think I'd end up with stage 3 extremely aggressive, serous endometrial cancer. But there you have it. And I at one point thought "What's the point of going through all this pain and nausea and numb fingers and and toes, if it's going to get me in the end anyway?" My life isn't great: I don't have a particularly good relationship with my spouse either, and most times I don't feel like going home after being out with friends. Neither do I have children or anyone else significant in my life. But, I still hope that the treatment will work, even if it's a just a little bit to make my days a little easier. In fact, the treatment I'm on now (I had previous chemo treatments that didn't work) has shrunk my tumors, yet minimally to my lymph nodes. I have decided to take more control over the direction my own life once I receive the results of my next CT scan. This will mean addressing my home-life situation, work, travel, and whatever else I need to do to live the life I want, for how ever long that may be. I regret not having this conversation with myself while I was healthy.
You too can get out of your situation, if you take control and look to the future rather than at your present circumstance.