Chicken Soup for the Breast Cancer Survivor's Soul Read online

  Chicken Soup

  for the Breast Cancer Survivor’s Soul

  CHICKEN SOUP

  FOR THE

  BREAST CANCER

  SURVIVOR’S SOUL

  Stories to Inspire, Support

  and Heal

  Jack Canfield

  Mark Victor Hansen

  Mary Olsen Kelly

  Backlist, LLC, a unit of

  Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLC

  Cos Cob, CT

  www.chickensoup.com

  “This is nothing compared to that sinking feeling I got

  when they told me I have breast cancer.”

  Reprinted with permission of Charles Markman ©2005.

  Contents

  Introduction

  1. LOVE

  She’s My Hero Anthony Burton

  Night School Kathy Cawthon

  Sooner or Later Lori Misicka

  Family Lowell Gere

  You’ll Never Feel So Loved Sharon Bomgaars

  Food Is Love Barbara Curtis

  All You Need Is Love Tina Wagner Mattern

  Reading Charlotte’s Web Jennie Nash

  Locks of Love Leah Cano

  2. SUPPORT

  He Doesn’t Take “No” for an Answer Ellen B. Leavitt

  Giving and Receiving Jennie Nash

  Little Man Christopher Kathy Vancura

  Debbie’s Story Lolly Susi

  Science Mom Mary Olsen Kelly

  Enjoy Life! Regina Dodson

  Filler Bonnie Seibert

  Heart Massage Pandora Kurth

  My Heroes Maria McNaught

  “Tweety Conquers That Mean Old Bweast Cancer” Susan Darke

  Blessed by Friends Judy Hague

  The Glow Girls Karen Theis

  Bring on the Lasagna! Lorna Maxwell

  Family Scenes Ruth Kotler

  Joining the Race Ryan Matthew Landis

  3. CHALLENGES

  The First Time’s Always the Worst Leigh Anne Jasheway

  The Hardest Mile Jacqueline M. Hickey

  One Is Enough Mary Ellen “Barney” LaFavers

  Blessings Beyond Belief Denise Blunk

  The Gift of Photography and a Beautiful Breast Pamela Shandel

  For Richer or Poorer Beverly Vote

  Sometimes You Just Get Lucky Arlette Braman

  I Am Not Alone Mary Olsen Kelly

  4. CHARACTER

  Laundry Soap Lolly Susi

  The Esther Bunny Lives Here Ron Lando-Brown

  Crooked Wigs and Guinea Pigs Kathy Cawthon

  Sixty Miles Sherrie Page Najarian

  Angels Pamela Pierce

  From Stressed to Blessed Carol Ross Edmonston

  Becoming a Transformed Woman Lillie Shockney

  The Graduation Heather Haldeman

  Chockwut Pudding Mary Olsen Kelly

  Spirit Undaunted! Sue Caruso

  Women Who Bare Their Breasts Jennie Nash

  Things Are Looking Up! Teri Reath D’Ignazio

  Divine Inspiration Mary Anne Breen

  5. HEALING

  The Seasons of Our Lives Diana von Welenetz Wentworth

  You’ve Got to Play If You Want to Win Lori Misicka

  A “Gift of Healing” Journey Betsy Ludwig

  Isabelle and Her Dollies’ Hair Paula Young

  The Bus Ride John de Strakosch

  He Does Not Live in Vain Suzanne Metzger

  Stop Changing! Rhonda Richards-Cohen

  “Shoot the Messengers” Don Kelly

  Angel Hugh Lolly Susi

  6. COURAGE

  Knowing What Your Rope Is Myra Shostak

  A Message from My Marine Kathy Cawthon

  My Red Badges of Courage Donna St. Jean Conti

  Courage Comes in All Colors Jennie Nash

  Courage to Climb Michele V. Price

  Abreast in a Dragon Boat Susan R. Harris

  Racing for the Cure Ellen Ann Callahan

  For Josie Doug Manuel

  No More Fear Mary Olsen Kelly

  7. SURVIVAL

  Fifty-One-Year Survivor! Kathryn O. Sharr

  All the GiftsPam Arciero

  Dancing at Evan’s Wedding Nancy Jaynes as told to Ida Chipman

  Joy Is the Simplest Form of Gratitude Karen Thei

  A Time to Listen Donna Andres

  The Olsen Girls Mary Olsen Kelly

  Laughter Is Bubbly! Judy Averitt Hayes

  Diagnosis: Canceritis Lori Misicka

  8. GRATITUDE

  The Twelve Gifts of Chemo Sally Fouché

  My Life Kathy Chamberlin

  Payback Time Lee Scheinman

  You’re Gonna Eat That? Jami Bernard

  Another Kind of Miracle Jennifer Basye Sander

  The Snapshot Elaine Zalar

  My Guardian Angel Nanci L. Stroupe

  Hearts and Flowers Joan Persky

  Light Joni Rodgers

  I Can’t Believe You T. Suzanne Eller

  The Big “C” Kathy Cawthon

  Who Is Jack Canfield?

  Who Is Mark Victor Hansen?

  Who Is Mary Olsen Kelly?

