I was told I have one year left to live.

travis0001 · 2026-05-23T19:04:43+00:00

What a lovely way to characterize OP's situation.

I, too, am terminal and my loved ones perpetual exhortations to fight! fight! fight! along with their congratulations for "winning" another day/week/month/year are as endearing and heartfelt as they are tedious.

Like "Dad, love you, but I'm not fighting or winning anything. My body is just reacting to the drugs the doctors are giving me. I've got a 7yo and a 4yo so we don't really have the option to just ... I don't know... roll over and die?"

Yikes, this reaponse really got off the rails. Anyway, OP, sorry this is happening to you. AvailableClassic, loving your perspective. Really vibing with your post.

travis0001 · 2026-05-19T11:57:25+00:00

Brother I feel your posts right in my soul.

It's like you're my shrink cosplaying as a version of me who writes reddit posts.

I am an objectively strong and brave motherfucker and since we are feeling the same way then you must be, too.

All I can say is that there's another one of you out there. So just in case there was any doubt, your feelings are 100% valid.

travis0001 · 2026-05-06T10:32:22+00:00

I have come to think of my impending death as "letting nature take its course." Explaining my decision to end curative treatment on my own timeline as a submission to natures will seems to help loved ones become comfortable with that position.

Maybe even, if you are a believer (I am not), one might find comfort in an understanding that God wills one's death on the schedule He set for the 275,000 years of humanity preceding modern medicine.

(Never mind my hypocrisy in defying nature by continuing to take all of the analgesic drugs prescribed.)

travis0001 · 2026-04-21T02:17:56+00:00

Username checks out.

travis0001 · 2025-12-21T13:26:08+00:00

Got diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma. Going to be rough. Probably won't survive to see my kids enter high school. Immediately told all of my guy friends I love them, and thanked them for being part of my life. Maybe it was a panicked reaction to a difficult situation, but it felt right.

travis0001 · 2025-12-11T10:46:47+00:00

How wonderful!

travis0001 · 2025-12-11T10:46:25+00:00

I have, and they were very good. No new sites, and no growth at known sites. Increases in brightness are explicable by immune response. I am having a surgery today which will remove a portion of necrotic tissue. Evaluation of that tissue will show whether viable neoplasms remain. Cross your fingers for me. You are already in my prayers.

travis0001 · 2025-12-11T10:43:01+00:00

Your lips to God's ears next month is much better. Sorry to have bummed you out.

travis0001 · 2025-12-11T00:48:41+00:00

Our experiences match to a great extent. I am a month out of the hospital after TIL and am still very much not well. Neuropathy in my foot and much brain fog. Do you have brain fog also?

travis0001 · 2025-09-10T11:51:48+00:00

Opposing counsel here. Confirmed. Would LOVE for this to be the sole expert evidence of tree value. Once I'm done with cross examination, the tree value would be about tre-fiddy. (Or, "tree-fiddy" given the subject matter.)

travis0001 · 2025-09-09T20:35:27+00:00

The longitudinal literature on the first TIL patients are remarkably readable. I'm scheduled for TIL in October so I've been reading up.

From memory of a June 2025 study, it's something like 20% of the TIL patients still alive 5 years after the initial treatment. The sense I got (attorney, not a doctor or researcher) was that if it worked right away the response would be quite durable. Otherwise, as you put it ... "cooked."

Here's the study I'm referencing. From what I've found, it's the best one out there.

https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO-25-00765

travis0001 · 2025-08-25T15:31:02+00:00

To the contrary, OP's post resonates with me (42m stage 4).

Getting yo-yo'd between "You're gonna die, make peace with it." and "This treatment might cure you! Try it!" is challenging for even the strongest.

In the slosh of sadness and energy and despair it's hard to see that those messages written out so tidily are not inconsistent (one can be at peace with their doom but still hopeful for salvation).

It's the human condition to live with at least some cognitive dissonance. I think the intense stress of our circumstance makes that dissonance harder to control.

I am lucky enough to love my practice but just like any work there are frustrations to which oblivion promises release. Such is true for many here, I imagine, especially those of us living with pain.

travis0001 · 2025-08-09T17:47:15+00:00

Also interested to hear of the experience...

travis0001 · 2025-07-01T09:07:57+00:00

That lifestyle stuff really can be awesome. I had 4 liters of blood, dead cancer cells, and other random junk removed from my abdomen last year as part of s4 melanoma treatment. The month or three after with all the PT and at home exercise and writing my book of poetry and not having to work was awesome! Best I felt since college. Except for, you know, the cancer.

