We all have questions in our lives. Everyone of us has faced a trial where we just didn't understand why it was happening to us, what the purpose was or why like others we were not taken out of the trial.
Sometimes it seems that we have been faithful to the church, faithful in prayer and faithful to God and then when a trial comes our way we are forced to walk through the fire. And yet again there are others who have never served God one day in their lives and when they are faced with similar circumstances they are delivered immediately with seemingly no pain or "trial."
Why does this happen? I wish I knew. I have had similar questions of late. I often wonder, why is this happening to us? Why wasn't I healed instantly and spared the pain and suffering? Why isn't it over? Why, why why??
Yes, I will be honest with you, I do have questions, and not many answers. Sometimes we will never have answers to the questions life presents to us.
Sometimes it is a struggle to hope when all hope has been taken away, trust when we feel we can't trust anyone and have faith when we feel that all of our faith has been slowly drained away in a sea of unanswered questions. As humans, we will have questions. That is normal and natural. We cannot stop our fallible brains from constantly questioning the circumstances we are faced with.
But there is a difference between questions and doubt. True, questions can lead to doubt but then am I supposed to blindly walk through life somehow shutting off my brain and not questioning anything? I think not.
I will be completely honest with you and admit, yes, I do have questions. I don't understand why this is happening and sometimes it is a struggle to "keep the faith" and not become angry and bitter with God and man.
Yes, I question; but I do not doubt.
I don't doubt God, I don't doubt His Word. I do not doubt that God sees the big picture and somehow in the midst of this storm He is working everything for my good. I don't doubt that in the fire, God is there and He will direct my path. I do not doubt that God can heal and I don't doubt that He will heal me, but I don't know how and when that healing will come. Will it be a miracle? Or come through the hands of my doctor after great pain and suffering?
I have questions, but not doubt.
Several years back, I faced what I considered at the time to be the worst trial of my life. I attended a small church and there was no youth group and no support from the leadership. During this trial I had no one to turn to for help and encouragement. I learned that my relationship was with God and not the church. Over the years I had mistakenly developed a relationship with the church but not God.
Oh I thought my relationship was with God but when my faith in man was tested I realized that I had placed my faith and trust in man and not God.
I grabbed my Bible and began to dig out a prayer life and walk with God. There were many sleepless nights that I cried myself to sleep and when I felt that all hope was lost I would open the Word of God and find the strength that I needed to face another day.
Over the years my Bible has become worn and faded. There are tear stains on those pages and many passages are marked and highlighted. The cover is worn and the words hardly recognizable but I love that old Bible. When I need to hear the voice of God I don't pick up my new Bible, I always go to my old, worn out one because I have pages marked where God brought me through different trials in my life.
My former pastor liked to call that "bear hides on the wall." Now I thank God for every trial I went through in the past because if I hadn't slain the lion and the bear I would never be able to face the Goliath that I am fighting now.
I know one day, maybe years from now I will be able to look back and thank God for this trial. He has showed himself to be so real and true through all of this. I have never felt so close to God as I have in the midst of this storm.
Alot of people like to skip right past the part about the lion and bear and let's just forget that David had to face Goliath and they jump straight to the passage of David being a "Man after God's own heart." We all tell of how David was such a humble man, a man of great strength and wisdom and how he was a wonderful king.
But first, before he could be great for God he had to become little. In the back woods of the hill country, where nobody else was watching, no metals to be won and no songs to be sung, David had to face the lion and bear to protect what was his.
When the day came to face Goliath, David did not arm himself with the Kings armor but he used his old, trusty weapons. He had a tried and true weapon that He knew worked. It was already marked with the blood of previous enemies and had some "tear stains" on it if I can put it that way.
David put his trust in the Lord and in the end, he was victorious.
I know there is much to be said for "positive thinking" and building ones self up through a positive attitude and I believe in all of that. I am not scorning those things, please don't get me wrong.
But when I face Goliath, I need a little more than just a positive attitude. I want to know that the weapon I have used to slaughter the other giants in my life is still by my side because I have tried that weapon and I know it works.
I will fight and overcome this Goliath just like I did the lion and bear. I will fight with the Sword of the Lord (God's Word) and with prayer.
I recently spoke to the Christian School at my church and one thing I told them was to grab their Bible, cry over it, let their tears stain the pages, highlight it and become familiar with it.
