Category: strength

Jul 05

An Amazing Story of the First Survivor I Ever Knew

 

 

 

 

“There is something you must always remember.

You are braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

Christopher Robin to Winnie‑the‑Pooh in Pooh’s Most Grand Adventure

I love these words of encouragement from one best friend to another. They were the sentiment of a life-changing pep talk given to me in high school by my dear friend Cecil, who is the first person I knew who survived cancer.

We met in a speech class in the fall of 1968. I was a junior and he was a sophomore at Victor Valley High, where he was without a doubt the best orator. When he chose me to be his debate partner, I was thrilled. I didn’t know that the year before he had been diagnosed with fibrosarcoma (a rare cancer of the soft tissue), only that he always had a large Band-Aid on his forehead and that its self-described “flesh” color did not match his black skin.

I’m not sure if either one of us ever used the “C” word. In the sixties, cancer was something adults whispered about and doctors tried to keep from patients’ knowledge.

“Why do you always wear a Band-Aid?” I naively asked him one day.

“Because I’m very embarrassed about my scars” was his quiet reply.

The scars were the result of multiple surgeries—beginning when he was fifteen—to try to cut away the cancer and extend his life.

“The fibrosarcoma was eating through my skull,” Cecil explained as we chatted on the phone about this chapter.

Back then chemotherapy was in its infancy, and radiation therapy couldn’t possibly be safely aimed at a patient’s head, so his doctors simply sliced away, waited for the cancer to grow back, and then cut it out again.

By the fall of 1968, doctors were so pessimistic about Cecil’s future, they recommended he drop out of high school. “Once it hits the optic nerve, it will go right to the brain. Go home and don’t even worry about school anymore,” they advised.

But Cecil had other plans.

“Not only am I going to go back to school, I’m going to graduate,” he told them. “And not only am I going to graduate, I’m going to go to college. And not only am I going to go to college, I’m going to go to the best college!” he defiantly added.

His equally strong-willed mother approved, saying, “If you want to go back to school, it’s fine with me. I don’t want you to just lie down and die.”

So Cecil went to school, ran track, and played basketball and football, wearing a customized helmet to protect his forehead as he darted downfield with the ball. (Bet that wouldn’t be allowed these days!) Just about every Saturday for the next two years, we were together at a speech meet or a debate competition, eventually becoming the first students from our school to make it to the speech state championships.

But in the summer of 1970, right after I graduated, Cecil’s cancer came back, and more surgery ensued. The hole in Cecil’s forehead was getting rather large, so doctors stitched his left forearm to his forehead for six weeks in an attempt to graft skin there. However, in the fall of 1970, the relentless cancer returned.

Surgeons wanted to operate again and now sew his right arm to his head, but his mother refused. She moved him to another hospital, ignoring the doctor’s warning that if she did he’d be “dead in two weeks.”

Physicians at the new hospital did the same kind of surgery, without stitching his arm to his head. At Cecil’s first recheck, they were pleasantly surprised the cancer had not returned. Three months later, they were shocked to find no sign of it. Three more cancer-free months later, they were speechless.

“We can’t take any credit for this, because we didn’t do anything different from the other doctors,” they told the then-eighteen-year-old Cecil. “The fibrosarcoma was like a runaway freight train on a dry, straight track, and it just stopped. In medicine we call it a spontaneous remission.”

Cecil finished high school, serving as student body president, and went on to graduate with honors from Harvard University, where he played football, ran track, and coached the debate team. As I write, he is a sixty-three-year-old longtime university law professor with many accolades and former students across the country who say his teaching expertise and friendship changed their lives.

“Despite all the dark predictions, I’m alive and doing just fine,” he says. “I believe to this day that God healed me despite all the gloom and doom. And it has never come back because He had other plans for me.”

 

I’m so grateful that meeting Cecil was part of God’s plan for my life. Before we participated in our first debate meet, I was scared and not at all confident in my speaking and writing abilities. I felt insecure because I was the youngest in my class (I graduated at sixteen) and because my father’s job had forced me to twice move midyear to new high schools. But Cecil shared words very similar to Christopher Robin’s with me, and I took them to heart. And as they say, the rest is history.

