Category: courage

Aug 24

When Your World Falls Apart

 

So where were you when the events of 9/11 unfurled? I bet you know exactly. I vividly remember I was standing in the chemo room at our oncology office chatting with patients when the first plane hit.

And if you’re OLD like I am, you recall where you were when President Kennedy was shot in 1963. I know I was at Debbie Walls’ house playing the Barbie game (and poised to secure the good-looking bachelor, Ken, for my “date”) when Debbie’s stepmom rushed in with the terrible news. (Debbie found me on Facebook a few months ago after being out of touch for 50 YEARS and she told me she never forgot me either because of the incredibly sad memory we shared.)

It’s amazing how quickly your world can fall apart. One minute life seems pretty good, and the next minute you’re wondering how you ever will survive.

A health crisis has the ability to shake our worlds in ways difficult to comprehend. A while back, I surveyed a bunch of my cancer survivor friends for remembrances of the day their worlds fell apart.

“Surreal” is the term Wayne uses to describe how it felt to be told he had Stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of forty-seven.

“My family, like myself was in shock—pure disbelief,” he recalls thirteen years later. “I recently had gone twenty years without missing a full day of work to illness and now I had cancer? I couldn’t believe it.”

Ken was equally surprised nine years ago when his tongue cancer finally was diagnosed after two years of reassurances that the enlarged lymph node was “nothing to worry about.”

“When the doctor finally did say the word ‘cancer,’ I was in total shock,” Ken recalls. “I had no symptoms and I was in great shape for a forty-six-year-old man! I told someone I felt as if I had entered the Twilight Zone and nothing was recognizable.”

Cathy says “denial and total shock” were the first two emotions she experienced after being told in November 2009 that she had breast cancer at age fifty-four.

“My husband’s and my emotions were very different,” she adds. “He was a lot calmer and stronger than I was.”

My nurse/reporter friend Cubby says disbelief also was her first reaction to a breast cancer diagnosis at age fifty-one.

“I froze and my husband’s face turned white,” she still vividly recalls six years later. “The worst part was the fear of the unknown.”

Fear of the unknown.

 I think that’s pretty much a universal response to a cancer diagnosis. The story of the day your world fell apart may be similar to these folks or it might be quite different, but I’m willing to bet that after those initial strong emotions wore off, you were left with the same question for yourself or your loved one: What’s going to happen next?

How difficult will the treatment be?

            Will I/they get sick?

            Can I/they keep working?

And the $64,000-question: Will I/they be cured?

I, of course, will answer all those questions for you in this blog…yeah, right. I have no magic tea leaves for your or your loved one’s future. I believe there’s a good chance that the treatments will be easier than you think because that’s what most of our patients say—the worry before the first chemo or radiation was worse than the actual treatment itself. I think you or your loved one probably will not get sick because there are wonderful anti-nausea drugs available today—at least three or four new ones since I was treated in 1990. (If you knew people treated a long time ago for cancer, please don’t imagine your experience is likely to be like theirs.)

I also think there’s a good possibility you or your loved one will be able to keep up a fairly normal life. I see cancer patients everyday in our office getting chemo and then heading out to their place of employment or home to do yard work. Most folks say they adjust to a “new normal” and enjoy the days with good energy, while resting more on the days when fatigue sets in.

And if you want to know the overall survival odds, 64% of adult cancer patients still are alive five years after their diagnosis, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Of course, I can’t promise my observations all will come true for you. I don’t know your future health any more than I am certain of my own. But I do know the One who does know it all.

For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster,
 to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11

What an incredibly comforting verse for us when our world falls apart. Just don’t miss that itty-bitty word “I” in the first sentence. “For I know the plans I have for you.”

Only God knows the plans for us and they are His plans and not necessarily ours. But whether His plans match ours or not, we can be confident they are good ones and designed to give us hope. Jeremiah 29:12-14 continues with God’s assurances:

In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly,
 you will find me. I will be found by you,” says the Lord.

Thank You, Lord, that You are not watching me from a distance, but You are close by and hear me when I pray. Please help me to trust that Your plans for my life are truly good ones. Amen.

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Jul 27

Amazing Cancer Patients

 

I knew her as “The Horse Lady” long before I ­ever knew her name was Nicola.

