For a lot of us this problem presents itself right at a time when you really have too many other things to worry about:  you are newly diagnosed with cancer.  Who to tell?  When to tell them?  For Dee, today’s guest blogger, the problem was magnified by the extra sensitivity surrounding her diagnosis of vaginal cancer.  Dee just started her blog in January at WHAT kind of cancer?
Please give her a visit.

Sharing your diagnosis….to tell, or not to tell

Having a cancer diagnosis, particularly a vaginal cancer diagnosis, brings with it the awkward position of either having to tell people what’s going on or trying to keep it to yourself.  In my case, I wasn’t inclined to broadcast to friends and family that I had cancer of the vag….so I told only those I had to.  Like my bosses, and my direct reports–both of whom would obviously notice the sudden departures from work for treatments.  The curse of being a workaholic is that everyone comes to expect that you’re always at work, so when you’re not, it’s somewhat conspicuous.  So in total, probably about 5 or 6 people at work knew I had cancer.  I gotta say I think it would have been easier if it had been breast cancer, or lymphoma, even bladder or colon cancer.  Anything but telling your co-workers (all men) that you have vaginal cancer.  Sharing that information was to me a curse worse than death.  So I snuck out when I could, never called in sick, and in general felt like crap and looked like shit for about 8 weeks. Some people asked what was going on; I dodged the questions and said something vague.
I should clarify–even those at work I had to tell–I never specified WHAT kind of cancer it was.  Just that it was a tumor that they could not operate on due to the proximity to the bladder. Which was true actually.  The V word would have made for a much more uncomfortable conversation — for them and me.
Of course my husband and daughter knew…they live here.  That said, we didn’t really talk about it much.  My teenager went from certainty that I was going to die to barely remembering when my chemo days were.

I told my sister, because she’s had close and personal experience dealing with cancer and cancer treatments before.  And because I trusted her and valued her opinion.  She in turn told my other siblings, nieces and nephews.
I was kind of pissed at first (and still am occasionally) but I realize that life is too short to worry about any self-imposed embarassment sharing this information brought with it.

My sister-in-law knew because she was here when my OB-GYN first called with the news about 9:30 one night…instant clue that something’s up. She ended up telling my step daughter many months later, who was hurt and offended that neither me or her dad had told her while I was going through it.

I never did tell my parents, even though others thought that not telling them was horrible of me. I just said…you don’t know my mother.

I’ve always been a pretty private person (insert some psycho babble about a dysfunctional upbringing here) not one of those ‘let’s get everything out in the open and talk about it to everyone who strolls by’ types.

I’m only sharing these examples and covering this topic in a post because I’m all about trying to help someone else who may be trying to figure out how to maneuver through this.  So my sagely advice on this topic:  tell everyone that means something to you.  Even if it’s embarassing, and even if you’re fairly confident that you’ll be fine in the end. If you don’t, you’ll wish you had, and at some point it becomes just too late to share because then they’ll be hurt that you didn’t tell them earlier.

I think perhaps the best approach would have been to just put it out there, ask for no pity, and move on.

- from

A dreary wet Monday after a gorgeous sunny Sunday.  Being it is the second week of March though, I can’t complain.  Crocous have been in bloom for weeks now.  Tulips starting to bud.  Trees and bushes too.  It really feels like Spring.  But this evening I must return to work at the clinic where it is still a cold winter for some.

Today’s breast cancer blogger hails from the UK.  Yvonne has been penning her posts for a little over a year now.  I decided to include her “About me” profile as it is such a succinct and well written introduction to writing about cancer. You can find Yvonne at time to consider the lilies

About me now …

What about me these days? Given what I’ve read and what I’ve seen, I’m not that different from many who wander through cancerland.  I used to complain about the pace of life as a woman trying to play well the parts of mother, wife, and profesional.  Just months shy of 49  (a fact that shocks me), with no family history of breast cancer, and the “all clear” on my baseline and subsequent mammograms,  I was wholly unprepared to add the job of cancer patient to my curriculum vitae. Unprepared. Reluctant. Angry. Just as I was coming into my own last October, rediscovering the endorphine high from a good run, I found something. Not a lump exactly, but what my doctor would tell me was a distinct difference in my right breast. I would like to say I was doing my monthly self-exam, but that would be untrue, and apparently typical for almost all the women I know.  By 11.11.11 – the luckiest day of the year – I was dealt the diagnosis that deposited me in new land with a new lexicon. It is a surreal land where staging doesn’t have anything to do with the theater, where “if this, then that,” becomes an acceptable answer, where so much is accomplished on the count of 3; it is a land where visitors are likely to encounter the very best, most noble expressions of humanity along with the very worst.  This place was not on my itinerary.  I was busy at work, I’d finally figured out the importance of staying hydrated and eating green leafy vegetables. This cancer diagnosis simply had to be a mistake. I felt great! Just weeks before, I’d had one of those AHA! moments so cleverly co-opted by Oprah, and decided, based on my sister-in-law’s success, to go from couch-to-5K in nine weeks. More than that, I had even bragged on facebook that the 2012 Belfast Marathon was well within my reach. In retrospect, this must have given God a good laugh. While it shook me to my core, the diagnosis brought with it daily opportunities for think differently about my life and the people in it, to gradually learn the truth about breast cancer, and so to live better within a state of grey. With a nod to Gilda Radner, this “delicious ambiguity” is a collection of my musings on “the cancer.”  Too, it is a rebel yell for change in the conversations we have in this country about breast cancer.

