Category: Miscellaneous

Oct 12

Five Ways to Strengthen Your Funny Bone

 

 

 

About a month before my cancer diagnosis in 1990 I was a reporter for a local paper and writing a story about the new cancer support group at the local hospital. I interviewed the local oncologist, Dr. Marc Hirsh for the story and visited his office. When I walked by the chemo room, I glanced in at all the patients in recliners hooked up to IVs. It was an incredibly scary picture to me. But what was even scarier was that the patients were laughing. I remember thinking: They must not know they had cancer. I went home that day and told my husband, “If I ever had cancer, I definitely would not be sitting there laughing.”

Four weeks later when I was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer at the age of 36, I definitely was not laughing. When I went for my first chemo treatment to that same oncology office, I was so frightened. And I knew I would never laugh while hooked up to an I.V. getting toxic chemicals.

But that was before I met Marc’s head chemo nurse, Ruth, who was with him since he opened his office in 1989. I can’t recall what silly thing she uttered, but before I knew what had happened, she had me laughing too.

There was still nothing funny about having cancer or getting chemo or not knowing if I would see my daughters grow up or if my husband would bury another wife, but every time I laughed it felt so good and reminded me that I was still alive.

So I decided I needed to keep my sense of humor and started to look for funny things in spite of my serious predicament.

One of the first things my family found to joke about was the new chemo pill I took—Levamisole. It was a newly approved oral medicine, and I was the first patient at Marc’s office to take it. I soon learned that in reality it was a worming medicine designed to kill intestinal parasites in sheep and dogs.

Whenever I took a pill, I started barking and chasing my squealing daughters around the house. My husband mentioned to our friends that I had been wormed and he was thinking of getting me a rabies shot too. The pills were very expensive and my husband often suggested we call the vet to see if we could get them cheaper there. (A regular comedian, huh?)

My support groups always have had a reputation for a lot of laughing and every time we laughed together, it reminded us that we’re alive . . . and that always is worth celebrating. If you don’t have a funny oncology nurse or a laughing support group nearby (or a comedian husband!), Dave Dravecky’s Outreach of Hope offers five suggestions to “strengthen your funny bone”:

  1. Start your own comedy collection of jokes and cartoons. Do an Internet search for “clean jokes” and you’ll find some good laughs. Post them at your desk or on your fridge so you can remind yourself to laugh. (Do you know how to make Michigan cookies? Put them in a bowl and beat them for three hours!–OK maybe that’s only funny if you’re a Buckeye like me!)
  2. Get your groceries and get a chuckle by reading some of the tabloid headlines while standing in line. (I just read about aliens with anorexia and manure as a miracle cure for arthritis!) Of course, when I purchase these magazines they are business expenses because I share the stories in my laughter talk 🙂
  3. Hang out at the greeting-card racks and enjoy reading funny cards (wash your hands first and don’t eat an ice cream cone while you do this!). You can even buy a funny card to brighten someone’s day! (One day at work I received a card with an odd-looking old man on the front, which said: “I bet I can still float your boat…even if I don’t have both oars in the water!” It was from my wonderful husband to cheer me up.)
  4. Become a humorous people groupie by hanging out with funny people, like my dear friend “Grandma” Doris, a 79-year-old, three-time colorectal cancer survivor, who often livened up our meeting introductions by wearing goofy glasses or showing off her silly souvenirs. (Either you’re a funny friend or you need one!)
  5. Make the most of embarrassing moments. (Did I tell you about the time a pair of my underwear dropped out of my jeans’ pant leg onto the floor of a Christian bookstore while I was shopping there?……….Never mind.)

In his book The Purpose-Driven Life, Rick Warren writes that our first purpose in life is to please God. Or as Warren puts it, “The smile of God is the goal of your life.”[i]

Cancer or any trial in life can and often take things away from us and from our families, but they needn’t take away our goal in life—to please God—to make Him smile.

No matter what you’ve gone through or what still lies ahead—whether you have no cancer, a little cancer or a lot of cancer; whether your trial disappears, grows more intense or perhaps never leaves—will you choose joy? Will you choose to please God and bring a smile to His face? It is your choice. You can choose to keep (or get) a sense of humor even in the shadow of the darkest trial.

I have a blessing for you from the book of Numbers as you try to find joy today:

May the Lord bless you

and protect you.