I know, when great trials come and they must face Goliath if they have the weapon that is tried and true they will always come out a victor. Yes, there will be battle scars and there will be hurt and pain but in the end, they will overcome by the Blood of the Lamb and the Word of their testimony.
Blessings,
-Amy
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
Test Result Update
So for those of you who haven't heard my recent update on my test results I will explain everything here.
I received my latest test results from my PET scan last Friday, June 8 and I must admit, it wasn't at all what I had hoped for.
After 8 months of chemo and 22 rounds of radiation I was really expecting to hear that all of the cancer was gone and I was free to go and live my life.
On the contrary, my doctor greeted me with a concerned expression and began asking me how I was feeling. I replied that I felt great and "normal." I joined the gym in May and have been working out regularly both cardio and strength training. I also joined a Zumba class which I have enjoyed immensely.
I dare say I have out worked many of my younger and healthier friends!
Needless to say, with this wonderful report of my recovery I was expecting my doctor to be quite impressed. He wasn't.
He showed us my first PET scan back in July of last year and as expected, the tumor on my right lung was glowing bright orange and completely covered my lung. He pointed out to us that the cancer was very 'alive' and active at that time.
Then he pulled up my latest test results from May 29, 2012 and at first, I couldn't see anything on the lung. Both lungs were completely black, which is air and is supposed to look like that.
Then my doctor zoomed in and I could see three very tiny pink spots on the outer ring of the right lung about the size of a nickel.
He explained that it could just be inflammation from allergies or it could be some small areas of lymphoma still holding on. The only way we will know for sure is to do a biopsy.
There are two types of biopsy that is available for testing the spots on my lung. I could have a CT biopsy where they would take a CT scan while going in through my chest wall and biopsying the spots with long needles or I could have another surgical biopsy where they would remove the upper lobe of my right lung (and possibly more) and cut the lung into sections and test the spots that way. The spots are too small simply just to remove them from the lung.
My doctor didn't recommend the CT biopsy because I had 5 of those the first time around just trying to figure out what type of cancer I had and as large as the mass was they still never gathered any live cells.
So it looks like my only option at this point will be to have a surgical biopsy, lose a lobe of my lung to testing and hope that it's just inflammation and not cancer.
I will speak with the surgeon who performed my first biopsy sometime in the next week to discuss my options.
If it's just inflammation from something as minor as allergies or a cold, they will still remove the inflamed part of the lung, sew me up and just watch me. No treatments or further testing will be necessary at that time.
If it is proved to be cancerous, they will remove the infected part of the lung and then do hard chemo for about a month.
For hard chemo, I would be kept in a state of drug induced coma for the duration of the treatments, and they would remove all of my bone marrow via IV just as if I was donating blood. They would then run in the chemo treatments and basically strip me of everything. My doctor told me they would take me down to nothing as if I was a newborn baby starting out all over again. I would lose all of my hair, DNA chain would be slightly changed, blood type might change and I would have to have all of my infant and toddler shots all over again.
During these treatments they would grow my bone marrow and create stem cells from my own blood. This process is called "stem cell transplants."
At the end of this process they would re-inject my bone marrow back into my body along with the stem cells they had grew and I would slowly be brought out of the coma state.
This process and treatment is extremely risky and used as a last resort only because the process itself can kill you.
BUT if you go through it and survive you are forever cured of Lymphoma and it can never come back because the DNA and cells in your body that were compiled to create the cancer cells have been broken and destroyed forever. This is not to say that you wouldn't get another type of cancer though as this process only cures Lymphoma.
I pray that I do not have to experience this as it would be harder than anything I have been through so far. I am asking anyone and everyone who reads this to please pray for me and my husband.
Add us to your prayer list at church and please hold us up in your daily prayer time as we are asking God for a miracle that I won't have to experience this.
I will update my blog after we speak with the surgeon and see what he recommends.
As it stands now, we really don't know anymore than we did before seeing the doctor except that there is still something on the lung. It could be inflammation or cancer, at this point we won't know until further testing is done.
I received my latest test results from my PET scan last Friday, June 8 and I must admit, it wasn't at all what I had hoped for.
After 8 months of chemo and 22 rounds of radiation I was really expecting to hear that all of the cancer was gone and I was free to go and live my life.
On the contrary, my doctor greeted me with a concerned expression and began asking me how I was feeling. I replied that I felt great and "normal." I joined the gym in May and have been working out regularly both cardio and strength training. I also joined a Zumba class which I have enjoyed immensely.
I dare say I have out worked many of my younger and healthier friends!