cancer on our calendar

This relatively normal Christmas could have used the enviable scheduling skills of the Breast Patient Navigator.  The hustle and bustle of my favorite season has been overshadowed by interminable waiting for results of tests on tumors and saliva. By some miracle, the Christmas tree is up and twinkling in our front window. I even managed to resurrect my camera. I  forced our daughter to put on a winter coat (on a 70 degree day) and pose under a tree in the backyard. The effort and the eye-rolling was worth it, producing a seasonal picture which was hastily uploaded to shutterfly where the nice people there transformed it into a Happy New Year card and, for an additional cost, even mailed it to friends and family, far and near.

Christmas means lots of mail. Along with the greeting cards this year, are thick envelopes from medical imaging companies, the health insurance company, and different doctors’ offices.  On Christmas Eve, I received a Surgery Scheduling form filled out in in neat handwriting that brought to mind a worksheet completed by a student for extra credit. At the top, next to the date and time, two words jumped off the page. Simple. Mastectomy. On the same line. In the one breath. How could the two coexist? True to form, I headed to google and entered “simple mastectomy” and in a second found it separated by an “or” from “total mastectomy.” Not so simple. My mother agrees.

For 25 years, long-distance phone calls with the woman who knows me best, have required no effort, no brave face. Knowing she is on the other end of the line, I easily fall back into the rhythm of the way I used to speak. The colloquialisms of home are comforting and help counter the strange words that fly like bullets from the lips of surgeons. Worse than hearing and seeing them in print, however, is waiting for the new words that will invariably be added to this strange lexicon. And slightly worse than that is figuring out how to respond, without appearing mean or small, to well-intentioned encouragement from people who genuinely care for me.  Perhaps as I was, they have been conditioned to a culture where it has been acceptable to settle for emphasizing early detection rather than prevention; finding a cure rather than a cause. They cannot possibly know the silent rage I feel against this breast cancer that has taken up residence in our family, just in time for Christmas. But it feels wrong to say that out loud. So I am learning how to respond, without falling apart, when people tell me, “you’re so strong,” “you’ll be just fine,” “if you’re going to get cancer, breast cancer is the one to get,” “at least you caught it early,” “you’re so lucky – new boobs and a tummy tuck!”

I know now what to say when someone assumes I haven’t had a mammogram. I can point out that I’ve had three, and none detected the invasive cancer that has resided within me for perhaps a decade. A decade. Had I known at 38 that it might have been important to ask about breast density, perhaps our family would have been spared this “journey.” I can now, with confidence, tell other people that a mammogram is an imperfect test. Sometimes, as I deliver this news, I find myself having to look away, because I cannot bear to watch the shock spread across the faces of women dear to me, women who have placed all their confidence in a negative mammogram. Like me, some of them hadn’t realized or hadn’t ever been told that dense tissue may make cancer more difficult to detect on a mammogram.  I don’t know how to respond when people close to me say, “You’re a fighter. You will beat this. Deep down I just know it.” I find myself fearing what they would have said to me if, deep down, they just know I won’t.

This Christmas and next Christmas, what I want someone to tell me is that I’m not going to die soon. That I won’t be ravaged from the inside out by a disease I hate. I want to know what caused Invasive Ductal Carcinoma (IDC) in my right breast. I want to know what to say to my 14 year old daughter who has walked for a cure and pinned pink ribbons to her clothing, but whose own mother cannot tell her how to prevent this disease.

And so, if you look closely enough, indeed you will see the cancer in our gingerbread house. Within the papers in the envelopes that are stuffed along with utility bills and bank statements into a basket on the kitchen countertop; on our coffee table, it is splashed across the pages of publications hidden between Vanity Fair and The Pottery Barn catalog. All I never wanted to know about managing my life during and after cancer. Nothing about how I could have prevented it.

from: time to consider the lilies

I received this interesting email recently “I’ve been blogging about my journey through metastatic rectal cancer, mothering young children, alternative therapies, and the spiritual/emotional crash course of living with this illness. I just returned in Feb 2012 from 5 mos of alternative therapy in China too.”

Rectal cancer is relatively rare.  It deserves a rare voice. ~ Shira Shaiman’s Blog

About Shira:

This blog is dedicated to the explorations of my time of healing. I am a happily married 39-year-old mother of two boys, Toby (born May 2007) and Leo (born February 2010). Shortly after giving birth to Leo I was diagnosed with rectal cancer, on my 39th birthday of all days. A bit of a shock. I had imagined the weeks and months after my second child’s birth quite a bit differently, but cancer had something else in mind for me. So here I am, trying to make sense of this interesting time of life. Writing about it helps. A lot.