 

When we face the trials of life. including cancer, we discover the incredible strength of the human spirit as we do things we never thought we could. But I hope you also are discovering that the greatness of God is the reason you are braver, stronger, and smarter than you realized.

 

Find a mirror, look straight into it, and tell yourself: “I am braver than I believe. I am stronger than I seem. I am smarter than I think. God is much greater than I can imagine.”

And then share those words today with someone else who needs to hear them. You never know how God may use them to change a life.

(If the music video below doesn’t automatically load, please copy, paste and click on this link to enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0ynr-qAhUY )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0ynr-qAhUY

Jun 28

Do You Need a Good Cry?

 

 

 

 

You can beat this. Think positive. You can do it. Stay positive.

I know people mean well when they say those things to people facing serious tough times, but I must admit they often rub me the wrong way.

Many caring people uttered those kinds of “encouraging” phrases to me after my cancer diagnosis, but I always had the feeling that they did more for the person saying them than they did for me.

In fact, rather than being comforting and encouraging, those phrases often created more distress in me.

I’m feeling worried the cancer may return, but I have to think positive so the cancer doesn’t come back.

I’m feeling down thinking about all I’ve endured, but I have to think positive so I get healthier.

And the real kicker: If I don’t get cured, it must somehow be my fault because I didn’t think positive enough!

 Don’t get me wrong, I am by nature an optimistic person, but I am also positively positive that being positive all the time is not necessary for those living in cancer’s shadow and in fact I wouldn’t even recommend it for most of us!

In fact, trying to live life by being “up” all the time can create a new problem: “the tyranny of positive thinking.”

That’s the phrase used by Dr. Jimmie Holland, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In her excellent book, The Human Side of Cancer: Living with Hope, Coping with Uncertainty, she explains the phrase:

“All this hype claiming that if you don’t have a positive attitude
and that if you get depressed you are making your tumor grow faster
invalidates people’s natural and understandable reactions to a threat to their lives.
That’s what I mean by the tyranny of positive thinking.” [1]

The truth is, Dr. Holland says,

“stress, depression, and grief do not increase the likelihood that cancer will develop or
 that it will come back if you’ve been treated before.” [2]

I can tell you for sure that if not staying positive made cancer recur, I would have been dead many times over.

Now if by some slim chance you are really the kind of person who likes to think positive all the time, copes with life by always thinking positive and finds it impossible to think any other way, I certainly am not going to tell you to stop thinking positive. But, please don’t expect that everyone else needs to be just like you.

I believe we were created to feel many emotions and that life is best lived when we acknowledge those emotions and express them in a healthy manner. Moreover, I believe tears are really a gift and that everybody—even positively positive people—benefits from a “good cry” now and then.

If you ever tasted a tear trickling down your face, then you know they are salty. But tears are much more than salty water. They’re actually a complex combination of proteins, enzymes, lipids, metabolites and electrolytes.

We all have three different kinds of tears: “normal” tears which continuously keep our eyes lubricated; irritant tears which wash away foreign substances; and emotional tears which we cry for reasons like sadness and pain. Scientists who study tears can look at these tiny drops of water and tell the difference between the first two types and the third kind because emotional tears have much more protein and less oil.

Some tear researchers theorize that emotional tears carry hormones from the brain, which release calming endorphins and flush toxins out of the bloodstream. This helps our body return to a reduced-stress state.

I’m glad my dear friend Norma was willing to cry with me throughout my chemo ordeal. Norma, survived three different cancers before she passed away in her 90s. Her second diagnosis was just a few months before mine, and she called me every month to chat.

“Wanna have a pity party?” she’d ask.

I’d say sure, and for the next half-hour we’d trade poor-me complaints about the side effects of our treatments. Pretty soon we’d had enough moaning and started laughing at ourselves for all the complaining we were doing. (The moral of the story: pity parties are great occasionally; just keep them short and only invite friends who still like to laugh!)

People like Norma and me who don’t repress our tears may have better health, according to many “crying” researchers who think emotional tears may remove toxins from our bodies. Some even theorize that women on average live longer than men because they on average cry twice as much as men!

Many of us need to tell ourselves the truth: that weeping is not a sign of weakness or shame; that tears are indeed a gift to express our deepest feelings. The shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35: Jesus wept. So if the Son of God can cry, I think we can, too.

