Need info on cancer, treatments and progression, as well as HIV/AIDS.

I've lost several family members to cancer, and many friends to AIDS, so can't help answering this one...but your questions are so general, so BIG, it's hard to know what to say in a tiny box!
;-)
There are many national/international organisations with helpful websites on Cancer and on AIDS; google for them and you'll find buckets of information.

Survivable (but still deadly!) cancers include prostate, breast, melanoma, and others, and treatment ranges from surgery to radiation and chemotherapy, with dozens of alternate therapies such as hypnosis and holistic treatments.

"What is dying like", well that's up to your character; everyone faces it differently; even the physical experience is different depending on things like treatment received, pain threshold, attitude, and progression of the disease.

My advice is, start with Google. But if you don't already have experience/knowledge of these diseases, perhaps all the research + writing will be a bit much to take on for a novel-in-a-month? Good luck, either way, to you and your poor stricken character, (hope he/she makes it, I just hate it when characters die....)

O.

~:~

Find me at Stony River Farm.

Wow, this sure is hard to give a good answer to!
Your character sounds doomed to me if he has both of those diseases. I mean, he's got a weakened immune system, and being microwaved by cancer treatments is going to make him more weak and sick still. But it might be possible for him to survive... it might have happened to somebody already, I have no clue.
For example, I heard a story about this mother. She got cancer, but didn't want her cells to be baked by cancer treatments. She took a different route, using some kind of Indian (or Native American, I'm not sure which) treatments, using special herbs I guess. She got no support from her family for doing this because they were mad that she wasn't using the normal treatment. But she was cured! So perhaps your character could quit cancer treatments somewhere down the road to pursue a more natural treatment in light of having AIDS... that's one suggestion anyway, the woman I told you about didn't have HIV/AIDS, so I don't know how it would go for your character.
If I were you, I'd try what was already suggested and research. Here's something to start you off (if you haven't already started, lol):
http://www.worldvision.ca/HIV_AIDS/HIV_FAQ.htm <--This will answer one of your questions.

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uh... I'll get back to you when I think of a witty quote.

'o7 project: The Backwards Witch

Breast cancer has a pretty good survival rate (and men do get breast cancer).

Any chemotherapy would most probably accelerate HIV turning into AIDS. HIV is that status of having contracted the virus. A diagnoses of AIDS is given when the virus causes the T cell (a type of immune cell) count to drop below 200 cells per cubic mm of blood. Basically, the virus attacks T cells. When enough T cells have died and aren't being replaced fast enough, you have AIDS.

Chemotherapy will weaken your immune system, making it harder to fight back against HIV, so HIV will just run rampant through the system, I would imagine. As well as faster progressing HIV, they would also suffer from all kinds of weird opportunistic infections. Google or wiki should be able to give you a nice list of these.

Dying from cancer is going to vary a lot from person to person, and from cancer to cancer. My nan died of colo-rectal cancer. They told her to eat a lot because chemo makes people lose weight (they feel too sick to eat) but she ate a lot because that was how she responded to feeling sick. She went from a (UK) size 12 to 16 or so. She eventually lost her hair, but not til after two years of chemo and she always wore a wig. She actually became a little bloated, not thin at all, like many people think and very immobile. She felt very scared and was very brave. She made sure that she did everything she wanted to do in the couple of years before she died.

My grandfather on the other hand had myeloma. He had curvature of the spine that made him look all tiny and gnome like. He found it very sore to move and just sat in a chair a lot. He was on a lot of morphine based drugs, which, because myeloma gives you bone pain, didn't really help painkilling wise. He had blood tranfusions every month. He lasted with that for three or four years, by which time he was just trapped in a body that couldn't move. He had always been active and that was just hellish for him so I think he was glad to finally die.

Short story is, cancer is treated as one disease, but it really isn't. Even one type of cancer is hugely variable so there isn't One Right Answer and what works for one person may not work for anyone else. In some ways, this is quite good for writers because you are less likely to be wrong ;) Hope this helps.

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2006: A Measure of Life - Won!
2007: The Scold's Bridle
http://www.frostintofire.blogspot.com

Here's some info that might make it easier for you to tie these two things together. There are several types of cancer which are often found in people with HIV/AIDS. One is Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. It would be quite reasonable for your character to find out about the cancer first and then once he begins treatment be diagnosed with HIV/AIDS or vice versa.

Here's a page from the National Cancer Institute on AIDS related cancers:

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/AIDS/

You can also google for "AIDS related Cancer" for more info.

Good luck.

purplechick

The first draft of anything is sh*t. -- Ernest Hemingway

Great response, I was actually going to recommend that myself.