Needless to say, with this wonderful report of my recovery I was expecting my doctor to be quite impressed. He wasn't.
He showed us my first PET scan back in July of last year and as expected, the tumor on my right lung was glowing bright orange and completely covered my lung. He pointed out to us that the cancer was very 'alive' and active at that time.
Then he pulled up my latest test results from May 29, 2012 and at first, I couldn't see anything on the lung. Both lungs were completely black, which is air and is supposed to look like that.
Then my doctor zoomed in and I could see three very tiny pink spots on the outer ring of the right lung about the size of a nickel.
He explained that it could just be inflammation from allergies or it could be some small areas of lymphoma still holding on. The only way we will know for sure is to do a biopsy.
There are two types of biopsy that is available for testing the spots on my lung. I could have a CT biopsy where they would take a CT scan while going in through my chest wall and biopsying the spots with long needles or I could have another surgical biopsy where they would remove the upper lobe of my right lung (and possibly more) and cut the lung into sections and test the spots that way. The spots are too small simply just to remove them from the lung.
My doctor didn't recommend the CT biopsy because I had 5 of those the first time around just trying to figure out what type of cancer I had and as large as the mass was they still never gathered any live cells.
So it looks like my only option at this point will be to have a surgical biopsy, lose a lobe of my lung to testing and hope that it's just inflammation and not cancer.
I will speak with the surgeon who performed my first biopsy sometime in the next week to discuss my options.
If it's just inflammation from something as minor as allergies or a cold, they will still remove the inflamed part of the lung, sew me up and just watch me. No treatments or further testing will be necessary at that time.
If it is proved to be cancerous, they will remove the infected part of the lung and then do hard chemo for about a month.
For hard chemo, I would be kept in a state of drug induced coma for the duration of the treatments, and they would remove all of my bone marrow via IV just as if I was donating blood. They would then run in the chemo treatments and basically strip me of everything. My doctor told me they would take me down to nothing as if I was a newborn baby starting out all over again. I would lose all of my hair, DNA chain would be slightly changed, blood type might change and I would have to have all of my infant and toddler shots all over again.
During these treatments they would grow my bone marrow and create stem cells from my own blood. This process is called "stem cell transplants."
At the end of this process they would re-inject my bone marrow back into my body along with the stem cells they had grew and I would slowly be brought out of the coma state.
This process and treatment is extremely risky and used as a last resort only because the process itself can kill you.
BUT if you go through it and survive you are forever cured of Lymphoma and it can never come back because the DNA and cells in your body that were compiled to create the cancer cells have been broken and destroyed forever. This is not to say that you wouldn't get another type of cancer though as this process only cures Lymphoma.
I pray that I do not have to experience this as it would be harder than anything I have been through so far. I am asking anyone and everyone who reads this to please pray for me and my husband.
Add us to your prayer list at church and please hold us up in your daily prayer time as we are asking God for a miracle that I won't have to experience this.
I will update my blog after we speak with the surgeon and see what he recommends.
As it stands now, we really don't know anymore than we did before seeing the doctor except that there is still something on the lung. It could be inflammation or cancer, at this point we won't know until further testing is done.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Recovery PART 2
I began my last post about recovery primarily addressing the issues of emotional and mental recovery.
That was my main focal point because I felt that it was, in my case, the hardest and most difficult. This could be different for different people but in my experience talking to cancer patients and survivors I found that everyone, no matter what type of cancer or what type of personality they had, they ALL suffered emotionally and mentally due to the cancer and treatments they went through. Equally the recovery process in the emotional and mental areas were challenging for all so I felt it was a priority to address that issue first.
Now I will address the physical appearance aspect of recovery, namely the hair.
I did not have any part of my body removed or altered so I cannot address the physical recovery of what some patients experience, primarily the breast cancer survivors. The only thing I lost physically was my hair so that is all I feel that I have the experience and authority to address.
As a woman, my hair was a really big part of me. Although I wasn't obsessed with my hair, I still enjoyed having it on my head. (ha!) When I lost my hair to chemotherapy treatments I refused to look in the mirror for two weeks just because I was afraid of seeing myself bald. It helped to have a loving and caring husband who supported me and thought I was beautiful with 4 feet of hair or none at all.
I'll never forget the day he came home from work to see my head wrapped in a "do rag" and asked somewhat hesitantly if I had lost my hair. We knew that day was coming because for a week I had been losing huge clumps of hair and then finally, while shampooing it all came out.
