Category Archives: New Normal

How far we’ve come. How far we’ll go.

19 Jul

I have just spent a wonderful morning speaking with some members of the media about the 20-year anniversary of the Look Good Feel Better program.  As women, we all love to read our fashion, beauty and lifestyle magazines, and since Look Good Feel Better began in 1992, our media partners have played a crucial role in helping to spread the word about our free programs to Canadian women.  As I looked around the table this morning at the magazine writers and editors who joined us, I saw some faces who have been with us since the program’s beginning, as well as some new faces. In both instances, it’s a sincere pleasure to let people know about the benefits of our Look Good Feel Better program and our facingcancer.ca community. 

We were especially thrilled to welcome our blogger friend, Katie Evans (The Bald & the Beautiful) who shared how the support she found at both the Look Good Feel Better workshop and here, at facingcancer.ca have coloured her cancer experience.  One of the things that resonated with me about what Katie said was that now that she’s out of treatment and back to work, people around her consider cancer to be “over” or “behind her”.  However, for those of us who have been diagnosed, we know that the period after treatment can be just the beginning of the cancer journey, as we adapt to our “new normal”. 

As we look back over the past 20 years of Look Good Feel Better, we also look forward, as we work to find ways to help women face the persistent challenges that follow us long after the diagnosis is given or the tumours have been removed from our bodies. For me, those challenges include wearing leg braces and using a cane to help me walk as a result of the intense treatments I received, as well as the fear of recurrence (that we all know so well) and grieving the life that might have been had cancer not robbed me of so many choices and chances.  That’s not to say there’s not a wonderful existence after cancer, it may just be that “after cancer” doesn’t exist. Rather, once we hear that diagnosis, our reality is altered and we are forced to move forward on a different path that is inextricably shaped by cancer. The important thing is, to keep moving forward with courage, hope and optimism.

Posted in Diagnosis, Life after cancer, New Normal, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

What’s Your Word?

31 Jan

We are only weeks into the New Year but 2012 is already shaping up to be an exciting year for us.  This is the year that we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of  our foundation and the Look Good Feel Better program in Canada.  We are in the early stages of planning the 20th issue of our annual magazine, which has given us a reason to dig through our archives and revisit some of the touching, hopeful and empowering stories that we’ve had the privilege of sharing over the past two decades.

Just this week, we were beyond thrilled to hear from an amazing woman we first met when she appeared in the 1998 issue of our magazine.  Dionne Warner is nothing short of a miracle.  She is a seven-time cancer survivor, having had cancer in her breast and brain and two bouts of liver cancer before being diagnosed in 2009 with Stage 4 cancer in her lungs, bones and liver.  Dionne and her husband Graham are known at the cancer care centre where Dionne receives her treatment for dressing up in themed costumes for each of her chemo appointments, often marking their entrance with music, laughter and commotion.  We received the incredible news this week that Dionne’s cancer is in complete remission!  I have no doubt that Dionne’s indomitable spirit and resolute optimism helped propel her to this point. She’s a true personification of what it means to have hope.

We use the word ‘hope’ a lot around our office because we believe that every woman deserves to face cancer with hope, support and optimism. That’s not to discount the bad days or the seriousness of cancer, but we believe, and our report proves, that women are, overall, determined to face cancer with positivity. The women we surveyed told us they just need the supports to help lift them up when the really low lows hit.  In fact, I would have to say that ‘determined’ is the word that I use most often to describe my own cancer experience.  Despite being given just three months to live, I was determined to do everything in my power to turn my grim prognosis on its head and make medical history. I was also determined  to face each day with as much positive spirit as I could muster.  Many days, when my own supply of positive spirit was depleted, I had to borrow some from the many friends and family members who rallied around me, but together we got through the scarring surgeries, the gruelling treatments, the pain and the nausea to the point I am at today – 22 years cancer free!  How truly grateful I am.  

Despite the fact that doctors were able to remove the cancer from my body many years ago, I face the lifelong impact of cancer every day with the same determination that I did back when I was undergoing treatment.  Because my treatments and surgeries were so extreme, I am left with lifelong physical challenges that require me to wear braces on both of my legs and walk with a cane.  Every day when I strap on those prosthesis that enable me to walk, I am reminded of the ‘new normal’ cancer created for me and I am determined to face these challenges head on.

What word best describes your cancer experience?  Has your word changed over the course of your journey? Please share your word in the comments section below.  We might include your comments in the 2012 issue of our magazine, so that you can help other women facing similar challenges.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you as we face cancer together. 