April 10, 2010

I feel vulnerable, especially at night. After the kids are in bed and the house is quiet, a dark space opens up like a mirror to reflect what I’ve pushed down and staved off all day: cancer. Dear God. This time it’s me. And I want David’s arms around me. I want to wear him like a blanket. I want him to protect me from this or, better, make it go away. And so I tell him that I don’t want him to leave the house to go pick up that free garbage can with a lid someone was giving away up the street. I tell him I want him to stay with me. I don’t even want him to go downstairs, to be on a different floor. Me, who is usually so independent and strong. David has called me his rock. Now I am small. I am so tiny I can disappear and never again hear the words cancer or chemotherapy. But then I picture Toby’s electric smile and long dark eyelashes and I remember the weight of baby Leo’s warm little body nuzzled against my breast, his mouth agape and a few drops of milk dripping down his cheek. I breathe in his hair every chance I get. I tell Toby I love him all day long. I know I have no choice. This story has been set into motion and I’m already somewhere inside of it. Wave after wave hitting against me. Salt and cool water. Wearing me down. Polishing me smooth.

February 2012

I’m not saying that I am a hero of any kind, or that I have any enlightened wisdom to share with you. I think I am still somewhere in the wilderness, still seeking, still learning what it means to heal and therefore what it means to face death and to be alive and at home inside myself and in the world. Oh, how could I have been so obtusely blind to myself! This whole time in Asia that I have been immersed in cancer treatments I have also, and just as importantly, been unwinding the threads of my life to find that essential, perfect, shining core that exists within each and every one of us. As I prepare to go home, I realize that that’s all I’ve been trying to do since I arrived here, and on some level for a good portion of my life. My journey for healing is my quest for home.

When I look in the mirror now at my bald head, the image that peers back at me doesn’t say cancer or victim or the ravages of chemotherapy. I see warrior. I see mystic who has renounced worldly attachments. I see grit and edginess and a cool attitude. I see the shadow of new hair. I see the promise of rebirth.

~ from: Shira Shaiman’s Blog

Another new blogger – this one with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.  Lily comes from the UK.  You can tell that by some of the cute idioms she uses in her posts.  Her recent search of the internet yielded some quotable quotes on cancer. It’s a nice way to begin our weekend.  Lily writes at Befuddled Baldy

“Cancer is a word, not a sentence.”

“Cancer is a word, not a sentence.” John Diamond.

“If you’re going through Hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill.

I was searching the web yesterday for quotes, as my nerdzilla side came out…and I found these wonderful quotes! And I also found this wonderfully charming quote, which reminded me slightly of my own wonderful Christopher Hingston:

“My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats.” John Cheever, 1982.

That one’s my particular favourite…although I have no idea why anyone would want to be mean to cats! And I’m sure my friend Matt would agree. I don’t know which he loves more: cats ears or his girlfriend, Laura…hehe.
Unless they were a horrible, mean breed of cats…or a mean and ugly breed of cats. But I haven’t come across an entire breed of ugly, mean cats yet. Maybe this John Cheever fellow had some sort of traumatic experience with cats when he was a kid or something…who knows?
Anyhow, I’m now back on chemo. The first chemo day was awful, and I threw up violently. Which was actually quite surprising- as I haven’t thrown up cos of that since…well- since the first cycle! But then the vomiting ebbed into severe nausea (which was worse, in a way) but now it’s just a dull nauseous ache in my head and tummy. Not pleasant, but I can deal.
And of course, the joint and muscle pain is starting up again. Especially in my back and knees. As usual. The physiotherapist at Addenbrookes, Laura, has given me some physio exercises to do at home. I don’t do them as often as I should, and Mum gets a little cross at times because I’m not helping myself- but I’m so tired…and this procarbazine chemo they have me on MUST be messing with my hormones as the mood swings are ridiculous. I’m okay one minute, then I’m knackered, then I’m weeping uncontrollably the next moment. Which, I guess, could be my mental health breaking down- but I doubt it, as I haven’t tried to harm myself yet…haha. Not that the cancer and the chemo isn’t doing enough of that for me! But, yeah. So, making little jokes like that help…as you might have guessed. Being sarcastic and snappy helps too. Not other people, of course. But it helps me. God, that sounds so selfish- doesnt it? Sorry.
Singing helps, too. I like to sing…especially when I can relate to the lyrics, or when I particularly like the lyrics. I don’t know whether I can actually sing…or whether I’m rubbish- but, to be honest, I don’t really care. I love singing, and it makes me feel good. Sure, after a while, it hurts- cos the chemos messed up my throat, but it makes me feel amazing for a brief amount of time…and that’s GREAT. I don’t care that I feel crappy for a while if I sing. And sure, it won’t get rid of my anxieties, and I can’t constantly sing to make myself feel good all the time. But it’s a start. It’s a start…
Anyhow, I have to go now…but I just wanted to share one more quote I found. I was actually amazed that I found a quote that matched my mood a bit! Anyhow…happy learning, my children!

“Some days there won’t be a song in your heart. Sing anyway.” Emory Austin.

Much love!!
Befuddled and singing to herself Baldy <3 xox

from~ http://browneyedbefuddledbaldy.blogspot.com/