Chicken Soup for the Cancer Survivor's Soul Read online

  In January the dreaded painful day came. The leg was amputated. Chris returned to school a few weeks later. He was soon fitted with a prosthesis. The children at school were fascinated that Chris could take off his leg. They were very understanding and helpful. In addition to coats and hats, it was not unusual to have a leg in our closet. Other students were always ready and willing to bring him his crutches or his leg. Whatever he needed, they were there and ready. It was a tough year, but rewarding to see the caring and giving of the other students.

  As winter faded into spring, the chemotherapy treatments took their toll on Chris. He lost all of his hair. For a while, he tried to wear a nice looking wig that his mother bought for him. One very hot, humid day when no air was moving, right in the middle of class, off came that hot wig. It didn’t matter what he looked like, at that moment his comfort was more important than his pride. After another very hot day of physical education outside that spring, as he struggled with those crutches, I suggested that he come to the front of the line and get a drink of water. The other students encouraged him to do the same, but he informed us that he would just take his turn like everyone else. The only special privilege he really enjoyed was being able to wear a hat inside the school building to hide his hairless head.

  One day an older man who had been a teacher and a principal before retiring came to visit the students and to tell them about a special contest that a civic club was sponsoring. This special man always quizzed the students and talked to them about the importance of patriotism and school. On this particular day, Chris sat there with his hat on. This very patriotic man walked over to him, removed his hat and said, “Boy, take that hat off when you’re inside!” As he removed the hat from Chris’ head, a look of surprise, sympathy and remorse all filled his face at the same time. Chris just looked up at him, smiled, reached for the hat and placed it back on his head. At that moment I think I felt even more empathy for the man who removed the hat than I did for Chris.

  During all the health problems that Chris faced, he never lost his courage or his faith. He and his family began this ordeal having just partially recuperated from a terrible accident five years earlier, in which his father and his grandmother were killed, and Chris was seriously injured. How much must one young man face? I am sure this is a question asked by many people.

  Chris and I are both doing fine now. In December, it will be eight years since I had cancer. I feel that I am better qualified as a teacher because of what happened to me. It has helped me to understand and help students who may have family members suffering from cancer or other serious illnesses. I hope I will not have any more students who have to go through anything like Chris had to deal with, but if I do, I’ll do my best to help them through it.

  In October, it will be seven years since Chris was diagnosed with cancer. We are survivors! Both of us know it was the Lord who brought us through the tough times. Chris will graduate from high school this coming year. He is a very handsome young man who will soon enter college and pursue his career. I am sure he will choose a career that will involve helping others. He is that kind of young man.

  Louise Biggs

  My Hero

  It is Thursday. I hate Thursday. Today, multitudes of parents and children make long trips in order to arrive at this destination... hell. It is a crowded and noisy place. It is a place where people do not smile, a place where pain and fear lurk around every corner. I exit the elevator on the fourth floor, turn the far-too-familiar corner, and sit in an uncomfortable chair. People are all around me, yet I am alone. Although my journey has just begun for today, it is not an unfamiliar one. I have been here many times before. Twenty-one grooves in each tile. I have counted them often. I settle myself in my chair because I know it may be some time before my name is called. Suddenly, I hear a strange sound. It is a laugh. I can hardly believe it, for no one laughs on Thursday. Thursday is chemo day on 4B.

  I scan the crowded reception area, looking for the source of the laughter. I note child after child, parent after parent. They all look the same—tired and frightened. I am certain each is thinking the same thought: Why is the treatment worse than the disease? My eyes lock on one particular mother who is holding her baby, a boy of about eight months. The laugh is his. He is bouncing on his mother’s knee. It is obvious this is the child’s favorite game. The mother’s face is one big smile. She relishes the brief moments of happiness in her son’s short life. She realizes it may be a while before he has the strength to smile again. He, too, has been chosen to suffer an unfair and uncertain fate. My eyes fill with tears.

  I shift in my seat to get a better view of the baby. I stare at his small, bald head. Baldness is not unusual in an infant, but I know why he is hairless. Suddenly I become angry with myself. I despise it when people stare at me; however, here I am sharing the stares I abhor.

  I shift my weight once again and sink more deeply into the groove of my chair. A rush of emotions—anger, fear, sadness, pity—surge through me. I remain deeply engrossed in my thoughts for a long time. A booming voice interrupts my reverie. It is the nurse summoning mother and baby into hell. Simultaneously the bouncing and laughing cease. The mother picks up her son. As they walk past me, I look at the baby once more. He is completely calm. His eyes are bright, and there is an expression of complete trust on his tiny face. I know that I will never forget that expression.

  This is but one of many Thursdays. However, on this particular Thursday, many months into a seemingly endless series of treatments, I learned a lesson from a little baby. He changed my life. He taught me that anger, tears and sadness are only for those who have given up. He also taught me to trust. This I will carry with me always. Today, my little hero is doing fine. His last treatment is in sight and his future looks bright. I can honestly say that I am a little surprised. That bright-eyed baby appeared so pale and sick that day. However, that was before I learned to trust.