I told him that yes, I had washed my hair earlier that day and what remained had said goodbye.
He didn't say a word, just walked over to me, hugged me close and quietly asked if he could remove my head rag. I had never hid anything from him before and we always had a very open relationship but that day I was tempted to tell him "no" and hide behind my little covering.
However, I knew it meant alot to him for me to trust him with my new appearance so I allowed him to remove my head covering and see, for the first time, his new bride completely bald.
He didn't even hesitate. He swept me up in his arms, gave me a kiss on the top of my now bald head and said with pride shining from his eyes, "this doesn't change you at all. You are still the most beautiful girl I have ever saw...and I think your bald head is cute."
From that day forward I learned to be proud of my little, shiny, bald head.
It was around the beginning of April that my hair really started coming in. It began to come back in March but was hard to see since it was just like peach fuzz.
Now it's the beginning of June and my hair is about 2 - 2 1/2 inches long. I can FINALLY style it and I'm having so much fun coming up with different styles and ways of fixing my hair.
Obviously it's not long enough to put up so finding ways to style it and still look feminine has been somewhat of a challenge but youtube tutorials have proven to be invaluable.
I have grown to love my short "Pixie" style and even my husband says he adores it.
At this point, I'm just thankful for hair! I will try to include some pictures of my process to show you how far it's come.
I hope this has been interesting and helpful for you!
May
End of May
June
That was my main focal point because I felt that it was, in my case, the hardest and most difficult. This could be different for different people but in my experience talking to cancer patients and survivors I found that everyone, no matter what type of cancer or what type of personality they had, they ALL suffered emotionally and mentally due to the cancer and treatments they went through. Equally the recovery process in the emotional and mental areas were challenging for all so I felt it was a priority to address that issue first.
Now I will address the physical appearance aspect of recovery, namely the hair.
I did not have any part of my body removed or altered so I cannot address the physical recovery of what some patients experience, primarily the breast cancer survivors. The only thing I lost physically was my hair so that is all I feel that I have the experience and authority to address.
As a woman, my hair was a really big part of me. Although I wasn't obsessed with my hair, I still enjoyed having it on my head. (ha!) When I lost my hair to chemotherapy treatments I refused to look in the mirror for two weeks just because I was afraid of seeing myself bald. It helped to have a loving and caring husband who supported me and thought I was beautiful with 4 feet of hair or none at all.
I'll never forget the day he came home from work to see my head wrapped in a "do rag" and asked somewhat hesitantly if I had lost my hair. We knew that day was coming because for a week I had been losing huge clumps of hair and then finally, while shampooing it all came out.
I told him that yes, I had washed my hair earlier that day and what remained had said goodbye.
He didn't say a word, just walked over to me, hugged me close and quietly asked if he could remove my head rag. I had never hid anything from him before and we always had a very open relationship but that day I was tempted to tell him "no" and hide behind my little covering.
However, I knew it meant alot to him for me to trust him with my new appearance so I allowed him to remove my head covering and see, for the first time, his new bride completely bald.
He didn't even hesitate. He swept me up in his arms, gave me a kiss on the top of my now bald head and said with pride shining from his eyes, "this doesn't change you at all. You are still the most beautiful girl I have ever saw...and I think your bald head is cute."
From that day forward I learned to be proud of my little, shiny, bald head.
It was around the beginning of April that my hair really started coming in. It began to come back in March but was hard to see since it was just like peach fuzz.
Now it's the beginning of June and my hair is about 2 - 2 1/2 inches long. I can FINALLY style it and I'm having so much fun coming up with different styles and ways of fixing my hair.
Obviously it's not long enough to put up so finding ways to style it and still look feminine has been somewhat of a challenge but youtube tutorials have proven to be invaluable.
I have grown to love my short "Pixie" style and even my husband says he adores it.
At this point, I'm just thankful for hair! I will try to include some pictures of my process to show you how far it's come.
I hope this has been interesting and helpful for you!
May
End of May
June
Recovery PART 1
We've come through the winter and spring and now summer is upon us.
Although these are seasons of the year, I feel that I am just beginning to enter the "spring" of my life.
It has been a very long and painful road since I was told I had cancer June 8, 2011 and now on June 8, 2012 I will receive my latest test results which will determine if I am cancer free or not.
In this post I'm going to share with you about my recovery from cancer. I have read many posts from different cancer patients and survivors and although I hear alot about the treatments and journey TO recovery, I haven't heard much about the actual recovery process itself.