  Contributors

  Permissions

  Introduction

  Going through the experience of breast cancer is no picnic, but with loving support, helpful advice and the healing power of laughter, it can be achieved. It is our fondest hope that you will be encouraged, buoyed, uplifted and instructed by the stories contained in this book. Other breast-cancer survivors wrote them for you— to bring you hope, to give you strength and courage.

  Research has shown that those who attend support groups tend to have higher survival rates. Those who reach out to family and friends for love and support make it through the medical journey of breast cancer more successfully. We have so much to learn from each other as we face the challenges of healing ourselves; often someone who has gone through the journey before us shares the thing we need to learn.

  We all have a story to tell. Our stories are healing and have power. We encourage you to tell your story, too. Who knows? Your story might encourage someone to go for a mammogram, even save someone’s life.

  Melissa Etheridge talks about how she prepared for the journey of breast cancer by gathering her “flashlights”— her friends and family members who would help her shine light into the fearful darkness.

  This collection of stories can be one of those flashlights for you—shining light and making your way easier, helping you to feel stronger, more filled with love and encouraged by the knowledge that you’re not alone in your journey.

  1

  LOVE

  Who so loves believes the impossible.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  She’s My Hero

  Things do not change; we change.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Senior year in high school: a time of college choices, graduations, proms and carefree friendships. Most kids were busy soaking up the last drop of the irresponsibility of high school before having to grow up in college. Most kids were making last-minute memories and losing them just as quickly. Most kids were having the time of their lives. Most kids didn’t have a mother diagnosed with breast cancer. I wasn’t like most kids.

  I was on my way to a soccer team dinner with my friend, Bill. I opened the front door and saw my parents sitting at the kitchen table with their heads down. My mother turned to me with a tear-soaked face, and before I could ask what was wrong, she answered me.

  “I have breast cancer.”

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  “I hope so.”

  Confused, I walked down the hall into my bedro
om. I looked at the walls covered with my favorite sports heroes and stared at each poster, looking for answers to the questions swimming in my head. What does she mean she has breast cancer? It was probably just a mistake, right? No one actually dies from that, right? Right?

  I returned to the kitchen without the words to respond to what was going on, what I was feeling. I didn’t know what I was feeling.

  “Can I go to the team dinner?” I asked.

  “Of course, sweetheart,” my mother replied.

  I climbed back into the car with Bill, who noticed I was shaken. He asked me, “What’s wrong?”

  “My mother just told me she has breast cancer.”

  He asked if I wanted to stay, and I told him I didn’t. I wanted to go away and come back later—when we could start this all over and my mother wouldn’t be ill. She wasn’t even fifty years old.

  During my mother’s bout with breast cancer, finding out she had the disease has remained the clearest scene in my mind. The following months I watched everything blur as she received a litany of radiation and chemotherapy treatments. She would struggle out of bed each day, burned from the radiation, only to get sick in the bathroom. Her hair began falling out, bags permanently hung under her eyes, and the color vanished from her face. This woman was looking less and less like my mother each day.

  Then I looked at the picture of me with my parents taken in much happier times. We were all smiling without a care in the world, and I would have done anything to stay locked in that moment forever. I’d look at my father in the photo and then to me, thinking another possibility: The next picture may just be the two of us. Tears welled up in my eyes as I thought about what it would be like going to college later that year without my mother to call. Things would get blurry all over again.

  One night as I looked at that picture, I focused on my mother’s face. She hadn’t smiled like that in a long time. Her hair was long and thick, and her face was youthful and beaming, but it was her eyes I noticed the most. They illuminated the whole picture with their vibrancy and life. If eyes really are windows to the soul, then this woman’s soul was bright enough to light up the rest of us.

  “Are you doing all right, sweetheart?” I heard from behind. I spun around to see my mother walking up to me in her robe. Her head was almost bald, her face was tired and worn, and her shoulders hung limp. But suddenly I felt in my heart that everything would be all right because when I saw her eyes, they were the same eyes that lit up that family picture. I saw that same bright soul shining through like the sun behind a set of gray clouds. I didn’t say anything, but my mother could read what I was thinking. She just grabbed my hands and told me, “We’re going to get through this.”

  From that day on, I’ve thought of my mother as nothing short of an angel. This woman conquered a disease inside her, one that was ripping away many of her physical attributes. It took away her hair; it took away her appetite; it took away her energy; it even took away her smile. But it never took away her soul, her spirit, for that remained where it belonged—with her family—and it was never cancer’s to take.

  I realized then that while she drew her spirit and strength from my father and me, we did the same from her. It’s ironic to think that I would not have made it through my mother’s battle with cancer without my mother’s support, but that was certainly the case. Our family unit laughed more, shared more, loved more. We knew the only way we were going to beat this thing was to love each other more and more every day.

  Cancer can’t touch love if it’s not allowed to. It will try to trick you into thinking that it can take away everything. It’s like that set of gray clouds. It can cover the sun and make you think everything is dreary, somber and hopeless. It tends to make things blurry. But if you have faith, patience, courage and love, eventually those clouds have to move, and the sun that was hidden will smile warmly on you once again.