Lord, I’m thankful that one day in Heaven You will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and until then, I’m positively happy that we don’t have to stay positive all the time! I pray in the Name of Jesus, who wasn’t afraid to weep. Amen.

[1] Jimmie Holland and Sheldon Lewis, The Human Side of Cancer: Living with Hope, Coping with Uncertainty (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), pg. 14.

[2] Ibid, pg. 30-31

If the music video below doesn’t automatically load, please copy, paste and click on this link to enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J46hMyrTL7Y )

Jun 21

The Language of Cancer and the Language of God

 

 

 

 

 

Tumor markers. Monoclonal antibodies. Angiogenesis inhibitors. Stereotactic radiation. MediPort. Neutropenia. Micrometastases…So how are you doing with learning the cancer vocabulary?

Or how about the alphabet soup of acronyms?

CEA, PSA, KRAS, ER/PR, Her-2/neu, VEGF, and BRCA just to name a few.

Yikes! Someone please get me an interpreter or at least a dictionary! (Never mind the dictionary—I just hit spell check on my computer and it didn’t recognize most of the words in the first paragraph!)

I remember after my diagnosis I felt as if I was thrown into a whole new world I hadn’t even known existed and I would have been just as happy to stay oblivious about it! So many terms and phrases were tossed around and basically all I heard was: “You need chemo and radiation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”

But after a while I was forced to stick my head out of my shell and start to learn this foreign language. I discovered my colon cancer was classified back then as Duke’s C-2, meaning it had spread locally to more than three lymph nodes. I found out that 5-Fu was short for fluorouracil, a chemo drug that had been around for many years and no one in Marc’s practice but me had been allergic to it.

By the time I started working for Marc six years after my diagnosis, I had mastered a few of the oncology terms, but was still in for a real education as I worked for the first time in a medical office. I constantly had to ask the nurses for explanations of medical jargon I heard: What’s a DVT? I thought he had a blood clot?

“He does. DVT stands for Deep Vein Thrombosis.”

Why not BC for blood clot?

One day I noticed the nurse Ruth had written the initials “SOB.” next to a patient’s name on the daily schedule. I was curious why she would make such a disparaging remark about the gentleman as he didn’t seem that cranky to me.

Afterward I asked her and when she stopped laughing, she explained that “SOB” stood for “short of breath!”

My personal opinion is that doctors and nurses aren’t all that much smarter than the rest of us—they just have their own special foreign language so we patients don’t feel as bright! (To all my doctor and nurse readers—that was a joke!)

Anyway, I spent almost 20 years learning medical terms and especially oncology phrases so I could throw them around the evening dinner table with my husband: “So, we thought there was nothing we could do for the patient, but the immunohistochemistry showed KIT positive and it’s a GIST and we can use a tyrosine kinase inhibitor!  Isn’t that great news?!”

My husband barely could contain his excitement as he asked me to pass the salt.

Even though I may have gone a little overboard with learning the medical language, I have been amazed to learn about the human body’s intricacies. Our bodies are so complex that, in some ways, I’m not as surprised they break down, but am more surprised that they don’t break down more often!

The Human Genome Project completed in 2003 identified the 20,000+ genes in the human body and sequenced the 3 billion chemical base pairs that comprise our DNA or hereditary code of life. The head of the project, Dr. Francis Collins explains that the DNA in each human is 3 billion letters long and written in a “strange and cryptographic four-letter code.” The code is so complex, Collins says, that if someone were to read it out loud at three letters per second, it would take thirty-seven years!

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it! Psalm 139:13, 14

Collins is one of the world’s leading scientists and also a man of Christian faith who calls our DNA “the language of God.”

“We have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God,”[1] Collins said when the genome project’s completion was announced.

He later wrote: “Science is not threatened by God; it is enhanced. God is most certainly not threatened by science; He made it all possible.”[2]

You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. Psalm 139:15

So just maybe the next time you hear some multi-syllabic medical words that seem overwhelming, you can allow them to remind you that you are “fearfully and wonderfully made” by the Creator of the Universe and that your tomorrows are safe in His hands.

You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. Psalm 139:16

Lord, Thank You for doctors and nurses and researchers who are trying to cure cancer and continue to write the new language of cancer. And thank you that our very DNA is “the language of God’  and speaks to us about how wonderfully we are made. In Jesus Name. Amen.