So if you are a fellow cancer patient or perhaps you have a loved one or friend who has been diagnosed with cancer, I am writing this to you. I want YOU to know I understand where you're at, I've been there myself and hopefully something I say will encourage you that trouble doesn't last always. God promised joy in the morning and that trials, no matter how hard or dark MUST come to an end.
Ok, so recovery for me began the first of March. I had completed all prescribed treatments (8 months of chemotherapy and 22 days of radiation) This is also when my hair began to grow back.
I had become accustomed to my bald head so seeing little sprigs of hair popping up in various places was such a welcome sight!
I was expecting a completely different looking set of hair as my doctors had warned me that I could have a different hair color and texture, but I did not experience that to the same degree as others have.
My hair has grown in slightly lighter than before and a little more coarse but that is probably unnoticeable to those who aren't looking for it.
I spent alot of days just resting and relaxing from the months of taxing doctor visits, hospital stays and trauma that was unleashed on my body. I took time for "me" and to do the things that I enjoyed.
I also began to completely change my eating habits to include loads of fresh, raw fruits and vegetables and organic produce in order to rebuild my body from the disaster the poisonous effects of chemo had accomplished within me.
I pampered myself and just enjoyed being alive. This was all very well and good but it wasn't long before a restlessness was birthed within me. I began to feel that I should be "doing" something. Anxiety and depression started knocking on my door and I began to feel trapped.
I would worry that I would never fully recover and be able to reestablish myself into the "real" world. My hair was long enough to wear without being covered around April but even though I was excited about this, I still felt that every time I stepped out of the house my short hair labeled me "Cancer Survivor"'
Although my friends and family assured me that I looked "great" and the label of Cancer Survivor was something to wear with pride I felt that it somehow hindered me. I'm not ashamed of my experience and therefore not ashamed of my short hair but I did not desire to be DEFINED by it.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am normally a positive, happy person with a bubbly personality but when you experience the emotional trauma for a year like I experienced, your natural personality can take a hit.
I became angry, sad, upset, disappointed and depressed. I felt as though I was riding a giant swing and at any given time my emotions would "swing" from one extreme to the other. Never having experienced severe mood swings or depression before, I was left stripped of everything and scared of what may happen next.
I was still attending church faithfully, still involved, still praying and reading my Bible, still happily married to my husband and doing everything I knew to be "right" and "good" but I felt so alone and empty.
There is really no way to describe how broken and stripped one can feel after experiencing traumatic emotional and mental pain. The only way I know to describe it was I felt mentally and emotionally raped.
I had to honor of meeting and talking to a fellow cancer survivor and she described those feelings by telling me that what I was experiencing was a loss of innocence. My body had betrayed me and done something that wasn't "supposed" to happen and I had lost my trust and innocence in my own body.
That was so accurate to the things I was experiencing and feeling that all I could do was cry. I literally felt like my body had turned me over to a hostile agent and I was being held hostage against my own will. The one thing that I had loved, taken care of and trusted to be faithful to me all my life had done the worst possible thing it could do and had tried to destroy me.
I began to try to work through my feelings as best as I could. I did countless hours of online research of different cancer patients and how they described recovery, I looked up medical causes and remedies, I delved into the physiological and spiritual aspect of things and when it was all said and done at the end of the day all I could come up with was what I was experiencing was completely "normal" for cancer patients.
BUT knowing that what I felt inside was "normal" didn't necessarily help me.
Now I want to stop right here and say if your are a recovering cancer patient trying to find your way back in life and you're experiencing these things, DON'T GIVE UP!!! First of all I would tell you to take a deep breath and give yourself some TIME. My problem was I felt as though I had taken plenty of time for me and now it was time to reestablish myself in the real world.
Well I have news for you honey, it took months, possibly years of treatments to get you to where you are today and it will take every bit that long to get you BACK to where you were before all of this happened.
Don't become overwhelmed by the odds stacked against you, you fought cancer and won by taking it one day at a time, so that's exactly how you're going to overcome the recovery process.
If you feel that it's too much for you to handle DO NOT hesitate to make an appointment with your doctor because hormone therapy might be in order and you may just need to speak with a counsellor and get your emotions in the open so you can better deal with things.
My problem was I had been strong for everyone for so long throughout the treatment process that when it was finally all over I felt that I could finally let my guard down and be afraid and show my anxiety because I didn't have to be strong for anyone anymore. I could show my true emotions and let them be strong for me.