  Everyone, some sooner than others, must endure his or her own personal “hell on earth.” It is important to keep searching for the small joys, although they are sometimes the most elusive. Trust that these joys will appear, sometimes unexpectedly, and often in life’s darkest moments . . . for instance, in the smile on a baby’s face.

  Katie Gill

  Keep on Keeping On

  In 1986, actress Jill Eikenberry completed the pilot for a new television show—L.A. Law. She and her husband, actor Michael Tucker, felt excited about the prospects for the show. They planned to leave their home in New York and move to Los Angeles if NBC accepted the pilot.

  Suddenly their rosy future turned dark. In May, Eikenberry’s doctor told her she had breast cancer.

  “The news came completely out of the blue,” Eikenberry told me. “At first, I thought that I was going to die and that was it. I spent some time just lying on the bed and crying, unable to imagine how my family was going to get along without me.”

  Husband Michael Tucker was scared, too. “I remember the moment when the doctor said, ‘It’s malignant.’ I’ve never been so scared in my life. I thought I was going to lose her.” But Tucker and Eikenberry gave each other strength. “Michael and I just held each other for a long time. That helped,” Eikenberry says.

  Then several days after learning the diagnosis, Eikenberry went to the screening of a film she’d recently done. One of the other actresses from the film was there, and when the young woman saw Eikenberry, she asked if something was wrong.

  “I spilled it all out to her,” Eikenberry says. “And she took me over to her mother who was there, too. When her mother heard the story, she grabbed me and dragged me into the ladies’ room. She hiked up her blouse and said, ‘Look, this is eleven years ago. I have a scar here and that’s all I have to remind me of the breast cancer. This, too, can happen to you.’

  “It was the first time I ever had any sense that there was hope, that I might not die,” Eikenberry says. “Her words gave me the courage to seek a second opinion. The first doctor had told me a maste
ctomy was the best idea, but the second physician said no, I was a good candidate for a lumpectomy.”

  So Eikenberry opted to have the lumpectomy, a less radical procedure. The operation was successful, but treatment wasn’t finished. When Eikenberry began filming the regular episodes of L.A. Law, she left the set every day at 3:30 P.M. to go to UCLA Medical Center for radiation treatment.

  “She was exhausted,” Tucker says. “After she got home, she’d rest for the rest of the night, and then go back to work the next day. And this is how we did the first three or four episodes of L.A. Law.

  ”

  Eikenberry told me how it was for her. “I just had to keep on keeping on,” she said. “And today everybody says, ‘Oh, that must have been so hard for you.’ And it was. But if you have something else you have to do, it helps. Continuing to work was very therapeutic. I was also playing the Ann Kelsey role, which was so strong and aggressive and confident. I think that really helped me make it through. Today, I’m celebrating my fifth anniversary cancer-free.

  “Once you’ve fought something like cancer and won, there’s not much that’s scary. I used to be scared of flying, but I’m not anymore. After cancer, you’ve seen the thing that we all spend a lot of time denying. You’ve looked death in the face. So fear plays much less of a role in my life than it used to.”

  Jill Eikenberry kept on keeping on and discovered that change and setbacks really can make you stronger.

  Erik Olesen

  The Container

  One of the angriest people I have ever worked with was a young man with osteogenic sarcoma of the right leg. He had been a high school and college athlete, and until the time of his diagnosis, his life had been good. Beautiful women, fast cars, personal recognition. Two weeks after his diagnosis, they had removed his right leg above the knee. This surgery, which saved his life, also ended his life. Playing ball was a thing of the past.

  These days, there are many sorts of self-destructive behaviors open to an angry young man like this. He refused to return to school. He began to drink heavily, to use drugs, to alienate his former admirers and friends and to have one automobile accident after the other. After the second of these, his former coach called and referred him to me.

  He was a powerfully built and handsome young man, profoundly self-oriented and isolated. At the beginning, he had the sort of rage that felt very familiar to me. Filled with a sense of injustice and self-pity, he hated all the well people. In our second meeting, hoping to encourage him to show his feelings about himself, I gave him a drawing pad and asked him to draw a picture of his body. He drew a crude sketch of a vase, just an outline. Running through the center of it he drew a deep crack. He went over and over the crack with a black crayon, gritting his teeth and tearing the paper. He had tears in his eyes. They were tears of rage. It seemed to me that the drawing was a powerful statement of his pain and the finality of his loss. It was clear that this broken vase could never hold water, could never function as a vase again. It hurt to watch. After he left, I folded the picture up and saved it. It seemed too important to throw away.

