@birdman518. Good morning, Mitchell. Cancer is a frightening diagnosis. And you’re right, the treatments for Cancer are frightening.
Your comment, “ Am I wrong in thinking that doing this to patients is crazy? Are people so desperate to live at *any* cost that they allow this to be done to them?” The answers? Simply put, Yes and Yes

However, there’s more to this. First, until something better comes along like a magic wand or a huge breakthrough in cancer treatments, where we have the ability to kill fast growing cancer cells without collateral damage, we’re needing to use what we have available to us now.

Cancer doesn’t play fair, it doesn’t discriminate, doesn’t care if you’re wealthy, poor, educated, etc.. It has no boundaries. Our oncologists are doing what they can to treat our cancers with the ammunition they have.
They’re not doing this to us! They’re doing it for us. There’s a difference and it’s important to keep that perspective. Are we cancer patients crazy to allow these drugs in our bodies? You bet! But if we want any hope for a future, we take what we can get.

I can tell you unequivocally, I would have been dead 4 years ago without the barrage of lethal chemo meds to rid my body of Acute Myeloid Leukemia. That aggressive cancer started right in the heart of my immune system…my bone marrow.
Here’s a partial list of my therapy: Cytarabine, idarubicin, fludarabine, melphalen, methotrexate, midostaurin, sorafenib, rituximab, then a host of broad spectrum antibiotics, antifungals, anti-virals, anti-rejection meds, and the list goes on and on! Was it worth it for what I endured at the time? You bet. I chose to fight because for me, like many of us when we get the opportunity to choose life or death, we take life every time…mostly, because it buys us precious time!

I’m 4 years post cancer/bone marrow transplant. My 4th ReBirthday is coming up in a week. I feel incredibly healthy and eternally grateful to my doctors and medical teams for doing what they could to save my life and to give me a second chance at life. I’d do it all over again!

I’ve read through some of your past replies and see that you had melanoma before but it was localized, lesion removed and nothing more was required except I’m sure you were told to avoid sun exposure, etc.
Now you’ve had a recurrence and there’s concern it has spread. I can imagine this is causing a little anxiety because there’s now something potentially threatening your life for which you don’t know the outcome. My suggestion is to stop looking at the black box warnings because they can scare the life right out of you…but the meds in the box can actually restore it for you.

I wish only the very best news for you tomorrow and not faced with the difficult decision to take these meds. But if you do, just know there is life on the other side of these treatments. They serve a much needed purpose. ☺️