In addition to her service as a CHN Support Volunteer, Debbie Woodbury is a patient educator with Pathways Women’s Cancer Teaching Project and a member of the Carol G. Simon Cancer Center Oncology Community Advisory Board at Overlook Medical Center. Debbie is a ten-year breast cancer survivor, a speaker, and the author of two books, You Can Thrive After Treatment and How to Build an Amazing Life After Treatment.

It’s easy to hate change, especially when it barges in frightening and unwanted. Usually, the first instinct is to fight it every step of the way. But if it’s serenity you seek, you’re only going to get there by accepting the changes you cannot change.

When I’m struggling with change (which happens much more than I like to admit) the following help me see things through different eyes:

1. “Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.” – Frank Herbert– Change wakes us up and makes us re-evaluate our priorities and choices.
2. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi– Change isn’t only something that happens to us, we can and must be proactive if we want to make change for the better in the world.
3. “If you don’t like something change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” – Maya Angelou– If you are enduring difficulties, you always have a choice as to how you approach your situation.
4. “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.” – Simone de Beauvoir– So many of us put off making changes out of fear of the unknown. The bottom line is all we have is today. If you want to make a change, do it now.
5. “Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.” – Gilda Radner– Gilda faced terminal cancer and came to embrace life as a “delicious ambiguity.” Her ability to face change and all the fear that it brings will always inspire me.
6. “If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.” – Lao Tzu– We fear change because of the pain it can cause. Think of what you could achieve if you relinquished that fear through acceptance.
7. “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” – Harriet Tubman – Amen!

The very moment cancer comes into your life, it is changed forever. The struggle is how to accept change you have no control over and still somehow move ahead.

Survival > Existence,
Debbie

The post Surviving on Hope: 7 Thoughts on Accepting Change after Cancer appeared first on Cancer Hope Network.

In addition to her service as a CHN Support Volunteer, Debbie Woodbury is a patient educator with Pathways Women’s Cancer Teaching Project and a member of the Carol G. Simon Cancer Center Oncology Community Advisory Board at Overlook Medical Center. Debbie is a ten-year breast cancer survivor, a speaker, and the author of two books, You Can Thrive After Treatment and How to Build an Amazing Life After Treatment. 

In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.  Pliny the Elder

The first casualty of cancer is certainty.

Of course, I’m only speaking for myself. And, as someone who had gone through five years of miscarriages and infertility before cancer, I should have already known that life doesn’t always go the way you expect.
Still, I walked into the breast center 15 years later without a doubt I knew the drill: remove everything above the waist, put on a robe, let the technician flatten a breast between panes of glass, hold my breath, repeat, get dressed, leave and, a few days later, open the letter confirming all was well.
I made it to the leaving part, but the letter never came. Instead, a nurse from my gynecologist’s office called to tell me that my mammogram was “suspicious.”

At that exact point, I was no longer certain of anything and fell into cancer’s black hole.
Over the next four and a half months of appointments, tests, biopsies, phone calls, internet searches, and crying jags, I was desperate to find firm footing. At first, I clung to every word uttered by my medical team, believing that everything they told me was guaranteed.

But time after time my expectations proved false and I was forced to adapt to the unexpected. The “suspicious” mammogram that was probably nothing, turned into cancer. The lumpectomy and radiation I would probably need turned into a mastectomy. The phone call I was promised with the results of my biopsy didn’t come. The diagnosis of stage 0 breast cancer felt certain, until debate raged as to whether it was truly cancer or not.

It got to the point that I told myself I had no right to any expectations at all.
It’s hard to let go of certainty. It was especially hard once treatment finished and I expected to be “over” cancer. As I worked on letting go of that expectation, I had to ask myself “what is normal after cancer, anyway?”  I had no easy answer, but realized the only certainty I could count on was to expect the unexpected and find the support I needed to work through the unknown.
Intellectually, I know anything can happen (or not, as was made painfully clear by the five years it took us to make a baby.) Despite the hard lessons I’ve learned from miscarriages, infertility and cancer, I still make plans and have expectations. I’m just not as surprised when things don’t go as planned.

I can’t say I’ve completely embraced uncertainty, but I have become a bit more mindful of accepting the present as it is. In truth, I’m just not shocked anymore when the unexpected happens because I’ve learned that the only certainty is that nothing is certain.

Has cancer made you more aware of uncertainty and the risk of having expectations?
Let’s talk about it.

Survival > Existence,
Debbie

The post Surviving On Hope: Letting go of uncertainty appeared first on Cancer Hope Network.

In addition to her service as a CHN Support Volunteer, Debbie Woodbury is a patient educator with Pathways Women’s Cancer Teaching Project and a member of the Carol G. Simon Cancer Center Oncology Community Advisory Board at Overlook Medical Center. Debbie is a ten-year breast cancer survivor, a speaker, and the author of two books, You Can Thrive After Treatment and How to Build an Amazing Life After Treatment.

One of the hardest things I had to deal with after my mastectomy was the pressure to be over cancer.
I know they meant well, but the friends and family who announced “the worst is over” and moved on left me behind in their dust, unable to follow.

Of course, all of the pressure I felt wasn’t external. I pressured myself too by expecting somehow to return to “normal,” an expectation that took its own sweet time to die.
But slowly, and with immense support, I learned how to relieve the pressure.
The emotional fallout of cancer takes a heavy toll. Experiencing your feelings in your own way, at your own pace, can be a challenge.

My pre-cancer self knew nothing of the disease. I stumbled through the four and a half months it took to get a diagnosis like a kindergartner in a graduate course.

