Five Ways to Handle a Cancer Diagnosis

Here are a few things you can do to help navigate a devastating diagnosis:

Don't get mired in "Why me?"

It's OK to be angry and feel sorry for yourself. For a while. But focusing on the "Why me?" question will drive you crazy and get you stuck in misery. There is no good answer to this. So don't blame God or yourself. I even suggested this to a friend diagnosed with lung cancer. She was a lifelong smoker who felt completely responsible for her disease. But lots of heavy smokers never get lung cancer and other folks who have never smoked get it. It doesn't make sense and it isn't fair. While you are dealing with a life-changing event, it isn't worth the energy to ask why.

Say yes to help.

People don't know what to do when they hear about your diagnosis. But let them do something. You or someone close to you can help guide them. When I was at my lowest I really didn't want to chat with everyone I knew. But I loved getting cards and offers of help. I learned to be specific: when a friend offered to do my family's laundry, I told her we were OK with the laundry but what we could really use were meals. And I asked her to spread the word.

Say yes to emotional help, too.

One of my hospital roommates with a similar diagnosis as mine (non-Hodgkins lymphoma) was exceedingly depressed. Married with teenage children, she was angry and hopeless. But she declined when nurses or doctors suggested she see a therapist or try an antidepressant. I  told her to accept their offers. It might help and it certainly can't hurt, I told her. I, too, have a husband and children. I cried in the hospital every day, but not all the time. I would weep through grueling physical therapy sessions.  But I was open to any kind of suggestion to alleviate my emotional pain.  I said yes to antidepressants, counselors, any volunteer who would hold my hand and a visit from any denomination of clergy. They all helped me get through my darkest times.

Don't be a defeatist.

Your life is not over, it's just different. It really annoys me when people will bring up their illness or age to qualify whether they will be alive at any day in the future. An older relative was hesitant to commit to a wedding a year away. I, on the other hand, said I would definitely be there (and I was). Another friend who is a cancer survivor routinely qualifies her plans with "I don't know what my future holds." News flash: Nobody does.

Focus on the good things day to day.

When I was released to my home after spending nearly five months in a hospital bed, I remember being moved to tears at the colors and beauty around me. The decor of my house, the backyard flowers, the chirping of birds: All were extra sweet to me. I still try to pay closer attention to such things as I experience them. We spend so much time griping. Really take the time to recognize the happy moments. Comment on them out loud so others can join in your reverie.

What to Get Someone in the Hospital: A Soft, Reliable Friend

I couldn’t have made it this far in my battle against cancer without my husband, my kids, my family and friends.

Or Bunny.

Through my terrifying journey, he has been with me.

And while I appreciated the prayers, cards, emails, flowers, calls and visits I received, I have a special place in my heart for Bunny. Like me, he’s a little damaged -- but he’s still here. I sleep with my arm around him every night.

Bunny

If you are wondering what to get someone in the hospital or how to help a cancer patient, consider a stuffed animal like a Pillow Pet, a huggable critter that doubles as a pillow. Or a similar soft toy would do. Pillows are a nice homey touch  -- I got several -- but there’s something about a sweet, soft face that makes you feel better.

Bunny was an accidental pal.

A friend and her son walked into my hospital room in February 2006 when I was sick and getting sicker. Doctors weren’t sure of a diagnosis and the prognosis was murky. They brought me a get well balloon and attached was a stuffed rabbit. When the balloon deflated, I had someone cut the string off. And I kept Bunny. 

He was a pale yellow, soft friend with magenta feet and long, floppy ears. Now, he is a faded version of his original self. He sits slouched, about eight inches tall. He has a dusty pink nose, no mouth and his left eye is half gone.

I didn’t know when I first got him that I would remain bedridden in hospitals and rehabilitation centers for more than four months. Or that I would then undergo a  chemotherapy regimen that involved a rotation of one week of hospitalization and three weeks at home for another year. Later, I would have more weeks in the hospital for surgeries, more chemo and a bone marrow transplant.

Bunny came with me to every new hospital bed.

Before I got sick, I was in the habit of sleeping on my side and hugging a pillow. When a brain tumor rendered me paraplegic, I couldn’t turn to my side without help. And I required many pillows to keep me from rolling back once I had been placed on my side. I had to prop up my booted feet with additional pillows so they wouldn’t flop to the side. Upon checking into a room, I always requested more pillows. Hospital pillows range in thickness from OK to barely there; and in softness from not to not.