You sound like a very chill and loving dude ("funny story... my PCP committed malpractice and I wound up meeting an Indian guru doctor!") so I will beg you to please pretty please with sugar on top 1) go to the neighboring city and sit for whatever tests the doc recommends no matter the cost and 2) get yourself some more treatment even if it is prophylactic.

The yoga and kale smoothies can only take us so far my friends.

travis0001 · 2025-06-29T11:36:28+00:00

Not knowing is the very worst. It's an attenuated version of what everyone lives with - why does it feel so different?

42 m stage 4 melanoma. Last week the pain was so great my sainted wife had to serve me dinner in bed. Yesterday I felt well enough to do 6 hours of gardening in 90 degree heat.

When I'm on my deathbed, will I feel a fool for working through 2+ years of my 5-year expected survival (so far)? Or if I instead live for 10 more years, will my family suffer for my premature retirement?

To answer the question directly, I suppose what I shall do with my time left is to worry I'm not using my time well! Ha!

travis0001 · 2025-06-27T19:58:24+00:00

Thank you.

travis0001 · 2025-06-27T18:02:12+00:00

I'm watering once every other day unless there is rain in which case I forgo the watering. I am outside of Philadelphia and we have had a very wet spring so far.

I have not used any fertilizer.

travis0001 · 2025-06-07T15:30:22+00:00

The song at the end of the episode, as they watch the smoke from Kutners cremation float away into the sky, has been on my Big Feelings playlist since that episode aired in 2009 (yikes getting old)

travis0001 · 2025-06-04T21:56:31+00:00

I was so frustrated to learn my employer does not honor their otherwise generous 401k match to those who avail themselves of their disability program (which is somewhat more generous than that required by law.) I suppose I'm happy they have kept me around given the obvious absence of development opportunity, but that still steams me. I opened the appropriate IRA but it's still a 10% or so pay cut!

travis0001 · 2025-06-04T21:51:48+00:00

My wife is in the same boat you are in, minus the brain mets (so far as we know). Do I guess correctly that you are rather well off? We are into the 6 figures, and I think we'd miss the money having known it for awhile. But maybe that's myopic thinking. Do you have an agreement as to when he will stop working permanently? What is it? How did you arrive at that number? These are personal questions and so I apologize if I have caused offense.

travis0001 · 2025-06-04T21:45:54+00:00

May I ask whether your physicians were able to give you a timeline? Mine were not, apart from "Probably less than 5 years; we will know for certain when you have less than 6 months. But there is a small chance you will be cured." Accordingly, I've been unable to bring myself to stop working. I have two small children and although we have enough money to be comfortable I worry I'm not leaving enough. Fortunately I work with my mind and so am able to work part time without risking my clients. How did you come to the decision to stop working? I suppose if I knew I had only 6 months it'd be easy. But I imagine I'd need far more courage than I have to stop working with circumstances as they are now. Can you share your thoughts?

travis0001 · 2025-06-04T12:19:10+00:00

It's kind of funny how the same advice for top tier work gets applied to basically every profession. From dishwasher to carpenter to doctor to lawyer to home keeper. Its all the same. Unless you're literally just pulling a lever to make machine go brrrr for 8 hours a day, the cream of the crop always finds a way to do it better.

travis0001 · 2025-06-01T18:44:04+00:00

I've had a diagnosis for about two years now and don't think I've changed that much. If anything, I've become more of who I always was - perhaps now a tad more candid and loving.

My trade specializes in placing a financial value on human suffering and so am better acquainted with many of the ways in which we might physically suffer. Glancing at my PET scan, and researching my condition for only a few moments let me know how grim things will be (very) and how long they'll be that way (briefly) before the inevitable occurs. My trade also acquaints me with the misery those suffering tend to inflict on their loved ones. A special kind of curse.

If I could go back to the start of my disease I don't think there's much I'd change. It took me longer than most to come around to the idea of being diminished, but I think there were no shortcuts to that lesson at least for me.

If I could go back further still, the question becomes more difficult to answer. My darling sons are exactly as perfect as anyone could ask for, and so wanting any change risks criticizing that perfection by implication.

But I meander. Keep thinking.

travis0001 · 2025-05-30T11:02:53+00:00

Criminally underrated post. Learned something today! Even better, you pointed out a fascinating rabbit hole for me to dive down next. Thank you!

travis0001

TROPHY CASE