[1] Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, pg. 3, Francis S. Collins, Free Press, 2007

[2] Language of God, pg. 233.

(If the music video below doesn’t automatically load, please copy, paste and click on this link to enjoy ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5eMMmKpJCo&list=RDz5eMMmKpJCo#t=51 )

 

 

Jun 07

Yes, there IS life after cancer!

 

 

 

 

This past Sunday was National Cancer Survivor’s Day— a holiday to celebrate survivors and remind them and their caregivers that there really is life after a cancer diagnosis.

So when do you know that you or your loved one is a cancer survivor? When the scan comes back clear? When the tumor marker is normal? When the treatment is finished? When there’s no evidence of any cancer?

I was diagnosed June 26, 1990, with Stage 3 colon cancer. I still am cancer-free and count myself as a very blessed survivor. But even if the cancer had returned, I would still count myself as a survivor because I agree with the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship when it labels cancer patients as survivors “from the moment of diagnosis and for the balance of life.”

I didn’t always think that way.

I used to think that you if you lived five years cancer-free after a diagnosis you were a cured cancer survivor.

I remember going in for my five-year oncology checkup in the summer of 1995 (before I started working in Marc’s office) and gleefully announcing to Marc that I wouldn’t be seeing him professionally anymore. (I’m not quite sure how I got that notion, but I hear many others say the same kind of thing. We’ve probably made that association because statisticians often give data on five-year survival rates for different types of cancer.)

“Where did you get that idea?” Marc responded.

It’s five years; I’m cured!” I told him; surprised that he didn’t realize it was such a momentous day.

“Well, the chance the cancer will return has diminished greatly, but you still need to be checked for the rest of your life,” Marc soberly explained.

Talk about bursting someone’s bubble!

I waited five years to be proclaimed a survivor and there was going to be no such official announcement.

Thankfully, a short time after that day I read the above-mentioned survivorship definition from the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship and proclaimed myself a survivor.

So I hope you’re not waiting for some mythical five-year mark to earn the label of cancer survivor. Anyone who has survived even one minute since diagnosis already is a survivor! Believe it!

Before I retired in 2015, I loved watching and listening to those survivors in my support group who had medically incurable cancer, but still found much happiness. Because of their circumstances others might say these folks have the right to be fairly fearful. But these “incurable” survivors have come to realize—as have those of us who are cured—that we don’t need the right circumstances to be happy, but we do need to believe the right things about our circumstances to be happy.

It’s important what you believe about yourself and your loved ones. When I finished treatment for my cancer, the odds the cancer would come back were greater than the odds it wouldn’t. That doesn’t sound like a situation that would make a person very happy. But what I believed about my circumstances did give me joy.

I believed the truth that I was already a cancer survivor.

For as he thinks within himself, so he is. Proverbs 23:17

And I believed the truth that nothing, including cancer and its treatment, can diminish God’s great love for me.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today or our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. Romans 8:38

I also believed the truth that God didn’t need good odds to heal me, that there are people everywhere surviving despite their odds.

For nothing is impossible with God. Luke 1:37

You and your loved ones have survived a cancer diagnosis. God obviously has plans for your life or you wouldn’t still be here. Ask Him to shine His light on your path and then don’t be afraid to follow where He leads.

Will you pray from Psalm 119 with me? Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light for my path. I’ve promised it once, and I’ll promise it again: I will obey your wonderful laws. I have suffered much, o LORD, restore my life again as you promised. Amen.

If the music video below doesn’t automatically load, please copy, paste and click on this link to enjoy  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewD9aRxnzec )

 

May 17

How to Fly into (and out of!) a Hurricane

 

 

 

 

 

The more I talk with my cousin Jim about his days of flying with an Air Force weather reconnaissance team, the more I believe that the trials of life—cancer included—are a lot like flying into a hurricane…both require an inordinate amount of trusting.

Jim agrees with my observation and says it was difficult at first for him to trust he was going to be okay as his plane flew right into the eye of a storm.

“There’s a lot of trust going on when you’re going into harm’s way,” he explains. “You have to trust in the plane and the people who made it. You have to trust in the people who maintain the plane and that it won’t fall apart. And you have to trust the other crew members that they know what they’re doing. And they all have to trust in you—that you will do the right thing, too.