To add to purplechick's response, here are some other tidbits to answer your initial questions:

(*) Generally, a person who has advanced HIV turning into full blown AIDS (at least in this age) will definitely be aware of it well before diagnosis. Such things as low energy levels, chronic diahrrea, recurring fever & night sweats, and unexplainable weight loss are all typical. Adding cancer to this just multiplies the scenario in terms of health. (I had a friend that died of Kaposi's sarcoma last year--the cancer highly connected to HIV infection...and he was in a constant state of health issues right up until his death (thankfully, he was able to say goodbye to everyone he cared for before he fell asleep in his bed adn didn't wake up).

Check out this website for more info:

http://www.aidsinfonyc.org/hivplus/issue2/ahead/cancer.html

Tim
Municipal Liaison for
NaNoWriMo::Illinois::Chicago & ScriptFrenzy::Illinois::Chicago

What kind of Cancer has my character got?

My two main characters are twin sisters aged about 20. One has got cancer, and one of the first things that happen in the story is that the doctors say that she will not survive, and will probably die within a year. Maybe I would have her die in like 5 months.

It would work well for my plot, if she goes to treatment a couple of times a week in a hospital. And she is losing more and more hair, and her complexion is becoming dull and pale.

Her cancer causes her lots of pain en periods. Sometimes she should have a very severe pain inside most of her body, maybe also her head. Can she have cancer in almost her whole body?

Could this cancer also cause her to not be able to walk more than 15-20 steps at a time?

Now what type of cancer could this possibly be, and what would the treatment be? I hope the answer will be a sort of chemo therapy, something that is difficult for her to subject herself under because it is unpleasant.

(This sounds like I like it when my characters suffer. I really don't, but it is essential to my plot that this girl is fighting a lot of pain).

How realistic does all this sound? I hope someone can help me. Thanks in advance.

2006: Det Koldeste Hjerte / The Coldest heart (Fantasy) - 51000 words!
2007: Beginning and the End (Mainstream Fiction)

Hello? Are anyone here? I really need your help!

2006: Det Koldeste Hjerte / The Coldest heart (Fantasy) - 51000 words!
2007: Beginning and the End (Mainstream Fiction)

Leukemia is an awful one towards the end from what I remember from friends that died from it. Also to take into account is that at 20 you are put on adult wards and most patients are really old so you do feel isolated. You also get to a point where you just dont want to discuss illness anymore so when family do visit all there questions about treatments etc can seem really annoying.
An interesting twist (and something I did during a cancer scare) was get online. So if your character has a net friend her age to talk about stuff that could cause jealousy with the family who dont really get it.
Good luck

Eliot
Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.
Jean-Paul Sartre

I have a few HIV/AIDs related questions that I hope someone can shed some light on. (I also plan to google the hell out of the subject, but I thought I'd ask here as well)

One of my characters, a male of about 24, contracts HIV during the late 70s or early 80s. He gets it while working in a hospital, as a medical intern (or something), not from unprotected sex, drug abuse, or anything of that nature. My problem is that I was not *alive* in a late 70s and early 80s, and don't know much about how medical procedures have changed since then. Could anyone shed some light on the life of a medical intern in the 80s?

My second question involves being HIV+, without having full-blown AIDS. Would the symptoms be about the same? About how advanced would it be before the subject would start to feel the effects? How long could one be HIV+ without having AIDs? What kind of treatment would they be facing? How careful about illness would they be? For instance, my HIV character is a father, and thus has the problem of not wanting to be too close to his daughter when she's sick, for obvious reasons. Would he be ok in the same house, or would it be best to have one or the other of them re-locate until she was no longer ill? Would he, as a result, need to be somewhat of a neatfreak/germ-aphobic?

My sympathies to anyone whose had to deal with this illness, either in your own life or in that of a loved one. I'm sorry to have to ask such delicate questions...

The cancer could have metastasized, which could theoretically mean that she could end up with a secondary tumour quite far away from the site of the original tumour, or spreading throughout her body via her blood.

"Could this cancer also cause her to not be able to walk more than 15-20 steps at a time?"
I'm not sure whether a type of cancer could do that, but some of the treatments, particularly more aggressive forms of chemo can leave recipients extremely exhausted.

Everything can be viewed as a thinly veiled insult to one's mother.

Persistence is Futile!

Hello Eliot and Persistence,
Thanks for your help :)

2006: Det Koldeste Hjerte / The Coldest heart (Fantasy) - 51000 words!
2007: Beginning and the End (Mainstream Fiction)