Recommendations for Newly Diagnosed Patients

1. Don't despair! The diagnosis "breast cancer" sounds horrible, but women go through this every day and come out strong and go on to live healthy lives. And don't obsess about how you got it  -- I lived a healthy lifestyle and had no known risk factors but got it anyway. My oncologist said that's true of most patients.
2. Bring someone along to early doctor appointments, not only for moral support but to write down all the information and next steps. It's overwhelming to suddenly find yourself a (potential) cancer patient and confusing to remember the many, many details while in the middle of such an emotional situation.
3. Start a folder or 3-ring binder for all the information you'll be given. Again, have the person who accompanies you to appointments write everything down for you so you can just listen.
4. Check the public library for the most up-to-date edition of Susan Love's Breast Book. It's a great resource for any woman -- diagnosed or just concerned about breast health. It's detailed and all-encompassing . For a quick resource that covers the basics, try: http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/types/idc/treatment/local.jsp
5. Get plugged into a group of local survivors and/or patients. They are brimming with practical advice and can guide you toward nearby resources. It should be easy to find a group through your local hospital, your breast surgeon, or YWCA 
6. Usually the breast surgeon is the consulting doctor who gives you the most information. She/he should be pro-active in addressing your concerns (should know what patients need to know) and should tell you who to contact if you think of more questions after your appointment (most breast surgeons have a very caring staff and/or give out their email address). If you are not comfortable with this person and their staff, ask around to find another doctor. Also, unless you have any unusual or life-threatening case, it shouldn't be necessary to seek out The World's Most Famous and Highly Acclaimed Doctor -- most treatment is standard (not including reconstruction; see below). But you'll might feel better if you get surgeon recommendations from other patients or meet other patients with the same surgeon as you.  
7. Breast reconstruction should be covered by most insurance companies and -- to me -- made a major difference in my emotional well-being during and after treatment.  I recommend interviewing several specialists, because philosophies and techniques vary HUGELY. Some do quite drastic rearrangements of your tissues... There are many options available, and YOU should be allowed to chose among them. If you don't like a particular doctor's methods or feel that he/she is pushing you to accept their preferred technique, try someone else. A local support group is very helpful for learning about reconstruction options (assuming the participants aren't all using the same medical group) or final results.

Advice for Others

It's such an honor when a friend or acquaintance (or friend's acquaintance!) confides in me about her health and asks me to describe the early steps of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. On one hand, it's disturbing how many people are diagnosed or have "a scare". On the other hand, I love being of use to others, to share what I've learned, to be that voice of experience I needed in my own frantic early moments.

I haven't forgotten the fear or confusion:

• I remember obsessing about risk factors and toxins in my environment and HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED TO ME????
• I remember the worst-case-scenario thinking when my lump was first found: imagining my children as motherless before their eighth grade graduations; crying at the thought of missing Sally's wedding or never meeting Huckle's firstborn child. Picturing all those Kodak Moments without me...
• I remember the frustration of health insurance -- the difficulty finding providers nearby; being told by my ob/gyn that I needed to find a breast surgeon to get a diagnosis and then being told by surgeons' receptionists that they had no appointments available for at least 1 month unless I already had a diagnosis.
• I remember being unable to read about cancer, being frozen with terror. As a researcher with sufficient background to understand medical jargon and sufficient interest to typically love reading up on medical conditions, I was very surprised at my inability to read about my own condition.

When women confide in me, they are often apologetic. "I didn't want to burden anyone with this," they say when they find a lump or are scheduled for a biopsy. "I'm sorry to ask you this."

My dear friend, please let me share this burden with you. It's a privilege for me to be your confidante and friend and prayer partner. You should not face this alone. Sometimes I felt so scared that I could not think or pray or do anything; I was frozen in my fears, unable to make decisions, or separate what "is" from what "might be".

"It's probably nothing," you say. My dear friend, I hope it is nothing. But please don't feel you need to minimize this valid concern. The lump might be nothing, but the fears are not nothing -- they are genuine. How do you cope with fear?

For many women, it helps to tell someone, whether a spouse or a parent or a complete stranger. Talking about our problems aloud -- voicing our fears -- is the first step in moving forward. Also, before you "protect" your family by not sharing your fears, think about how you would feel if they didn't share their valid fears with you. Do you really feel burdened when someone close to you confides in you, or do you feel privileged to journey beside them or closer to them because they trust you? You might be surprised by who rallies to your side when things get tough.

But I have another, much more important way I cope with fear: I cope through prayer. I am a Christian, a follower of Christ. I believe, as taught in the Bible, God is both all-powerful and all-loving. His ultimate goal for you is to have you by his side in heaven for eternity -- the perfect friendship with the perfect Friend who never lets you down. Yes, life here on earth will be tough. It just is. That's not a sign that God doesn't love you or isn't powerful enough to makes things go smoothly for you. Rather, God uses this sometimes rotten world to draw us closer to him -- to prove his allegiance to us and let us grow our allegiance to him. Prayer is calling out to God in our fear or frustration or joy or sadness. It's like telling a trusted friend all your hopes and fears. The difference is that this Friend listens perfectly, cares perfectly, meets our needs perfectly -- his plan for you cannot be frustrated or fail, no matter what happens on this earth.

 Resting in the God who loves you can take you much farther -- to much better places -- than good health or good friends or any other earthly "good". Just something to think about. You are welcome to email me if you have any questions or want to talk.

Romans 15:13, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

My Cup of Chicken Soup Overfloweth

Hello again! It's been a long time since I posted on this cancer-related blog. That is mainly/wonderfully/thankfully because I don't have cancer anymore. My life has moved on and so have my thoughts and doings.

