Excerpt
A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she's in hot water.
Eleanor Roosevelt, America's Most Influential First Lady and wife of 32nd President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(1884 - 1962)
Lately, I've been hanging out with lab coats. Actually, I've been hanging out with people who wear lab coats. I say things like, "Why don't we order liver functionality testing with the CBC," and, "Let's determine the next steps in the treatment plan." I am neither a doctor nor a nurse. I am not a health care practitioner. My vocation has nothing to do with the medical profession.
My name is Wendi and I am a recent survivor of advanced stage breast cancer. I am a 46-year-old communications professional, wife, and the mother of three teenage daughters and a four-year-old son. My tumor was found during an annual clinical exam (and not a self-exam). I was complacent; I did monthly breast self-exams (BSEs) about twice a year. After all, I had none of the breast cancer risk factors, breast cancer wouldn't happen to me. Yet, here I am, a breast cancer victim with a story to tell…
By chronicling my story, I hope to achieve several things: help people with breast cancer get through their treatment experience; help cancer caregivers and anyone who may develop breast cancer in the future (male or female); inform non-medical people in everyday language about some of the ways cancer is treated; and provide encouragement and inspiration to anyone facing something that threatens his or her quality of life or life expectancy. This is a story about facing fears, making decisions, living day-to-day, discovering comedy in unlikely situations and ultimately emerging triumphant. This book is my gift to everyone touched by cancer (which is just about everyone).
Some of the story is drawn from the regular written updates I had provided to friends and colleagues. Some of it is from notes I'd scribbled on bits of paper, napkins, and sticky notes. And the rest of it is the result of my time spent resting and recuperating with a notebook computer on my lap.
As you read the story, you'll find advice for cancer patients and caregivers in the form of underlined tips. However, read more than just the tips. There is practical advice throughout.
If you are a cancer patient or a caregiver looking for an understanding of what to expect and how to travel your cancer journey in an informed way, this book is for you. You can follow the story as you would a novel and get the timely tips as you read. I invested hundreds of hours of exploration into the cancer topic, so you don't have to. On the other hand, if you are the knowledge-hungry type, you can start with this book, and then proceed to the websites, pamphlets and books I suggest.
This book is enriched with e-mails and comments from caring people and compassionate physicians who traveled this journey with me. I wrote about my journey. They wrote about me.
If you are a cancer patient and struggling emotionally, don't close the book because you think I'm too optimistic to be true. As you will come to find out, I hit my wall of gloom. The way I approached my ordeal was practical and positive. I am more optimistic than the average person; I don't expect cancer patients or their caregivers to be as positive as I was, but I anticipate that some of my ideas, attitudes, thoughts, and methods will grow in you and give you hope. Hope is powerful medicine. My path might not be your path, your stage of cancer might not be the same as my stage of cancer, but there are things in this book that will help you.
When I did my research, I separated the cancer books into two main categories: 1) informational resources and references guides, and 2) personal stories. This book is both.
Resource book: You'll notice that there are blank pages in the back for notes and tiny, diagonal lines on the top corner of every page of this book. This is to remind you that this book can be used as an informational source, and dog-earring pages is encouraged. Additionally, I suggest keeping a highlighting marker with your copy of this book so you can draw attention to information you want to remember or share with others, and sources you might want to investigate (such as books, websites, etc.). An important aspect of beating cancer is knowledge. Education is powerful medicine.
Personal story: You may be inclined to read the first few paragraphs of this book to compare your diagnosis with mine, and then jump to the last few paragraphs to see how I'm surviving. Let me save you some time. At the time of this writing I am doing extremely well. I've been told I am "cured unless proven otherwise." I've endured four surgeries, sixteen weeks of chemotherapy, and twenty-eight radiation treatments. It is my hope that my story will inspire you. Inspiration is powerful medicine, too.
And now, for the in-between part of the story…