May the Lord smile on you

and be gracious to you.

May the Lord show you His favor

and give you His peace. (6:24-26)

[i] Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2002), 202.

 

Oct 05

Guaranteed to Survive?

 

 

 

“To what do you attribute your survival?”

That was the question posed to me by a newly diagnosed cancer patient in the office when I was working as a patient advocate. He was just a little younger than me and undergoing chemo for “my” kind of cancer so we had a kind of special bond.

I thought about his question for a moment before I answered: “The grace of God.”

I’m guessing he might have been a little disappointed with my reply as he’d been researching all kinds of complementary treatments and nutritional advice for his cancer fight. I imagine he was hoping I had a vitamin regimen or a diet modification he could adopt.

I did tell him that throughout my treatment I drank green tea, but always wondered if the honey I put in it was canceling out the tea’s benefits. I told him about the supposedly cancer-fighting vitamins I took—at least one of which researchers now say may cause cancer rather than cure it. I told him how my husband and I grew all our own vegetables without any pesticides for years. I mentioned that I cut the sugar out of most things, left the skins on lots of things and I added wheat germ to just about everything. (Some crunchies on your cereal this morning, girls?)

Actually, I was a real health-nut before I got cancer. In fact I was pretty disappointed that all those donuts my husband ate and I passed up hadn’t seemed to help me keep cancer at bay. I think subconsciously I even believed that my healthy eating and exercise routine would guarantee that I wouldn’t be sick—after all, I hadn’t had a cold for four years before I got diagnosed with cancer!

So when people ask me what I did to get cured, I refuse to give credit to anything I did or didn’t do. I did what the doctors advised (well, most of it), but I felt so nauseous I ate whatever tasted good rather than what had the best nutritional value. A short walk was all the exercise I could muster because I was too weak and had too many problems with the allergic reaction to one of my drugs.

I honestly don’t know for sure why I’m still here. I feel uncomfortable suggesting that I did something right to survive cancer because that would mean that my dear friends who did not survive must have done something wrong.

That’s why I say it was the grace of God.

After my diagnosis I remember desperately wanting some guarantees. I wanted to hear that the chemo regimen I was getting had a money-back guarantee, not a 20-percent chance of working on me. I wanted to know for certain that it was going to be all right to refuse the radiation some doctors had recommended for me. I wanted to be assured that if I went through all this difficult treatment that the cancer would not come back despite a 60-percent probability it would.

I ­didn’t get any of these guarantees. And I can tell you that I’ve stopped looking for guarantees here on this earth.

Some of you are trusting in doctors or medical science or alternative therapies for a cure, but despite what you read, they ­don’t have guarantees.

About the only earthly guarantee I can give you is that all of us will experience difficulties, including the breakdown of our physical bodies. But I promise you—more importantly, Jesus the Messiah promises you—we can face these difficulties with unshakable assurance, remaining deeply at peace. Why? Because Jesus has overcome the world by overcoming the power of death in our lives. Jesus already has beaten cancer and every other illness that strikes us on this earth.

And His kind of peace isn’t just the absence of striving; it’s the presence of something much more. The Message Bible paraphrases it this way: I’ve told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world. John 16:33

Now that’s a guarantee I can live with!

Let’s pray today with King David in Psalm 20:7 NIV: Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Amen.

 

 

 

Sep 28

Flying by the Seat of Your Pants?

 

 

I’ve read that an eagle, like many other animals, can sense a storm before it arrives. So the eagle flies to a high spot and waits for the inevitable winds. When the storm hits, the eagle sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it. The eagle does not escape the storm but simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm.

God has allowed a storm in your life, and He will give you His strength to rise above it until He ultimately calms it.

But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. Isaiah 40:31

If you feel that soaring above the storm is hard work, uncomfortable, and sometimes downright scary, you are right! That’s why I use the analogy of a storm—we might not mind one from a distance, but it’s not exactly pleasurable when we’re smack-dab in the middle of a big one.

In fact, flying in a storm is extremely dangerous. My cousin Jim knows this from his half-dozen years of soaring into hurricanes and typhoons as part of a U.S. Air Force weather reconnaissance team. It was his team’s job to gather weather data so forecasters could better predict a storm’s strength.

