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Personality Change with Cancer


Six months, possibly more, before his diagnosis, Mathew had a personality change. The Sarcoma Doctor at Moffit told me that by the time most young people are diagnosed with these types of soft tissue sarcomas, they have lost their jobs, their friends are avoiding them and family aren’t speaking to them. They are alone.

So by this time, the tumor is so large, and it is impacting waste removal from his liver, gall bladder, and kidneys. He is full of toxins. My niece assured me that after his first chemo, Mathew would be back to normal.

Each day when the doctors would come in, Mathew had already made his own notes and lists of questions (and we parents had made ours in The Notebook), but Mathew insisted on asking his first. Then we would ask ours. But what was so poignant was each time Mathew was through talking to the doctor or doctors, he would ask the same question.

“Is there anything I need to be doing.”

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