Fast Foward TWO YEARS

Well, a whole lifetime has gone by since my last post. So much has happened since that last post when I was so happy to have moved into our new apartment two years ago now.
To begin with, the Cancer came back in Aug/Sept. The details of everything that happened, including losing my job over it, will come in another post. Today I don't feel like reliving the horrible details just yet .

Today is a happy day. I am a volunteer at CPMC, the hospital where I spent so much time as a patient. Everyone there was so nice to me from the doctors and nurses down to the people who cleaned the room each day and brought the food trays. They were all so kind.

I don't know why I have survived two attacks of Cancer. I don't know why so many members of my own family were not able to survive their cancers and I am still here. I have no answers but thought I would begin to search for the reason by volunteering at the hospital where I was treated so well and maybe I could give back some of the kindness. Along the road somewhere, maybe I would find out what I am supposed to do to earn the "survivorship".

Today is an especially happy day. After volunteering for a few months, I have become a part of a brand new program called "Oncology Peer Support Group". This is a very small group of only 6 of us, all being cancer survivors. Thomas had lung cancer, Pete had a tumor behind his eye and I don't remember the name of his cancer, Leslie had breast cancer, Shelly who is the youngest in our group being only in her 30's had colon cancer and Candi had Nasal Pharangeal (sp?) cancer. We had three meetings of three hours each to orientate all of us into the new program. We had speakers, staff members and counselors all helping us in what will be our new task. That new task is to visit with Oncology patients in the hospital. We will talk with them and listen to their fears, concerns, questions and feelings. Of course we are not supposed to give any advice or medical opinions, just to be there and let them know we care.

The fact that we have all been there, done that will be good for them. We are all over one year out and represent survivors which the new diagnosees will be happy to hear from if they are like I was at that time.

I wasn't supposed to start until next week but I got a call from the volunteer coordinator Alison yesterday who said there is a patient on T3 (the node where patients get the new BioTherapy instead of ChemoTherapy) who wishes to talk with someone. I was happy to agree to go in today and see her. This will be the very first visit between a Peer Group volunteer and a patient. I'm excited to be the very first.

Since I lost my job, I learned a lot of new things about myself. One of those is that I am capable of, but thoroughly enjoy making jewelry !!! Who knew??!! I read about a program at a children's hospital in Oregon where they have these large colorful beads that they give out. A bead is given to a child who has to have a test, blood drawn, some other procedure or just is having a bad day. After a while, the beads are all strung onto a necklace for the child to wear. I got the idea to tweak that a bit and I made some bracelets (25 so far) out of memory wire for my patients. I also made a business card sized message to be included into the bag with each bracelet. The card reads:

This is your Bravery Bracelet. It is my gift to you. Each bead represents the challenges you face, the strength you have, the bravery it often takes just to get through the day, the wisdom to make the right decisions and the trust you placed in your caregivers. It also represents the colors of life so precious to us all.

I will also include a card with my name and phone number and email address for anyone to contact me if they need to talk sometime. I am hoping that will help some of them. I am going to make some bracelets with a little less color and less loops so the men will feel more comfortable wearing them too!

Later posts will bring you up to date on the recurrance of the cancer and other details since my last post of two years ago. I just didn't want to go into that today because it's such a nice day and I didn't want to go into all the ugly stuff just yet.