And if I was writing a brochure about amazing things cancer patients have done while ­under­going treatment, the Horse Lady would be my cover photo.

She got her nickname from Dr. Marc Hirsh, who initially had trouble remembering her name, but had no trouble bragging about her exploits to me even before I worked in his office. His favorite story was about how she loaded up one of her prized thoroughbred horses in her horse trailer, hitched it to her pickup, and drove all the way from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma. After delivering the horse to its new owner, she continued to drive herself to Mexico for a vacation.

“Drove the truck herself with her oxygen tank right beside her on the front seat!” Marc said with a satisfied smile. “She’s amazing!”

I’ve met a lot of amazing cancer patients.

 I know a man who earned his green belt for karate while being treated for lung cancer. I know a woman who went to dance class wearing a belt pump that released a continuous infusion of chemotherapy into her while she danced. I know another man who won a racquetball tournament a couple days after his treatment for widespread colon cancer.

My friend Leanna started running 5K races after her diagnosis of Stage 4 melanoma. She’s not super-fast, but at age sixty-eight, she’s usually quick enough to win her age category!

“I thought I’d give it a try to see if it would help me get better,” says Leanna, a grandmother of eleven who still works part-time babysitting neighborhood children and is in complete remission from the cancer. She’s even convinced her husband Larry, seventy, to compete in an upcoming race with her.

“He was going to enter in the ‘Clydesdale’ category for men who weigh over 200 pounds,” she says, “but I told him he might have a better chance of winning the ‘70+’ category in case there’s a young guy who weighs over 200 and is really fast!”

Our oncology office even had our own version of Lance Armstrong with a patient named Eric, who was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1987 at the age of thirty-one. Like Lance, Eric had Stage 4 disease, which had spread to his liver, lung, and groin in 1988. Now twenty-nine years after his diagnosis, Eric remains cancer-free and is enjoying life with his wife and three grown children.

You’ve probably seen the little plastic yellow “Live Strong” bracelets from the Lance Armstrong Foundation. They’re a neat way to remind cancer patients and their caregivers that a little ol’ thing like cancer couldn’t stop Lance from winning seven consecutive Tour de France cycling races. (No matter what controversy surrounds him, there’s no doubt he’s an incredible athlete and an amazing cancer survivor.)

I was sad, though, when I read in his first book, It’s Not about the Bike, that he doesn’t believe in God, but rather only in himself and in his ability to be “essentially a good person.” He gives God absolutely zero credit for his recovery from cancer or his athletic accomplishments.

Personally, I think God supplies supernatural strength to us many times when we don’t even realize it and that the reason our bodies have an amazing ability to heal is because He created us that way!

So while I agree with Lance that cancer patients and their caregivers need to live strong, I like even better the admonition adopted by my friends Barry and Barbara when she was facing pancreatic cancer: “By His Strength.”

Barb’s younger brother Tommy even bought silver bracelets for all the family members with the letters “BHS” engraved on the front. The bracelets were partly a Christian response to the “Live Strong” bracelets. But mostly they were a reminder that this family intended to live strong by God’s strength—even if they always didn’t have the fortitude within themselves. The initials BHS always reminded Barb’s family of their heavenly Father and of their earthly family: Barbara Hall Streeter and Barry Howard Streeter.

Perhaps you feel 100-percent confident in your own abilities to face and conquer cancer, but there must be a little room for concern or you probably wouldn’t be reading this blog.

Isn’t it good to know that you don’t always have to have it completely together, you don’t always have to just tough it out and you don’t always have to conjure up your own courage? Instead, at those times when you feel inadequate—or even hopeless—you can live By His Strength.

I love how The Message paraphrase Bible describes Abraham’s response when God told him He was going to make him the “father of many nations” even though Abraham and his wife Sarah were way past childbearing ages:

\When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do,
 but on what God said he would do. Romans 4:17

Don’t be discouraged by whatever you—or doctors or medicine—can’t do, but live on the basis of what God says He will do.

But joyful are those who have the God of Israel as their helper, whose hope is in the Lord their God. Psalm 146:5

http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=FFFFEMNU

Lord, I do want to live strong and I want to do it by Your strength. I’m so grateful that You have what I need to get through each day. In Jesus Name, I pray, Amen.

Jun 01

Becoming the “Ideal Patient”

Are you or your loved one an ideal patient?