Posted in Life after cancer, New Normal, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Looking Back, Moving Forward

29 Dec

I have been reading my fellow bloggers’ posts about how the holiday season can seem even more ‘magical’ after a cancer diagnosis.  I believe it’s true, that once you’ve faced some of the most challenging of days and lived to tell the tale – literally – you do become even more grateful for the good days.  Heck, even the bad days after cancer aren’t nearly as bad as the day you receive the dreaded diagnosis or the worst of days when you’re in the thick of treatment. Ironically, even as I pause at this time of year to give thanks for the many, many blessings in my life, my family remind me of the news they received on Christmas Eve 22 years ago. When they were coming in to visit me, as they passed by the nursing station, they were told to call before coming in on Christmas morning because I wasn’t expected to live through the night.

Those of you who have read my previous blog posts may already know that when I was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer, my prognosis was dimmer than dim: there were only a handful of cases of my type of cancer around the world and virtually no survivors.  My diagnosis came in September and I was told that I would be lucky if I saw the New Year.  But despite the grim outlook, my medical team and I vowed to do everything possible to make medical history and we did!  But it wasn’t without encountering setbacks and roadblocks along the way. 

I was horrified to have to spend that first Christmas after my diagnosis in hospital.  My father, who was still mourning the loss of my mother to cancer, brought the spirit of Christmas to my hospital room.  He also brought me a gift I was hoping for – a fancy new camera.  Over the years I have often thought about how symbolic that camera was to me.  Although I wasn’t expected to live long after receiving it, for me it represented my will to live and my desire to move my life forward.  

And just as Catherine looks back now one year after finishing her chemo treatments and marvels at how far she has come from those dark days that at the time seemed endless, I too look back and am eminently grateful for the blessings in my life, including the friends and family who helped me through those dark days and who continue to support me through thick and thin.  I know that, unfortunately, not everyone has a support network as strong as mine.  I hope that for you, the facingcancer.ca community gives you hope and inspiration so that you, too, can look back one day and marvel at how far you’ve come. 

 As I look forward to a bright new year filled with new adventure and opportunity, I’ve decided I want to make this a year of gratitude.  I look forward to being mindful for all that I am grateful for ~ family, friends, health and well-being; work at a job I love; travel and a world of possibility in each new day. God bless and Happy New Year. I look forward to staying connected throughout 2012.

Posted in Life after cancer, New Normal, Support | 2 Comments

Getting Back to ‘Normal’

29 Aug

Recently, I’ve been revisiting the findings of our 2010 national survey of women with cancer, and thinking about how so much of what women told us mirrors my own experience. It got me to thinking about the things women with cancer want. Of course, there are things we all want — a self-clean bathroom, the perfect pair of jeans, great boots — but a cancer diagnosis changes everything and suddenly and somehow, for awhile anyway, many of the things we once wanted aren’t very important anymore.

In our survey, women told us that more than anything, they didn’t want the people around them to treat them differently just because they had cancer. I remember very well the overwhelming need for life to be as normal as possible (which was virtually impossible at best) during my cancer journey. For me, this meant getting up every morning and attempting to brush on touch of mood-lifting blush, pencil on some eyebrows, spritz on some of my favourite fragrance and, of course, put on my wig, just so I could start my day feeling a little more like myself. It wasn’t that I looked pretty, but somehow investing the time and effort into how I faced the day had a powerful impact on my psyche. Even while I was in the hospital — desperately thin and feeling anxious and weak as I faced more nauseating treatment — I wore my lipstick. I suppose that slash of One Perfect Coral on my lips (my late 1980s go-to shade) was my way of showing people that the ‘old’ me was still there, inside a body that was supposedly mine despite the fact that it looked so drastically different. It was an invitation (a plea?) to all of my visitors to speak to that sassy blonde who carries her lipstick everywhere she goes, even if the blonde hair was nowhere to be seen.

‘Normal’ for me also meant getting away for an evening or even just for an hour to enjoy a refreshing adult beverage with my best girlfriends. (That’s me in 1989, taking a break from treatment to attend Flare magazine’s anniversary party.) While it was often a physical struggle for me to get there, I knew that sharing a few laughs would allow me to feel as though I were still engaged in LIVING! And much like the women we surveyed, I craved those moments when I was just ‘me’ not ‘Sherry dying of cancer’. As one of our survey respondents said, “I was cancer girl. It always set me apart.”