As they work, it’s critical that team members trust the “artificial horizon”— a line on the plane’s instrument panel that always corresponds to the earth’s horizon, no matter in which direction the plane is flying.

“When you’re in the clouds and in storms and you can’t see the horizon—the earth the ground, good old terra firma—you have to rely on the artificial horizon,” Jim explains. “You have to trust that it is representing the horizon. You have to trust that it represents something you can’t see.”

Because of the extreme variability of the weather, there are two government ratings for pilots: one group is cleared to fly only when there’s good visibility—following Visual Flight Rules—and the other is cleared to fly even in poor visibility because they can keep a plane controlled solely on the data from their instruments—by Instrument Flight Rules. If you recall after John Kennedy Jr.’s fatal plane crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said the young pilot—who only was rated to fly with Visual Flight Rules—had become disoriented in the night sky and lost control of the plane.[1] Experienced pilots are taught to rely on their instrument panel—no matter how they feel—because they can become so disoriented in clouds or during a storm they may actually think they are flying up when they really are heading down.

In the early days of aviation when aircraft had few navigational aids, a successful flight was accomplished mainly by the pilot’s judgment and instincts; that is “flying by the seat of your pants.”

“All you could do was fly by your sensations,” Jim explains. “If you were coming out of your seat, you must be upside down. If you were pressed down into your seat, you must be flying higher.

“The problem is that [our perceptions are] not always accurate. You can feel like you’re flying normal and perfectly fine, but it’s just that the airplane is falling at just the right speed that feels normal. You have to look at your instruments and believe them.”

Flying by the seat of your pants through your storm isn’t a good idea either. Feelings can be overpowering and paralyzing. You may become so disoriented you don’t know whether you’re headed up or down.

That’s why you need to decide every day to trust the magnetic poles of the earth—in other words, to recognize that God’s Word is the compass on your instrument panel in the storms of life. It is truth, which, just like the pilot’s artificial horizon line, always will point you in the right direction.

When the storms of life come, the wicked are whirled away, but the godly have a lasting foundation. Proverbs 10:25

Put your hope in the Lord. Travel steadily along his path. Psalm 37:34

I love author Max Lucado’s perspective[1]: “Faith is trusting what the eye can’t see…Eyes see storms. Faith sees Noah’s rainbow.”

Dear Lord, It’s hard not to focus on the storm around me. Please help me to trust that the promises in Your Word are more reliable than my feelings. Give me the strength to rise above this storm and even the faith to see a rainbow. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

 

[1] “NTSB: Pilot Disorientation Led to Fatal JFK Jr. Crash,” CNN.com, July 6, 2000, http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/07/06/jfk.crash.report.02/index.html.

[2] When God Whispers Your Name, pg. 214, Max Lucado, Thomas Nelson, 2009.

Sep 21

What’s Feeding Your Mind?

 

 

So tell me the truth, when you read the obituaries, do you scan down to the bottom to see if memorial contributions are to be made to the American Cancer Society?

I know I did after my diagnosis. Every night I’d look in the paper to see if someone I had treatment with had died or how many people listed that day had died from cancer. It was a depressing ritual, but one I found hard to break. I guess it was part of those early days when I let cancer consume my thoughts.

It also seemed to me as if the word “cancer” came up daily in conversations or in the celebrity news headlines. If there was all that cancer out there before, I had never noticed it! I guess it’s like what happens when you get a new car and all of a sudden you notice lots of people with the same make and color vehicle.

And thank goodness I had cancer “in the olden days” as I like to call them when I didn’t have Internet access in my home or at my fingertips on a mobile device. I’m pretty sure that vast amount of Web information would have made me feel even more overwhelmed. (I just Googled the term “colon cancer” and up came 28 MILLION sites!) Often when a newly diagnosed patient came into my office for the first time, the patient’s spouse practically begged me to tell the patient to “stop reading everything on the Internet.”

Don’t misunderstand, I’m thrilled at all the information—and encouragement—that is available on the Web, but a good question to ask yourself after your on-line time is: Do I feel better or worse after what I’ve just read? If information makes you feel better equipped to fight the cancer battle, than search away. But if information makes you feel overwhelmed or depressed or fearful, please don’t keep putting such stuff into your head. (Much of it isn’t accurate anyway!)