  In time, his anger began to change in subtle ways. He began one session by handing me an item torn from our local newspaper. It was an article about a motorcycle accident in which a young man had lost his leg. His doctors were quoted at length. I finished reading and looked up. “Those idiots don’t know the first thing about it,” he said furiously. Over the next month he brought in more of these articles, some from the paper and some from magazines: a girl who had been severely burned in a house fire, a boy whose hand had been partly destroyed in the explosion of his chemistry set. His reactions were always the same, a harsh judgment of the well-meaning efforts of doctors and parents. His anger about these other young people began to occupy more and more of our session time. No one understood them, no one was there for them, no one really knew how to help them. He was still enraged, but it seemed to me that underneath this anger a concern for others was growing. Encouraged, I asked him if he wanted to do anything about it. Caught by surprise, at first he said, “No.” But just before he left he asked me if I thought he could meet some of these others who suffered injuries like his.

  People came to our hospital from all over the world, and the chances were good that there were some with the sorts of injuries that mattered to him. I said that I thought it was quite possible and I would look into it. It turned out to be easy. Within a few weeks, he had begun to visit young people on the surgical wards whose problems were similar to his own.

  He came back from these visits full of stories, delighted to find that he could reach young people. He was often able to be of help when no one else could. After a while he felt able to speak to parents and families, helping them to better understand and to know what was needed. The surgeons, delighted with the results of these visits, referred more and more people to him. Some of these doctors had seen him play ball and they began to spend a little time with him. As he got to know them, his respect for them grew. Gradually his anger faded and he developed a sort of ministry. I just watched and listened and appreciated.

  My favorite of all his stories concerned a visit to a young woman who had a tragic family history: breast cancer had claimed the lives of her mother, her sister and her cousin. Another sister was in chemotherapy. This last event had driven her into action. At 21 she had both her breasts removed surgically.

  He visited her on a hot midsummer day, wearing shorts, his artificial leg in full view. Deeply depressed, she lay in bed with her eyes closed, refusing to look at him. He tried everything he knew to reach her but without success. He said things to her that only another person with an altered body would dare to say. He made jokes. He even got angry. She did not respond. All the while a radio was softly playing rock music. Frustrated, he finally stood, and in a last effort to get her attention he unstrapped the harness of his artificial leg and let it drop to the floor with a loud thump. Startled, she opened her eyes and saw him for the first time. This young man, once one of the best dancers on his college campus, began to hop around the room snapping his fingers in time to the music, laughing out loud at himself. After a moment she burst out laughing. “Fella,” she said, “if you can dance, maybe I can sing.”

  This young woman became his friend and began to visit people in the hospital with him. She was in school and she encouraged him to return to school to study psychology and dream of carrying his work further. Eventually she became his wife, a very different sort of person from the models and cheerleaders he had dated in the past. But long before this, we ended our sessions together. In our final meeting, we were reviewing the way he had come, the sticking points and the turning points. I opened his chart and found the picture of the broken vase that he had drawn two years before. Unfolding it, I asked him if he remembered the drawing he had made of his body. He took it in his hands and looked at it for some time. “You know,” he said, “it’s really not finished.” Surprised, I extended my basket of crayons toward him. Taking a yellow crayon, he began to draw lines radiating from the crack in the vase to the very edges of the paper. Thick yellow lines. I watched, puzzled. He was smiling. Finally he put his finger on the crack, looked at me and said softly, “This is where the light comes through.”

  Suffering is intimately connected to wholeness. The power in suffering to promote integrity is not only a Christian belief, it has been a part of almost every religious tradition. Yet 20 years of working with people with cancer, in the setting of unimaginable loss and pain, suggests that this may not be a spiritual teaching or a religious belief at all, but rather some sort of natural law. That is, we might learn it not by divine revelation, but simply through a careful and patient observation of the nature of the world. Suffering shapes the life force, sometimes into anger, sometimes into blame and self-pity. Eventually it may show us the freedom of loving and serving life.

  Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

  3

  ON ATTITUDE

  It is our attitude at the begin
ning of a difficult undertaking which more than anything else, will determine its outcome.

  William James

  The Best Day of My Life

  Today, when I awoke, I suddenly realized that this is the best day of my life, ever!

  There were times when I wondered if I would make it to today; but I did! And because I did I’m going to celebrate!

  Today, I’m going to celebrate what an unbelievable life I have had so far: the accomplishments, the many blessings, and, yes, even the hardships because they have served to make me stronger.

  I will go through this day with my head held high and a happy heart. I will marvel at God’s seemingly simple gifts: the morning dew, the sun, the clouds, the trees, the flowers, the birds. Today, none of these miraculous creations will escape my notice.

  Today, I will share my excitement for life with other people. I’ll make someone smile. I’ll go out of my way to perform an unexpected act of kindness for someone I don’t even know. Today, I’ll give a sincere compliment to someone who seems down. I’ll tell a child how special he is, and I’ll tell someone I love just how deeply I care for her and how much she means to me.

  Today is the day I quit worrying about what I don’t have and start being grateful for all the wonderful things God has already given me. I’ll remember that to worry is just a waste of time because my faith in God and his Divine Plan ensures everything will be just fine.