That's good to do that and to deal with your emotions but you don't want to continually live in those negative emotions and keep reliving the past. There comes a time when you need to lay everything that was done to you to rest and "forget about it as soon as you can" and MOVE ON!
You have a bright, new future ahead of you and you don't want to cloud it up by looking over your shoulder to the things that might have been or could have been had this experience not happened to you.
In closing I want to say that dealing with your emotions will take time, prayer and effort. When you feel yourself spiraling downward into that black hole of helplessness and worthlessness, just find that warrior in you that rose up and said "I will NOT be defeated by cancer!" and rise up against those negative feelings and emotions in the same way and determine that you WILL NOT be conquered.
It also helps to find an activity you enjoy and throw yourself into it with all of your heart. Do whatever you must to get your mind off of the negativity and back onto something that is positive.
I will continue my experiences of my recovery journey in another post titled "Recovery PART 2"
Stick around! ;)
Although these are seasons of the year, I feel that I am just beginning to enter the "spring" of my life.
It has been a very long and painful road since I was told I had cancer June 8, 2011 and now on June 8, 2012 I will receive my latest test results which will determine if I am cancer free or not.
In this post I'm going to share with you about my recovery from cancer. I have read many posts from different cancer patients and survivors and although I hear alot about the treatments and journey TO recovery, I haven't heard much about the actual recovery process itself.
So if you are a fellow cancer patient or perhaps you have a loved one or friend who has been diagnosed with cancer, I am writing this to you. I want YOU to know I understand where you're at, I've been there myself and hopefully something I say will encourage you that trouble doesn't last always. God promised joy in the morning and that trials, no matter how hard or dark MUST come to an end.
Ok, so recovery for me began the first of March. I had completed all prescribed treatments (8 months of chemotherapy and 22 days of radiation) This is also when my hair began to grow back.
I had become accustomed to my bald head so seeing little sprigs of hair popping up in various places was such a welcome sight!
I was expecting a completely different looking set of hair as my doctors had warned me that I could have a different hair color and texture, but I did not experience that to the same degree as others have.
My hair has grown in slightly lighter than before and a little more coarse but that is probably unnoticeable to those who aren't looking for it.
I spent alot of days just resting and relaxing from the months of taxing doctor visits, hospital stays and trauma that was unleashed on my body. I took time for "me" and to do the things that I enjoyed.
I also began to completely change my eating habits to include loads of fresh, raw fruits and vegetables and organic produce in order to rebuild my body from the disaster the poisonous effects of chemo had accomplished within me.
I pampered myself and just enjoyed being alive. This was all very well and good but it wasn't long before a restlessness was birthed within me. I began to feel that I should be "doing" something. Anxiety and depression started knocking on my door and I began to feel trapped.
I would worry that I would never fully recover and be able to reestablish myself into the "real" world. My hair was long enough to wear without being covered around April but even though I was excited about this, I still felt that every time I stepped out of the house my short hair labeled me "Cancer Survivor"'
Although my friends and family assured me that I looked "great" and the label of Cancer Survivor was something to wear with pride I felt that it somehow hindered me. I'm not ashamed of my experience and therefore not ashamed of my short hair but I did not desire to be DEFINED by it.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am normally a positive, happy person with a bubbly personality but when you experience the emotional trauma for a year like I experienced, your natural personality can take a hit.
I became angry, sad, upset, disappointed and depressed. I felt as though I was riding a giant swing and at any given time my emotions would "swing" from one extreme to the other. Never having experienced severe mood swings or depression before, I was left stripped of everything and scared of what may happen next.
I was still attending church faithfully, still involved, still praying and reading my Bible, still happily married to my husband and doing everything I knew to be "right" and "good" but I felt so alone and empty.
There is really no way to describe how broken and stripped one can feel after experiencing traumatic emotional and mental pain. The only way I know to describe it was I felt mentally and emotionally raped.
I had to honor of meeting and talking to a fellow cancer survivor and she described those feelings by telling me that what I was experiencing was a loss of innocence. My body had betrayed me and done something that wasn't "supposed" to happen and I had lost my trust and innocence in my own body.
That was so accurate to the things I was experiencing and feeling that all I could do was cry. I literally felt like my body had turned me over to a hostile agent and I was being held hostage against my own will. The one thing that I had loved, taken care of and trusted to be faithful to me all my life had done the worst possible thing it could do and had tried to destroy me.