But I always had Bunny. He was a comfortable pillow to hug when I was on my side, an extra soft boost behind my head. He was a ledge to rest my arm on when I couldn’t bend it. He was with me in the middle of hundreds of nights when I was alone. He accompanied me to in-hospital scans in what seemed from my gurney like cold, metallic basements.

The hospital staff grew attached to him. Everybody commented on him. Some thought he was Eeyore, Winnie-the-Pooh’s donkey friend. Others thought he was a Beatrix Potter rabbit.

They would ask his name and seemed disappointed when I told them. I was too sick to be more creative. Over the months, nurses learned his name and would stop by specifically to see if I had brought Bunny. Of course I had. 

Five years ago, I was released from the hospital, using a wheelchair. My husband threw Bunny in the car as we drove my son to college. He made an excellent travel pillow and I have brought him with me to every trip and hospital stay since.

I even got permission to clean him and bring him to my month-long hospitalization for a stem cell transplant three years ago. (Because a person’s natural immune system is wiped out during the procedure, doctors are careful about what’s allowed in the room.)

A few years ago, I began noticing advertisements for Pillow Pets. A California mother invented the huggable animals as a way for children to find comfort from their stuffed buddies around the clock.

They reminded me of Bunny.

Any child would love them, but sick or bedridden people of any age would especially appreciate them or something like them. This year, a 7-year-old cancer patient from Indiana started a drive to provide one for every patient in his local children’s hospital, donating more than 2,000 pets to sick kids.

A few years ago, the friend who gave him to me came by my house. Bunny was in his spot next to me in my at-home hospital bed.

She didn’t recognize the worn, little rabbit behind my head.

“That’s the same bunny?” she said.

Yep, I told her. He’s been with me all along.

The Human Touch: Connecting with Stem Cell Transplant Survivors

My friend Sue recently contacted me and said a woman she knew had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma  and was facing a stem cell transplant. She knew that I had survived a similar transplant three years ago as part of a lengthy battle against my lymphoma, another type of blood cancer.

She asked for suggestions for how she could help both the patient and her husband. It's a question I commonly get: how to help a cancer patient?  And this one had added specificity: what if the patient is also facing a stem cell transplant?I gave her my two cents on a few things she could do, routine things like offering to bring them a meal, help with laundry, do their grocery shopping. I also said what they might need depends on the stage of the treatment.

I told Sue she could tell her friend that medicine is making great strides with the stem cell program. A study this week, discussed in the myeloma treatment website Cure Talk, reports promising results for patients who undergo transplants.

There are plenty of studies that are encouraging to transplant candidates. But what I found most valuable -- and what I emphasized to my friend -- was the importance of speaking to survivors.

I found them by word of mouth. All my friends and family members were shocked, as was I, that a transplant was needed to continue to fight my cancer. I had never known anyone who had undergone one. But once news got around, I began to hear from friends who knew someone who had survived a bone marrow AKA stem cell transplant. 

I asked them if they would contact each of the survivors, three in all, to see if they would mind talking to me. I had lengthy phone conversations with two men and a woman, total strangers, about what I might expect.

After those calls, I was still apprehensive about a process that can take four weeks in the hospital and is designed to bring you close to death. But I was also encouraged. 

These were people who had lived through the ordeal and had come out the other side OK. 

I advised Sue to encourage her friend to seek out others who have had the procedure. I offered my services if she wants to hear my story.  I recommended the friend ask her doctor or nurse for other ideas.

Online resources are available to match transplant patients with survivors. The Bone Marrow Transplant Support group  holds three online chats a week so patients can have questions answered. And the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society

 arranges telephone calls  for patients to talk with survivors who have faced the same type of cancer, including myeloma.

The day in September 2008 that I checked into UCLA hospital to begin the transplant procedure, a pretty, energetic young lady swept into my room. She said she was returning a book to the unit and had asked if there were any new patients on the ward. She said she was a cancer survivor who had a transplant there years ago.  She told me it was not easy. “I had every bad complication,” she said.

But today, she said, beaming, she is doing great. I smiled weakly back at her from my hospital bed, wearing a cotton cap over my bald head. She ran her hands through her thick, long hair. “And this is my own hair!”

That visit from a bubbly survivor was worth more than any info I could find in an online study. It was the personification of hope.