Instead I would encourage you to fill your mind with the truth that the God who began creation by simply speaking words is a lot more powerful than any possible misguided cells within our bodies and a lot more trustworthy than any statistics in a medical journal.

So stop feeding your mind with a voice of fear and instead allow a strengthening fear to fill your being. I’m talking about the fear of the Lord.

It’s not a “fall down and shake because you’re afraid of getting zapped” kind of fear, but a Wow! kind of fear. It’s the kind where you are just in awe and amazement and wonder and reverence about God because of what He has done and still can do.

It’s this “fear” that I and so many other cancer survivors have discovered reduces all the other fears.

I love how Psalm 112 describes us “fear-filled” kind of people:

Happy are those who fear the Lord.
Yes, happy are those who delight in doing what he commands. . . .
When darkness overtakes the godly, light will come bursting in.
They are generous, compassionate, and righteous. . . .
They do not fear bad news;
they confidently trust the Lord to care for them.
They are confident and fearless
and can face foes triumphantly. Psalm 112:1,4,7-8 NLT-1

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah explained how he, too, learned to have the right kind of fear after God warned him that his country was going to be invaded.

The Lord has said to me in the strongest terms: “Do not think like everyone else does. Do not be afraid that some plan conceived behind closed doors will be the end of you. Do not fear anything except the Lord Almighty. He alone is the Holy One. If you fear him, you need fear nothing else. He will keep you safe.” Isaiah 8:11-14 NLT-1

I don’t know about you, but that’s one voice of fear I always want to hear.

Heavenly Father, Please help me not to feed my mind with fearful things, but instead to confidently trust that You will care for me and my loved ones. Strengthen me not to fear bad news and empower me with fearless confidence to triumphantly face this foe, cancer. Amen.

Sep 14

Hope is the Thing with Feathers

 

 

If you had asked my friend Carollynn what gave her hope throughout her cancer journey, she would have smiled and quickly answered: feathers.

She loved Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Thing with Feathers” which begins:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all

And when she was first diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1995 at the age of forty-six, Carollynn stumbled upon a verse in the Bible that became her favorite:

He will cover you with his feathers.
He will shelter you with his wings.
His faithful promises are your armor and protection. Psalm 91:4 NLT

Even though medical doctors and treatments at that time gave her no hope of surviving more than a few months, this verse gave Carollynn incredible hope. It also started a real fascination with “feathers” and the number 914.

“Whenever I see a feather it reminds me of God’s protection for me,” she told me shortly after moving to the area and joining my support group. “And I like to look for the number 914 on signs to remind me of God’s constant care for me.”

I had to chuckle when eight years after her initial diagnosis Carollynn’s first grandchild was born on her birthday weighing 9 pounds, 14 ounces! When Carollynn passed away just a few months later at 4:19 p.m., her husband, Ed, said he had to smile at what he felt was a last gift from Carollynn to remind him of her special verse.

“One final example of her fabulous humor,” he wrote in an email to friends and family. 

Some of Carollynn’s amazing life under God’s wings was told in a children’s book called Sea Feather, named after the first of many wild ponies she purchased on Chincoteague Island and donated to deserving children. More of her “feather-filled” life was shared in a video that aired on the television network Animal Planet in November 2003, just a month after her passing. (The nonprofit Feather Fund has been established to continue her work of donating wild ponies to children.)[i] When I see feathers today, they remind me of my beautiful friend Carollynn, but they also remind me of my God whose “wings” protect us even in the face of cancer.

Keep me as the apple of your eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings. Psalm 17:8, NIV

Let me live forever in your sanctuary,
safe beneath the shelter of your wings! Psalm 61:4 NLT

Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me. Psalm 63:7-8, NIV

Of course God the Father, who is Spirit, doesn’t have real flesh and blood wings, but He is able to protect us by His awesome power.

Can you feel those “wings” over you—protecting you, shielding you, drawing you close? Have you trusted God enough to truly let Him cover you? He longs to do that for you.

How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me. Jesus speaking in Matthew 23:37

Please let God love you today. Let him draw you close.

 My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.”
And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.” Psalm 27:8

Heavenly Father, Thank You that You love us so much. Thank You that Your loving arms are far bigger than any diagnosis or prognosis. Wrap my friend in that love today. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

[i] Read more about why feathers and Psalm 91:4 meant so much to Carollynn at http://www.featherfund.org/the_story.htm.