That's a huge, big deal not to be taken lightly. I feel like a compatriot of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego: I was brought through a fiery furnace unharmed, unsinged, unscorched, without even the smell of fire on my clothing (Daniel 3:27). In modern American life, that means I am not emotionally singed or scorched. I do not go out among people, constantly reminding them of how bad things have happened in my life. I no longer mourn. I do not see myself as a victim deserving pity and special treatment.

However, this doesn't imply that I have forgotten the experience or have not been changed by it. Quite the opposite. While I do not spend every day dwelling on the experience (in fact, when people at church ask how I'm feeling, I go through a moment of surprise at their kind concern before remembering that they mean cancer-wise), I certainly was burnished by the fire.

That's what I mean to record. Rather than leave this blog untended, I will go back to complete it for the sake of others and as an act of joy for myself. I will pull from my private writings to give a more complete picture of the experience and I will extend the posts to include reflections on life enriched by trial and on struggles I still face. Oh, and plenty of reflections on the pleasure of regrown hair, something I never would have expected to bring me such satisfaction.

My main reason for revisiting this blog right now is that a new opportunity has been presented. I wrote of a cancer-related experience that has been accepted in a book in the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series:

The book will be available on October 23, 2012 (my daughter's 8th birthday!).

While I did not specifically mention God in the book submission, He is the underpinning of my hope and my life, the current that carries me along and directs my course. And so, in my "by-line" in the book, I mentioned this blog and mean to use it to fill in more details of my story. So don't be surprised if new posts appear about past events -- it's just me completing the picture by moving material from my private writings into this blog.

Re-thinking Re-learning

There are certain life lessons that I need to relearn over and over again. It's frustrating. I feel stuck in a rut, spinning my wheels on the road to personal development and Christian growth. I'm embarrassed by my thickheadedness, my lack of progress. I imagine God as a long-suffering schoolteacher, sighing and saying, Didn't we already cover this material? We had a whole unit on this last year.

Case in point: I was thinking this morning about my son's difficulty understanding that my love for him transcends his behavior and accomplishments. He tries hard to please me and feels terrible after misbehaving. He craves my praise for perfect math scores, completed projects, good penmanship, beautiful drawings, well-made beds, fast running, clever invention ideas. He even feels the need to confess to me his wrong-doings, even if they don't relate to me, even after making proper amends, and even though we've talked many times about God's freely-given forgiveness upon our confession to Him.

Yes, this transparency can be reassuring. I often know exactly what he is thinking and how he behaved at school. But it's uncomfortable to have that sort of power in his life and to realize that my imperfect parenting can have potentially devastating effects on his psyche.

Why does he crave my approval? I realize it's partly my fault: his behavior -- good or bad -- and his accomplishments are what I comment on most often. They are tangible and visible and are often windows to his soul and mind, which are what I really love. I love my son for who he is, not what he does.

I sat on the couch this morning after doing my devotions and tried to assess whether I've been doing a good job of getting this point across to my son. Why does he still crave my approval? I've told him many times "I love you for who you are, not what you do", so what more can I do? Are my actions or words are sending a different and wrong message? What must I do to get him past this?

Then it struck me: that's exactly what God is trying to teach me. Again and again, I worry that I'm not accomplishing enough in my life, that I'm not bearing enough spiritual fruit or using my gifts properly, that I'm not making decent time on the road of life. But God doesn't love me for what meager ways I serve Him or for what legacy I might leave on this earth. He loves me for who I am regardless of what I accomplish or how I behave.  I need to learn the very lesson I'm trying to teach my son.

But why did this thought strike me as being so new, so important? I've already had an in-depth lesson -- a whole unit of lessons -- on this very topic. Let's go back a mere nine months ago and there it is: a lesson well-learned during chemotherapy about how God loves me even when I'm stuck on the couch in extreme, drug-induced exhaustion, unable to serve my family or work or do much more than stare ahead at some mindless television program. I even wrote a devotion for MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers, International) on this very topic. How hypocritical to have written about an important lesson learned, only to find myself struggling with the same concept less than a year later. I must not have properly learned, since here I am again. The disappointed teacher in my mind crosses off the A+ on my paper and writes a big red F for failure.

I know this mental image is wrong. God is not a strict schoolteacher grading my performance. I want to develop a new, more godly attitude toward this purported failure, this spinning of my wheels. I can see how God can use my need to relearn as a way to continue His good work in me. Here are some thoughts to incorporate into a new attitude:

1. The need to re-learn is a lesson in humility. I can use each lesson to remind myself that I am a sinner doing what sinners do: sinning. I need God constantly, I am not ever going to outgrow my need for Him.
2. My re-visited lessons are not the same every time, not like a child's board game where an unlucky spin of the wheel takes you back to the first square. Each lesson builds on the foundation laid with the others. A lesson re-visited is a signpost pointing back to God's faithfulness along the road. I look back and see that God has been patiently paving my road with His patience and goodness, and He will continue to do so along the road ahead.
3. I need to think of re-visited lessons not as ruts but as themes. Just as a well-written book has themes, so can a well-lived life. A theme is meant to be revisited over time and in a variety of different ways. One of my life themes is that God loves me regardless of what I accomplish. He is developing this theme and building on this theme in rich and varied ways through my life experiences. My legacy can be a record of His patient faithfulness to a stumbling soul.

When my son gets home from school this afternoon, I will tell him again how much I love him, regardless of what he accomplished or how he behaved today. I will try to tell him this every day, to make it a theme in our relationship and to use it to point him toward our God who loves us perfectly: who is able to forgive the same sin over and over again and re-teach the same lesson over and over again. I will continue to monitor my imperfect parenting and to gently point my son toward God (not mom), but I will not look for proof of progress; I will not expect my son to "accomplish" in this lesson. Instead, I will strive to reflect God's patience by a willingness to revisit lessons for my son in unconditional love.