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The Living Hell of Undiagnosed Cancer, Mathew's Journal

A reminder; Mathew was finally taken seriously 2-22-14 when he was sent to the hospital and a scan was done. Even then, the assumption was that he had been drinking his liver into a coma or some other horrible self-imposed illness.


Mathew Journal  2-4-14     

Wake up to another day of feeling like hell.

Biting the skin off my lower lip.
Pick and scratching skin raw.
Sinister visions projected onto the back of my eyelids.
Arms and legs sore.
Hardly able to get myself into bed.
Once eyes closed the visions return again.
Played it fast-forward - too fast to ever identify what they are.

My heart is aching from beating too fast.
And I have constant dry mouth.

My left leg drags behind me.
Like a ghoul from a horror film.
My aching body says “Take another warm bath.”
M wallet and my mind say “Enough with the damn baths.”



The itching was from the high bilirubin, due to the tumor invading the liver and strangling the bile duct.

The visions, hallucinations, they asked Mathew at Moffitt if this had been happening to him and when he said yes, they told us that is from the toxins building up in his body from the organ blockages. 

That dragging left leg, remember in my last post I told you about Mathew’s problems in High School and again later with that leg and hip locking up? The tumor was wrapped around that kidney and around the renal artery. 

The racing heart, if you recall back when Mathew had his first scan and biopsy, the I.R. doctor showed me how the tumor had displaced Mathew’s inferior vena cava, pushing it off to the side by inches. 


A few days later Mathew writes:  “The hardest part is my body betraying me, and people implying that it’s just in my head.”


I will tell the pre-diagnosis story one day, it hurts too much right now, coupled with anger. I was horrified that no one would listen to my son. I knew something terrible was wrong. Another reminder that this is the story of Sarcoma. 

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