But it’s not fair to fault our well-meaning friends and family for acting differently. Most of what we hear about cancer is about the bad news and the struggle so they may be expecting the worse. The people close to you have probably never seen you so unsure of yourself and vulnerable, to say the least. When you think about it, they’re probably feeling pretty scared and vulnerable, too, and they can’t find the right words to convey what they really feel. They might need you to tell them it’s okay to feel the way they’re feeling, but remind them that you’re still you and that hasn’t changed. Sometimes, people need the person with cancer to acknowledge the myriad of emotions that come along with the diagnosis. By putting it out there, you make it okay for them to talk to you about it the way they would talk to you about how your day was, your job or the weather. Tell people what you need to get over each hurdle, whether it’s for them to grab you some groceries on the way over or to take you out for a dirty martini at your favourite old haunt.

And one day, when you aren’t even paying attention, you’ll again start wishing for things like a pair of jeans that fit like a glove and a great new pair of boots … maybe even a new lipstick. You know, the ‘normal’ things in life.

Posted in Life after cancer, New Normal, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Women Spoke, We Listened

21 Mar

Last week my colleagues of the CCTFA Foundation and I joined many friends, supporters and members of the media for a breakfast event to mark the official launch of this website and the report that inspired it, Lives affected by cancer…800 women speak.  It marked the culmination of a lot of hard work that began, really, when we launched Look Good Feel Better in 1992.

Since that time, more than 110,000 women have benefitted from our workshop, and over the years they have told us many things about the impact of cancer on their bodies, their lives and the lives of their loved ones.  For nearly two decades, we have been listening and collecting their stories of courage and inspiration in our hearts and in our heads. We learned a lot from these women and in 2010 we broadened the mission of our Foundation to encompass the psychosocial needs of lives affected by cancer, which, quite simply, encompasses everything ‘else’ a woman many be going through with cancer, beyond the medical care of the disease.  In an effort to learn even more about the social and emotional impacts of the disease, and to look at ways that we as a Foundation could help women address some of these psychosocial needs, we conducted a Canada-wide survey to hear first-hand what they had to share about life after a cancer diagnosis. 

 
The resulting report, Lives affected by cancer…800 women speak reveals that even after cancer and its treatment, may women struggle to return to their “normal” life, or perhaps more appropriately worded, their “new normal”.  Whether our body has been changed physically as a result of cancer, we are grieving the loss of life as we once knew it, or dealing with issues of fatigue that can take months or sometimes years to go away, like it or not, many of us have a changed reality.  As one survey respondent told us, “You can’t just close the door and walk out.  You’ll never be who you were.”

For me, although I’ve been cancer free for more than 21 years, the impact of the disease is still very much a part of my daily life, and always will be.  My treatments and surgeries left me with nerve damage that requires me to wear braces on both legs to walk, and I use a cane to support me as my balance is now poor.  Mind you, my cane is studded in rhinestones!  But the lingering effect of nerve damage has meant that my quality of life is different from what it may have been. And while physically I cannot do some of the things I used to, as a result of my cancer journey I am emotionally and spiritually rich in life appreciation as a result of my new normal.

There are many women who will tell you they have emerged ‘stronger and better than ever’ after cancer, finding that the experience of looking into the face of the disease forces them to find inner strength and draw on reserves they didn’t know they possessed.  One of our Look Good Feel Better Ambassadors and models, Line, recently realized a dream of hers and opened a body clinic, Nueeva, in Brossard Quebec with her daughter. With her breast cancer gone and her treatments now complete, she finds she has more confidence that ever before. “I went through all of this, imagine what I can do today,” she says. “I found out that I am very strong.”  Our beloved blogger Dr. Alex Ginty also tries to focus on the things she has learned from cancer, using her experience to relate to the fear and anxiety her patients sometimes feel, and sharing some of the tips she used to get through the darker days of her journey. She eloquently shares some of what cancer has taught her in her poetry on her blog, Both Sides.

Of course not everyone finds the ‘silver lining’ to cancer.  And no one should ever feel pressured or guilty to move on.  Healing takes time, and the fact is, cancer does change you, even if that change may be in your outlook on life, or through the newfound inner-strength and wisdom you’ve unleashed within.  And no matter what, we know that the need for support does not end with the last treatment, or when we ring the chemo bell.  Though our hair, brows and lashes will grow back and many of us do return to work, for many women faced there are bound to be hurdles throughout the cancer journey.  For many of us, healing and well-being becomes a life-long quest – it has for me. 

I would like to personally encourage every woman who has had cancer not to be afraid to acknowledge that you still may need help, that some days are harder than others, or that you are scared that cancer may rear its ugly head again. If you need or are seeking support or resources to help you on this next stage of your journey, please visit the Resources page of our website for a list of places and programs that may be of help to you.  

I’d love to hear from you. You can send me a note on this site, or at thecancerjourney@cctfafoundation.ca

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