I’m not asking whether you do everything the doctors tell you to do. I’m not referring to whether your disease is easily treatable. And I’m not talking about whether you have the right personality.

What I do mean is this: Do you have the right blend of realism and faith as you live wondering when and if your or your loved one’s disease will be cured?

If you haven’t already reached “ideal” status, I pray I can inspire you to achieve it, and if you’re already there, I pray I can encourage you that it’s definitely the best place to stay.

I think that an ideal patient is one who believes firmly in the power of prayer and has no doubt that God can answer with a miracle. Such a patient prays for complete physical healing, absolutely believing that God can do it and feverishly praying that He will do it. But this ideal patient also recognizes that God is sovereign—He is absolute, unlimited, independent, and has supreme authority over us and everything else in the world.

Such an ideal patient understands that when we give our lives to Jesus, we give up our rights and give Him the right to do whatever pleases Him with our lives. When we’re “ideal,” we pray and believe for a physical miracle, but never demand it as the only answer to our prayers.

Some people might say that our faith is decreased if we don’t absolutely “expect” a miracle, but I think it takes even more faith to continue to trust God, stand on His promises and cling to hope when we aren’t healed.

It is not a lack of faith to accept whatever God’s will is for us. It’s a true sign of faith to trust Him no matter what happens—or doesn’t happen—in this lifetime. I pray you will be an ideal patient: trusting God as you pray for His physical healing touch to come and trusting Him still if it doesn’t.

 

To believe in someone

is to have faith

In God’s ability as the Potter

And in that person’s willingness

to be the clay.

I believe in you.

May 25

Peace in the Face of Cancer

 

I’ve just received word from Tyndale House that my manuscript for my new book Peace in the Face of Cancer has been “enthusiastically accepted!” This book has been rolling around in my head for at least a couple of years and I just couldn’t really relax in retirement until I got it out.

For a long time I’ve been wanting to write a book that would be especially for those facing cancer that is not expected to be cured. You know the descriptions. Treatable, but not curable. Chronic cancer.  Always in treatment. Cancer for the long haul. 

This new book–coming out next March–even includes three bonus chapters at the end just for such folks: Why doesn’t God heal? How to dance with cancer instead of  just battling it. And how to live AND die well for Jesus.

And the really good news is that Peace in the Face of Cancer actually is written to speak to the needs of ALL survivors and their caregivers no matter where they are on their cancer journey–newly diagnosed, in treatment, living in cancer’s shadow, dealing with a recurrence or trying to buy more time.

Not sure if you’re a survivor yet?

 

The National Cancer Institute says we become  survivor “from the time of diagnosis until the end of life.” So survivors include folks who have just found out they have cancer, people who used to have cancer, and those who can expect always to have it. Pretty sure that means everybody who has ever heard those three dreaded words: You have cancer.

As I write, there are an estimated 14.5 million people in the U.S. with a history of cancer and about the same number of new diagnoses is expected worldwide this year. That’s an incredible total of survivors, but I wonder how many meet only the first dictionary definition of survive: to remain alive or in existence? And how many also portray the second meaning: to continue to function or prosper?

Between my former job, my cancer prayer support groups and my speaking-travels, I literally have held the hands of thousands of people facing this disease. I count it a real privilege to walk with hurting people, whether the ones with the medical chart or the ones standing nervously by.  But despite my huge number of cancer-acquaintances (including about 90-percent of my Facebook friends!), I never would presume I know exactly what you or your loved ones are going through. Each patient and caregiver journey is unique, but chances are good that you and I have shared some of the same feelings over the years. And chances are very good that I know someone who has been in a very similar medical situation to yours.  And I think it’s especially feasible that you, like me, at times have trouble finding peace in the face of cancer.

  It’s definitely difficult to feel peace…but it is possible.

I know it’s possible because I have been there, done that, and because I’ve known scores of others who are finding peace even though they thought they couldn’t. In the pages of Peace in the Face of Cancer,  I’ll share true, hope-filled stories to encourage you that a survivor also can be a “thriver!”

If I come to your mind, please PRAY for this book as it goes through the editing and design process and that God would use it to bring PEACE in the face of cancer to those who need to hear that message.

“Because of God’s tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide us to the path of peace.”—Luke 1:78-79 NLT