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

“Cynthia Chauhan has compiled an excellent and very readable book of essays on kidney cancer called “Incidental Finding”. The contributors are a mix of researchers and physicians from the Mayo Clinic and kidney cancer survivors who tell their own personal stories. Cynthia is making the book available without charge to kidney cancer survivors/caregivers who request it. A generous contributor is allowing ACKC to distribute the book without charge as well to residents of North America.

Cynthia, as well as being a kidney cancer survivor herself, is a clinical social worker in private practice in Wichita, KS. She has extensive experience as a group worker including support group work with kidney cancer patients. She is a member of a number of professional organizations including being on the Patient Advisory Board of the Coalition of National Cancer Cooperative Groups. She has also published in professional journals.

We thank Cynthia for making her book available to a broad readership. The more knowledge we have about our disease, the better we are able to fight it. The book is dedicated to Steve Dunn, who was the first and most eminent kidney cancer advocate until he died prematurely in 2005, at age 49, from meningitis. Steve was the creator of the CancerGuide website and the ACOR Kidney-ONC listserv.”

If you want a copy of the book, go to  Contact ACKC page and enter your name, address, email, and note “CHAUHAN BOOK”, and allow a couple of weeks for delivery.  (from Action to Cure Kidney Cancer)

New Year's Guest Blogger

I wasn’t looking for a Guest Post particularly suited for the New Year.  And yet the post I found was exactly addressed to the New Year theme.  This is the first Wednesday of 2010, the year’s first opportunity for a Guest Post.  And the first blog I clicked on featured the post “Purpose in Pain” whose forward-looking theme seemed an ideal meditation for all of us in the cancer community.

Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik RN BSN writes at her blog Appendix Cancer Survivor’s Blog. In this post Carolyn reflects on the theme of the transformative potential of the cancer experience, on how, in very subtle and unsuspecting ways, we become more attuned to the essential things in life.  A very positive way to start the New Year.

Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but I guess I spend a lot of time thinking and contemplating and reading. Maybe because I live in the cancer community, a place where pain and heartache and struggle reign. I think about it a lot.

After I had survived longer than I was expected to, I became obsessed with purpose. If I had survived against all odds, I felt I must be here for a reason, and I was obsessed with learning why I had survived, what my purpose was here. I thought if I’d survived when I wasn’t supposed to, it must be for a reason. I HAD to understand my life purpose, I had to justify my survival. I had to be worthy.

I read lots of books about purpose. One was “What Color is Your Parachute”, written Richard N. Bolles, a former Episcopal clergyman. What intrigued me most about the book was a single chapter, which was later published in a single small book “How to Find Your Mission in Life”. In that chapter and book, he contemplates that maybe before we were born, our eternal soul existed and gave permission for us to be on this earth and to deal with what we would suffer here, knowing that it was for a limited time only. What if we, from the other side, gave our permission to experience the events and pain we would suffer here, knowing it would serve an ultimate and greater purpose? Knowing that we had a mission and knowing that we would eventually come home to where things were right and just, where we would later be whole again.

That gave me a sort of peace. Maybe we are all interconnected and our trials in the end are for a greater good. One example…my daughter has a deaf cousin. She learned sign language to communicate with her. That same cousin had a very disabled brother who died at age 4 after suffering a life of disability..he was never able to communicate, eat, even breathe well. In the end she is pursuing a career in special education and works for a group home housing many disabled adults with severe autism. Her heart is for the handicapped. She has a gift for dealing with the severely disabled. She worked with the disabled at her high school, and taught sign language to some who were mute, giving them the first chance they’d ever had to communicate with others. Maybe dealing with two disabled cousins gave her the ability to profoundly affect the lives of many who are disabled. Maybe the disability of her two cousins will in the end help her help hundreds of disabled kids. So maybe from her cousin’s pain there was a greater good.

I read once of a very educated and intelligent man who gave up his career and spent years working with the very disabled. Though they could not communicate with him, he said they taught him more than he had ever learned before…about appreciating health and wholeness, about unconditional love.

A young adult I consider my “adopted son” was profoundly affected by the accidental death of his father at a young age…but he has become gifted from that experience in the way he is able to support and relate to others.

Maybe in the end all of our suffering is for a greater good. Maybe kids who lose parents to cancer will in the end be able to help others in a way no one else can. The child of one patient I know who had appendix cancer in the end as a teen formed her own non-profit to raise money for cancer research.

Maybe the effect of our pain on just one other person will cause that person to positively influence hundreds of other. Maybe our pain is interconnected in a way that achieves a greater goal, even if we can’t know it from our perspective here and now.

Maybe even small events in our lives cause a ripple effect that change the world. Maybe there is a bigger picture we don’t understand..yet. But maybe we will one day.

from: Appendix Cancer Survivor’s Blog

cancer

Today I would like to republish a couple of posts by Michelle, a young woman from Long Island, who has been battling a rare sarcoma for seven years, enduring a number of brain surgeries.  Her blog is entitled “Sarcoma Chic”.  She writes at It’s My Turn to Kick Sarcoma’s Butt! In these two posts she writes sensitively and with humor about dealing with an impending relapse.

My Plan

cancer