Tag: Hope

Before You Meet Your Oncologist, Be Aware…

…they don’t pull punches.

This is critical to be aware of when you’ve gotten your cancer diagnosis and are meeting your oncologist for the first time. We all go into that exam room fearful but hoping for good news. We want reassurance that it’s going to be okay.

The problem is, your oncologist can’t tell you that. They can’t say that you’ll get through this fine. Because they’re not going to promise you something they cannot guarantee. What they can give you is statistics. However, that may come in the form of something like, “You have an 85% chance of surviving…”, which sounds great, right, “…for 5 years.”

Is it good news or bad news? Their faces won’t tell.

Now, I don’t know how you feel about this, but honestly, when I heard that I thought, um, is that the best you can give me?

While I adore my oncologist, there was no cute wrinkled nose, no “I’m sure you’re gonna be okay” warm-and-fuzzies. It was all, “this is what’s next.”

I’m convinced that oncologists start their day by practicing how to deliver information without emotion, without giving away whether the news is good or bad. As patients, we literally hang on every word, every hesitation, every wrinkle on our oncologist’s face for an indication of just HOW bad the situation is. Some will reveal more than others, but in my own experience, it was “just the facts, ma’am” for quite a long time.

This could be very frustrating. I learned that I needed to get the “rah-rah” encouragement elsewhere.

On the plus side, however, I knew that if something was bad, my oncologist was going to tell me. He wouldn’t be like that friend who assures you your ugly outfit looks good just so that they don’t hurt your feelings. So if it’s any consolation, you’ll leave the office knowing what’s up, and what the doc doesn’t know yet if they’re still waiting for results. No false promises.

That helps get your head past the diagnosis and moving forward into treatment.

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I remember when, after my final infusion, I developed a horrible nail infection that landed me in the Emergency Room. I was stabilized, pumped full of antibiotics and my wound cleaned out. As I recovered, my ER doc came back to see how I was doing because he knew I’d just finished chemo and was familiar with the cancer experience. He told me that he was about to go notify another ER patient that they had liver cancer and wanted to take a breather and come talk to me before he had to break the news to them. It was obvious that he was moved by his patient’s plight.

So this was a great reminder for me that even though the doctors may seem to be stone-faced, they are by no means stone-hearted.

Inviting Gratitude, Gently

Since this week is the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, it’s a good time to revisit the practice of gratitude. I wrote some time back about my nightly practice of writing down three things for which I was grateful. It was a lovely way to close the day on a positive note, as I would always be able to jot something down, even if my day was difficult.

Nightly gratitude journaling started feeling forced, certainly not the point of the practice.

However, after a number of weeks of this, I found it harder to be consistent. I would skip days, and often on the days that I could find something to write in my journal, the process would feel forced. The more I had to work to pull out little things to be grateful for, the less meaningful they became. Eventually, and regrettably, I stopped the nightly practice altogether.

Apparently, this is to be expected. Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues from UC Riverside found that journaling once a week was more effective for boosting happiness than doing so more frequently. I can see why this would be. Everyone has stressful days that can wring any semblance of happiness out of us. Yes, while I found something to be grateful for any given day, if the overwhelming feeling was that of negativity then I was simply going through the motions of trying to find something–ANYthing–to write down. For me, this waters down the effectiveness of the exercise.

But writing on a weekly (or less) basis allows me to focus on the most powerful feelings of gratitude, and those have a stronger uplifting effect on me. They last longer and evoke a joy that daily journaling couldn’t.

In my life, there have been times that have felt very dark and heavy. In the moment, I have not always been able to find anything positive in them. Take, for example, cancer. Those weeks around my diagnosis were literally the most terrifying of my life, because I felt that this situation could actually cost me my life.

Quite frankly, if someone had told me then that I should stop and think of all the things I was grateful for, I might have told them to go to hell. The intensity of what was taking place right then–the shock and disbelief, the despair, the sheer fear–was too great to let in any light. For someone to have suggested that I should essentially “look on the bright side” would have felt like they were dismissing the reality of what is cancer.

For me, the process of letting gratitude come to me was far more effective than trying to snatch it out of darkness.

But as I passed through those worst weeks, I noticed things that bobbed up to the surface that I could be grateful for, so much so that at times I was overwhelmed with gratitude for how events had unfolded compared to how things could have been. I still had cancer and my life was still upended, but I felt a sense of grace about it all.

So if were to give one piece of humble advice to someone going through desperate times, it would be to remain open to the possibility that no matter how dark things may seem right now, when you finally have a chance to take a breath, you may see that glimmers of hopeful light have been shining through all along.

Starting 2020 with Compassion: The Dogs of Chernobyl

(Featured Image Photo: Jorge Franganillo from Barcelona, Spain [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)] – cropped image)

My kids and I got hit with the flu right New Year’s Day, which meant mandatory rest and time to browse the Internet. After randomly clicking through websites, I landed on a story about the stray dogs of Chernobyl.

This touched me deeply because I hadn’t realized that animals were abandoned during the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986. When people evacuated the area, they were told to leave their pets, that they’d be able to soon return. Obviously, that didn’t happen, so animals that had been used to being fed, watered and otherwise cared for were suddenly left alone. To make matters worse, the Soviet government sent soldiers into the disaster area to kill the homeless animals in an effort to contain the radioactive contamination.

Amazingly, some dogs and other pets survived in the exclusion area, even through harsh winters, lack of food, threat of predation and possibility of rabies. Given that it’s been over 30 years since the accident, the current “dogs of Chernobyl” are several generations away from the original dogs, but their circumstances are still dire.

As I’ve gotten older, gone through cancer treatment and now menopause, I find that stories like cause me to disintegrate into a mushy mess. It breaks my heart that these animals were serving as companions to humans, and then were left to suffer from a human-made disaster when it was deemed too dangerous for the humans to stay there. These cruel twists of fate seem too much.

However, this post is not about agony or anger against humans, it’s about hope and compassion. A charitable group called Clean Futures Fund was established, as their mission statements reads, “to raise awareness and provide international support for communities affected by industrial accidents and long-term remedial activities”. Among other projects, they sponsor the ogs of Chernobyl effort: veterinarians and other experienced personnel who care for the descendants of abandoned pets by spaying, neutering, vaccinating, providing first aid and whatever else needs to be done to keep the animals as healthy as possible.

The Clean Futures Fund provides people an opportunity to virtually adopt the dogs and cats of Chernobyl, thereby using those funds to support their rescue program. But there’s also a sense of satisfaction to be found in simply supporting them through their GoFundMe page.

And the best news is, after years of people being told that all the animals were radioactive and therefore unadoptable, that presumption has been shown to be a myth. How? Because the radiation found on the animals can be washed off – it comes from the environment, not from the animals themselves. Finally, puppies are being removed from the exclusion area and sent to loving homes.

There are many more animals still left, but there are also many dedicated and courageous volunteers who are determined to make sure that these furries are not forgotten. While this story isn’t over yet, it promises a happy ending.