  Now I think back upon that day when I walked into my bedroom for answers. I looked at Michael Jordan, Don Mattingly and Patrick Ewing, men I’d anointed as my heroes, for some guidance. All my life I had followed these men as people I’d like to be like one day. But all they did was play a sport. They didn’t fight for their lives with their backs against the wall. They hadn’t had to look cancer straight in the face and say, “No!” I had spent my whole life looking outside for a hero when I should have been looking within.

  It’s been nearly ten years since my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she is totally healthy now. I have certainly endured some tough times since my senior year in high school, but I have faced those situations with a new perspective. I watched my mother prevail in the toughest fight of all, and I know deep in my heart that I have some of that magic myself because she’s given it to me. However, I take solace in knowing that whenever I may lose my way or things get blurry again, my mother will always be there to tell me: “We’re going to get through this.”

  She is, and always will be, my hero.

  Anthony Burton

  Night School

  Cancer got me over unimportant fears, like getting old.

  Olivia Newton-John

  Without a doubt, the nights were the worst.

  During the daytime, family and friends visited and chatted. Others called to talk on the phone. My mother rented movies, and we watched them together. My teenage sons went through the typical trials and tribulations of that phase of life, and its inherent daily drama kept my thoughts occupied. Visits to the oncology clinic or the radiation therapy center at the hospital provided opportunities to visit with other patients and cheerful nurses and technicians. And the daylight somehow made everything okay. It was easier to laugh in the daytime, and it was easier to believe I would get well. I didn’t feel so alone when the sun was up.

  But when night fell, everything changed. The nightmares of childhood could not compete with the horrors of those nights when survival seemed only a very slim possibility. With everyone in our household sound asleep and not a sound to be heard anywhere, I would bolt upright in my bed, heart pounding, envisioning things I feared would come to pass. I would start to tremble all over, pull the blankets tighter around me, and lie there shivering and sobbing for what seemed like hours.

  Then I heard someone refer to those times as “God’s night classes.” She said that God often awakens us in the middle of the night during difficult times for the simple reason that it is quiet and there is nothing to distract us from communicating with him. With all around us dark and silent, we can talk to him, and we can listen to what he has to tell us.

  I began to look at those nightly wake-up calls as God’s night classes. When I began to shake all over and the tears came, I begged him to pull me close, to comfort me and calm my fears. I told him where it hurt and what I was afraid of. And, yes, I prayed for a cure. But mostly I just prayed for courage to get through one more treatment, one more surgery, one more day of living with cancer.

  After a few of these “night classes,” the trembling and the tears stopped. If I awoke during the night, I said, “Hello, God. I’m here.”

  Invariably he said, “So am I.”

  Kathy Cawthon

  Sooner or Later

  You don’t get to choose how you’re going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you’re going to live. Now.

  Joan Baez

  On April 15, 1997, I was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. Talk about an emotional roller-coaster: I felt shock and fear, denial and fear, anger and fear . . . a lot of fear.

  The only thing that got me through that crazy earthquake of a time was that so many people offered so much help. Every day I got phone calls, e-mails, cards, letters, books, tapes, meals . . . you name it. There were on-line support groups, face-to-face support groups, dance movement therapy classes, art therapy classes, healing circles. There were friends, relatives, neighbors, therapists, social workers, ministers. I literally owe my life to all those people. But the person who helped me the most during that terrible time was my
son John, six years old.

  Because the perspective of a six-year-old is so different from an adult, I had to think in a very different way in order to help him understand what was happening. Little did I know at the time how much John would help me break through my fear barrier.

  The first step in my treatment plan was chemotherapy. I felt a lot of fear about having chemo. I thought of it as poison and wondered if it would do more harm than good, but I certainly couldn’t describe it that way to John. I told him that, since I had a powerful sickness in my body, I would need powerful medicine to help me get better. The medicine was so powerful, in fact, that it was superhero medicine—it could knock the hair right off my head!

  John was obsessed with Batman, Superman and the Power Rangers. He loved the thought that his mom’s life was being saved by medicine that was as strong as his heroes, and so he was thrilled when my hair was “knocked right off my head.” I found myself visualizing little Supermans flying through my body punching out all the cancer cells, and I wasn’t scared anymore.

  Once four months’ worth of chemo was done, I moved on to the next step of my treatment: surgery.

  I have never been particularly breast-identified, but a body part is a body part, and my goal has always been to retain as many of mine as possible. I dreaded the prospect of losing my breast. John was horrified.

  Over the next few days, my six-year-old son worked feverishly, concocting alternate ways for the doctor to get the cancer out of my body without having to cut off my breast. His favorite, and most creative, idea was for the doctor to go into my body through my mouth and use a spoon to scoop out the sick parts of my breast from the inside, without having to touch the outside at all.

  In discussing each of his proposals, together John and I realized and came to accept that losing a breast might just be the best way to help me get better. Suddenly, I was no longer afraid of the impending surgery.

  But it was toward the end of my treatment that my son helped me the most.

  One day, shortly before I started radiation, we were sitting in the living room. I think I was watching him play with Legos. Out of the blue (which is how kids ambush you with the big stuff), he said, “Mommy, if they don’t get the sickness out of your body in time, will you die?”