I began to try to work through my feelings as best as I could. I did countless hours of online research of different cancer patients and how they described recovery, I looked up medical causes and remedies, I delved into the physiological and spiritual aspect of things and when it was all said and done at the end of the day all I could come up with was what I was experiencing was completely "normal" for cancer patients.
BUT knowing that what I felt inside was "normal" didn't necessarily help me.
Now I want to stop right here and say if your are a recovering cancer patient trying to find your way back in life and you're experiencing these things, DON'T GIVE UP!!! First of all I would tell you to take a deep breath and give yourself some TIME. My problem was I felt as though I had taken plenty of time for me and now it was time to reestablish myself in the real world.
Well I have news for you honey, it took months, possibly years of treatments to get you to where you are today and it will take every bit that long to get you BACK to where you were before all of this happened.
Don't become overwhelmed by the odds stacked against you, you fought cancer and won by taking it one day at a time, so that's exactly how you're going to overcome the recovery process.
If you feel that it's too much for you to handle DO NOT hesitate to make an appointment with your doctor because hormone therapy might be in order and you may just need to speak with a counsellor and get your emotions in the open so you can better deal with things.
My problem was I had been strong for everyone for so long throughout the treatment process that when it was finally all over I felt that I could finally let my guard down and be afraid and show my anxiety because I didn't have to be strong for anyone anymore. I could show my true emotions and let them be strong for me.
That's good to do that and to deal with your emotions but you don't want to continually live in those negative emotions and keep reliving the past. There comes a time when you need to lay everything that was done to you to rest and "forget about it as soon as you can" and MOVE ON!
You have a bright, new future ahead of you and you don't want to cloud it up by looking over your shoulder to the things that might have been or could have been had this experience not happened to you.
In closing I want to say that dealing with your emotions will take time, prayer and effort. When you feel yourself spiraling downward into that black hole of helplessness and worthlessness, just find that warrior in you that rose up and said "I will NOT be defeated by cancer!" and rise up against those negative feelings and emotions in the same way and determine that you WILL NOT be conquered.
It also helps to find an activity you enjoy and throw yourself into it with all of your heart. Do whatever you must to get your mind off of the negativity and back onto something that is positive.
I will continue my experiences of my recovery journey in another post titled "Recovery PART 2"
Stick around! ;)
Angels On Duty
It was my 6th chemo treatment and I was sitting in the large waiting room waiting to be called back to see the doctor.
I heard my name called along with someone else's and my husband, mother and I got up to follow the nurse back to the doctors office.
There were two people ahead of us and nobody behind us as we went back. We were seated in a large room with four chairs and were told that the nurse would be back shortly to collect some information.
As he entered the room the nurse looked around with a rather confused look on his face and asked, "Where is the other man?" I looked at him and said, "There isn't another man, there is only three of us." He said "I could've sworn I saw a fourth man walk in with you guys!" I calmly replied, "It was probably my angel. God knew I would need him today."
Yes I do believe God sent "Angels On Duty" that day to be with us through the storm.
Radiation Treatment - My Experience
It has been quite some time since I blogged, so I thought it was about time I update everyone on my journey.
I guess you could say that life has finally caught up with me and I've been busy, busy BUSY!
I finished chemotherapy treatments December 28, 2011. I must say I "went out with a bang" as I spent New Year's in the hospital as a result of my blood counts dropping dangerously low once again and another uneventful trip to the emergency room.
I recovered quite nicely thanks to prayer and good doctors and was released after a short stay of 4 days.
My last 4 chemo treatments were the very hardest. I had a total of 8 treatments with the first 4 seemingly so easy it was unbelievable and the last 4 so hard at times I wasn't sure I could take it anymore.
In the end, I found a strength within myself that I didn't know I had and was able to withstand horrors I didn't think were possible.
I know on my own I couldn't have taken the first step, but God's grace was sufficient for me and in my weakness, He was made strong.
I began 22 rounds of radiation January 25, 2012 and completed it on February 23,2012. I went every day, Monday through Friday for roughly 30 minutes a day.
I had heard all the horror stories about radiation and fully expected to be in the throes of agony and complete and utter torture for 22 days. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Now, I understand that treatments for different types of cancer are different ranging from the different methods used to the different strengths and dosages of radiation and chemotherapy given and it even depends on the area of the body that's being treated.
Some people due suffer greatly with radiation therapy, but thankfully I was not one of those people.