At six and a half months in, I had a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. By then, my bright red, hip-to-hip scar, missing nipple and asymmetrical breasts gave me a pretty good handle on cancer’s physical effects.
Getting my head around the emotional consequences was infinitely harder.

Looking back, it’s not like I didn’t feel anything. I was miserable, fatigued, lonely, stressed, angry and overwhelmed. But, unlike physical scars, the severity of those wounds wasn’t obvious when I looked in the mirror.

I had no idea then that recuperating from the emotional devastation of cancer was going to be even harder than recuperating from the physical damage.

In fact, people I trusted told me the exact opposite. As soon as I got home from the hospital, friends and family expressed relief that “the worst is over” and returned to their regularly scheduled lives.  A cancer survivor I knew and one of my doctors assured me that cancer would take a year of my life and then “it would be over.”

On the one-year anniversary of that first frightening mammogram, I was nowhere near over cancer and hit a new emotional low. Luckily, I was seeing an oncology therapist. She pointed out the futility of trying to conform to a set end date and empowered me to believe in my right to experience cancer in my own way, at my own pace.

With her help, I learned how to cope with the pressure to be over cancer:

1. Focus on Support: When we’re sick, we go to a doctor. It shouldn’t be any different when we’re emotionally traumatized. I had no clue how to get out from under my misery, fatigue, loneliness and anger when I started seeing my therapist. Working with her helped me slowly face and dissect the pain behind my emotions and get to a better place.

2. Focus on Healing: As a five-year survivor, I can honestly say I’m not over cancer and probably never will be. I have, however, healed to a great extent and am much less emotionally distraught than I was during my dark days.

3. Focus on Connecting: Talking with other patients and survivors let me know my emotional struggles were normal and I wasn’t alone. It may be a club no one wants to join but, once you’re in, belonging connects you to others who are uniquely qualified to provide understanding and validation.
A pivotal moment of healing came a few months after my surgery when my husband and I were invited to dinner by friends. I balked because I wasn’t over cancer and was trying to hide it by telling people I was fine. I was exhausted and sick of lying, but afraid to let others in on how hard cancer hit me emotionally.
When our friends asked how I was doing, I answered honestly and was shocked at the relief I felt. Better yet, the trust I put in them was rewarded with empathy and compassion and I was able to go on with the evening feeling heard.

Dealing with the pressure to be over cancer isn’t easy, and it’s not something I could have ever done alone. It takes work, time, and a great deal of support.

Do you experience pressure to be over cancer? If you do, do you find that pressure difficult to deal with and what do you do to cope with it?

Survival > Existence,
Debbie

The post How to get over the pressure to be over cancer appeared first on Cancer Hope Network.

In addition to her service as a CHN Support Volunteer, Debbie Woodbury is a patient educator with Pathways Women’s Cancer Teaching Project and a member of the Carol G. Simon Cancer Center Oncology Community Advisory Board at Overlook Medical Center. Debbie is a ten-year breast cancer survivor, a speaker, and the author of two books, You Can Thrive After Treatment and How to Build an Amazing Life After Treatment.

A few months after my mastectomy and TRAM flap reconstruction, I had it out with the light fixture in my walk-in closet.

Like me, the bulb was burnt out. Removing the cover to replace it was easy, but I couldn’t get the cover back on for the life of me.

As I struggled, I got more and more frustrated. I didn’t want to give up and ask for help; I wanted to make it work.

Suddenly, my brain made a hard left turn and all I really wanted was to smash the darn thing onto the floor.

Which I did.

The cover hit the floor and exploded. Shards of plastic sprayed everywhere. It was a moment of violent, beautiful clarity that shocked me awake.

I was a cauldron of red-hot anger, and I hadn’t even realized it until that moment.
Looking back, it’s my denial that shocks me now. Of course, I was angry. My entire life had been turned upside-down. I had a bright red scar from hip to hip, and a reconstructed mound and missing nipple where I used to have a breast. I was afraid, lonely, guilt-ridden and traumatized.

My anger was that part of me that railed against it all. It was the part that hated submitting when punching someone or running made much more sense to my fight or flight impulse. It was the part of me that was sick and tired of letting cancer dictate my life.
Anger was as valid an emotion as any other. By making itself known when that light cover hit the floor, it forced me to deal with it. Luckily, I met with a therapist at my cancer center on a regular basis. She encouraged me to talk through my anger, first with her and then with others.

Our conversations helped me sort through my general anger at having cancer and my specific issues with family and friends who didn’t understand why I  “wasn’t “over” cancer. She also reassured me that it was normal to feel anger as a result of living with cancer.

Months after the walk-in closet incident, I returned to the breast center for the first mammogram of my remaining breast after my mastectomy. As I wrote in an earlier post, the technician’s ignorance and gross insensitivity made me “over the top angry.”

As extremely difficult as that experience was, I didn’t swallow my anger. Instead, I was able to express it constructively and get a resolution that worked for me.

Denying my anger and characterizing it as “bad,” resulted in bad behavior (and, ten years later, the light in my walk-in closet is still missing a cover.) As a normal emotional response, anger isn’t good or bad – it just is. Dealing with it openly can be difficult, but it’s a lot more constructive than smashing things.

You can read more about my struggles with cancer anger in “Seeing Red: Coping with Anger During Cancer” from CURE.
Survival > Existence,

Debbie
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The post Surviving On Hope: Working through cancer anger appeared first on Cancer Hope Network.