“But the more you do it, the more you know it’s going to be okay,” adds Jim, who has flown 44 times into the eye of hurricanes and typhoons.

Jim says the scariest part of the team’s mission to gather weather data is the five or 10 minutes just before the plane actually flies into the eye of the storm.

“You usually have to fly right through thunderstorms—which of course you normally would never do—and the turbulence is sometimes so severe you’re really glad you’re strapped into your seat,” he explains.

But what happens next is so incredible it helps keep people like my cousin flying again and again into the eye of the storm.

“When you break through the eye wall, dramatically and suddenly the turbulence stops,” Jim explains. “What was black and bleak is now calm, sunny, quiet, beautiful and really awe-inspiring. There’s blue sky above you and you’re like a little fish in the bottom of a bowl. You’ve found the exact calm center.”

 

Now I fully realize that unlike my cousin Jim, you have not chosen to fly into a hurricane. I also realize I can’t change the fact that your life has been touched by an imperfect storm, that your world has fallen apart and that you are trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. But I believe with all my heart that when God meets your pain, the Creator of the Universe is able to lead you to the exact calm center. I don’t really understand how He does it anymore than I understand how the middle of a hurricane can be beautifully quiet. But my cousin Jim has been there so I believe him and God’s Word promises it so I believe Him.

 “Be still, and know that I am God!…” Psalm 46:10

That’s where we find the exact calm center. It’s the place where we can relax in the tight grip of a sovereign God. We relax not because everything is okay, but because we know the One who is in control…and will one day in Heaven make everything okay.

Here’s how some other Bible versions translate that verse:

“Cease striving and know that I am God;” NASB

“Desist, and know that I [am] God.” Young’s Literal Translation

“Let be and be still, and know (recognize and understand) that I am God.” Amplified Bible

God says, “Calm down, and learn that I am God.” Contemporary English Version

The word translated “still” in Psalm 46:10 is the Hebrew word “harpu.” I’m no Hebrew scholar, but I did some research and found it conveys the idea of being weak, letting go, surrendering or releasing. It’s the opposite of striving with our arms up, ready to fight or at least defending ourselves. When we are “harpu,” our arms are at their sides, relaxed.

There’s a great story in the Old Testament that I think illustrates this idea. It’s found in 2 Chronicles 20. The short background of the story is that the Jewish King Jehoshaphat was told that some great armies were coming to attack him. His response was not atypical from what ours might be—he “was terrified and begged the Lord for guidance.” (2 Chronicles 20:3) Shortly, God answers his prayer by sending His Spirit to speak through one of the king’s men:

 He said, “Listen, all you people of Judah and Jerusalem! Listen, King Jehoshaphat! This is what the Lord says: Do not be afraid! Don’t be discouraged by this mighty army, for the battle is not yours, but God’s. Tomorrow, march out against them. You will find them coming up through the ascent of Ziz at the end of the valley that opens into the wilderness of Jeruel. But you will not even need to fight. Take your positions; then stand still and watch the Lord’s victory. He is with you, O people of Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid or discouraged. Go out against them tomorrow, for the Lord is with you!” 2 Chronicles 20:15-17

The king and his people believed God and began to worship Him, praise Him and sing to Him. At the very moment they did this, the Bible says God caused the approaching armies to fight amongst themselves and kill each other. The Israelites won the battle without a fight because God fought for them.

Standing still does not logically sound like a good way to win a battle. But then God’s ways are not our ways, are they? The armies coming against Jehoshaphat were way too large and powerful to be defeated by him. The situation was hopeless from his perspective—but it was hope-filled from God’s vantage point.

I know you or your loved one are in a difficult battle. Perhaps you at times feel the problem is too large and powerful for you and your situation is hopeless. But it is not really your battle—it is the Lord’s. Sometimes He will fight through you (when you need to push on through the pain) and other times He will fight for you. At those times, you can do as Jehoshaphat and the Israelites did: stand still and watch the Lord’s victory.

Be still, dear friend, and know that He is God.

(Today’s music video below is an instrumental with the lyrics–I hope you’ll sing along! If it doesn’t automatically load, please copy and paste this link to enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl6h3ML2ut4 )