I was placed in a large machine like a PET scan or MRI machine and the technicians marked different areas of my body with permanent marker that would be radiated.
My cancer was in my upper right chest area so they radiated the tumor from 9 different positions starting at the very base of my throat and moving slightly downward.
I was told that since I have very fair skin that I would likely develop a rash or sunburn in the area that was being radiated. I didn't develop any of these complications, however I did experience some tenderness of the skin in that area.
Also, since the radiation was hitting the very base and back of my throat, just 4 days before I was to complete my treatments I developed a mild sore throat. It's a little hard to describe that type of "sore" as it was more like being irritated.
Different things like warm, salty soup, citrus products and extremely cold liquids hurt my throat. The most annoying thing was it felt as though there was a knot at the back of my throat and I did experience some difficulty swallowing so small bites were a MUST. Any bread products were almost impossible to swallow and I would take a few bites and have to drink milk or eat some yogurt in order to coat the throat so I could finish my meal.
All of this faded away in about 7 days and was certainly the least of my pains that I experienced on my journey.
Upon completing radiation, I received a diploma and a cute cap. Since my hair had not yet begun to grow back from chemo, I made good use of that cap.
All in all, radiation was not the horrible experience I expected. I got tired very easily and seemed extremely fatigued all the time but I wasn't in any kind of pain or sick like I was with chemo.
Upon the completion of radiation treatments, my doctor ordered a PET scan for May 29, 2012 to see if the treatments were successful in vanquishing the last remains of the cancerous tumor that was sitting on my right lung. I will receive these results June 8, 2012 the very day that I was diagnosed last year.
I guess you could say that life has finally caught up with me and I've been busy, busy BUSY!
I finished chemotherapy treatments December 28, 2011. I must say I "went out with a bang" as I spent New Year's in the hospital as a result of my blood counts dropping dangerously low once again and another uneventful trip to the emergency room.
I recovered quite nicely thanks to prayer and good doctors and was released after a short stay of 4 days.
My last 4 chemo treatments were the very hardest. I had a total of 8 treatments with the first 4 seemingly so easy it was unbelievable and the last 4 so hard at times I wasn't sure I could take it anymore.
In the end, I found a strength within myself that I didn't know I had and was able to withstand horrors I didn't think were possible.
I know on my own I couldn't have taken the first step, but God's grace was sufficient for me and in my weakness, He was made strong.
I began 22 rounds of radiation January 25, 2012 and completed it on February 23,2012. I went every day, Monday through Friday for roughly 30 minutes a day.
I had heard all the horror stories about radiation and fully expected to be in the throes of agony and complete and utter torture for 22 days. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Now, I understand that treatments for different types of cancer are different ranging from the different methods used to the different strengths and dosages of radiation and chemotherapy given and it even depends on the area of the body that's being treated.
Some people due suffer greatly with radiation therapy, but thankfully I was not one of those people.
I was placed in a large machine like a PET scan or MRI machine and the technicians marked different areas of my body with permanent marker that would be radiated.
My cancer was in my upper right chest area so they radiated the tumor from 9 different positions starting at the very base of my throat and moving slightly downward.
I was told that since I have very fair skin that I would likely develop a rash or sunburn in the area that was being radiated. I didn't develop any of these complications, however I did experience some tenderness of the skin in that area.
Also, since the radiation was hitting the very base and back of my throat, just 4 days before I was to complete my treatments I developed a mild sore throat. It's a little hard to describe that type of "sore" as it was more like being irritated.
Different things like warm, salty soup, citrus products and extremely cold liquids hurt my throat. The most annoying thing was it felt as though there was a knot at the back of my throat and I did experience some difficulty swallowing so small bites were a MUST. Any bread products were almost impossible to swallow and I would take a few bites and have to drink milk or eat some yogurt in order to coat the throat so I could finish my meal.
All of this faded away in about 7 days and was certainly the least of my pains that I experienced on my journey.
Upon completing radiation, I received a diploma and a cute cap. Since my hair had not yet begun to grow back from chemo, I made good use of that cap.
All in all, radiation was not the horrible experience I expected. I got tired very easily and seemed extremely fatigued all the time but I wasn't in any kind of pain or sick like I was with chemo.
Upon the completion of radiation treatments, my doctor ordered a PET scan for May 29, 2012 to see if the treatments were successful in vanquishing the last remains of the cancerous tumor that was sitting on my right lung. I will receive these results June 8, 2012 the very day that I was diagnosed last year.
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