Best "Cancer Advice" I've received

Nearly two weeks out from my second chemo treatment and I'm feeling fairly close to normal. In case I haven't mentioned it, chemo and the associated drugs (steroids and anti-nausea, etc.) do quite a number on your digestive system. However, my system is getting back on track and, as Martha Stewart would say, "It's a good thing." :~)

My eyes have been twitching a lot the last couple of days and I just thought it was annoying, but didn't associate it with chemo. It was nearly driving me crazy today, though, so I searched for "eye twitch" on the discussion boards on breastcancer.org and discovered that indeed, eye twitching is associated with neuropathy from the Taxotere chemo drug.

I wish someone would have mentioned it, really. I purchased some L-Glutamine to take in case I had "peripheral neuropathy," but I thought it would be tingling in my fingers and toes. I never thought it would be eye twitching, for crying out loud! So, now that I know, I'm on it . . . I took some L-Glutamine right away. Let's see if it works.

All of this got me to thinking about how little information a patient is truly given at the doctor's office. Most of what I know about side effects, chemo drugs, etc., I know because I've been reading the Internet and picking up recommended books along the way.

It distresses me that physicians don't spend more time educating their patients. I've had to bring up most of the topics on my own. What's with that? It makes me a little indignant on behalf of people who may not have the wherewithal to access good information or know what questions to ask.

So, on to my main topic: I have been meaning to mention what follows ever since I started this blog, but never got around to it:

Three days after I was first diagnosed with breast cancer last July, I received an email from my cousin, Tim, who lives in Texas. He had forwarded an article that ex-White House Press Secretary Tony Snow had written about having cancer.

I had seen Tony Snow's article months before and remembered how well written it was. But reading it a second time after my own cancer diagnosis, it came into much clearer focus and truly resonated with me.

Tim did not know that I had been diagnosed with cancer that week when he forwarded the article. When I responded by thanking him for the article and telling him that I had just been diagnosed, he wrote, "I almost didn't send the Tony Snow piece to you. I was entering email addresses and I thought, 'Oh, I don't want to flood Dana with all my pass alongs.' But, something told me to send it to you. I now know that something was that still, small, voice of God."

Here's an excerpt from Tony Snow's article that especially connected with me:

We want lives of simple, predictable ease,- smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see, - but God likes to go off-road. He provokes us with twists and turns. He places us in predicaments that seem to defy our endurance; and comprehension - and yet don't. By His love and grace, we persevere.

The challenges that make our hearts leap and stomachs churn invariably strengthen our faith and grant measures of wisdom and joy we would not experience otherwise.

'You Have Been Called'. Picture yourself in a hospital bed. The fog of anesthesia has begun to wear away. A doctor stands at your feet, a loved one holds your hand at the side.! "It's cancer," the healer announces.

The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to serve as a cosmic Santa. "Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything simpler."

But another voice whispers: "You have been called." Your quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that matter,- and has dragged into insignificance the banal concerns that occupy our "normal time."

There's another kind of response, although usually short-lived, an inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying moment of calamity has swept away everything trivial and tiny, and placed before us the challenge of important questions.

The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft.

Faith may be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies.

Wow. I mean, really . . . wow. Tony Snow encapsulates the feeling that I think all cancer patients understand. Three days after sitting in a doctor's office and hearing the words, "It's breast cancer, " I experienced the same feeling of being called. Here's what I wrote to Tim:

It's funny that Tony Snow mentioned being "called." That's a feeling I've had, too, since the diagnosis. It sounds strange when referring to something like cancer, but I know that I will have to marshal all of the faith, courage, and hope that I've ever had within me. I am weak and fall far short. I pray daily for the Lord to give me more faith, more courage, more hope to endure my trial.

Tim had also experienced cancer himself the prior year and is a survivor. I asked him if he had any advice to give me and here's what he wrote (and by the way, this is the best "cancer advice" I have ever received, so thank you, Tim!):

There are so many different things I could say, but for now I'm going to keep it short.

1. Stay positive! I can't stress this enough. Trust God. Don't ask for things that you don't personally know He's promised you, just trust Him.

2. Stay busy. Live your life as if you're going to be here another 50 years. Don't give cancer a single second to seep into your belief system. I was so busy with my business that I didn't have time to even think about cancer. I think that was a key to keeping positive. Beating cancer or any disease is so, so, so influenced by your mental state. "A merry heart doeth good, like medicine."

3. After you've beaten it, get mad at it and attack it with everything you've got to give. I believe us survivors are meant to help other people that are going through cancer and to help find a cure for it.

4. Most important: Don't let your imagination go to the dark places that it will try to take you. The only time during every phase of my battle that I got down was when I would picture in my mind a scene of my deathbed, with my family saying goodbye. I still can't go there. I think it's the Enemy trying to get you off course when that happens. I would instantly fight that picture when it would appear and go to hope and the future with my family instead.

5. Believe in your purpose. I KNEW God had me here for a reason that I had not fulfilled yet and I have a feeling that you know the same thing about yourself. Believe it, count on it, and plan on it. Focus on the future of living out what God has in store for you.

6. And when you've done all that, just trust Him. He knows what you need far more than you do or anybody else for that matter.

I have reflected on Tim's words more times than I can count. When I received his advice, I was stuck. I was scared, depressed, and fearful of the future. I wasn't sure how to move forward.

As soon as I read what he had to say--someone who has been there himself--I knew what I had to do. I got busy with living and moving forward. A couple of weeks later, I wrote Tim:

I don't know if you realize how much you helped me when you wrote that email. I was still really struggling with my diagnosis and anxiety about the unknown. Your "pep talk" really focused me on getting back into life, keeping busy, and placing my fears into God's hands.

Yep . . . best cancer advice I've received. Close runner-up would have to be the advice to cut my hair and buy a wig before it fell out. :-)

Maybe next blog post will be about the worst cancer advice I've received. Now there's some humorous material . . .