Cancer Battle Humor

By now, you might be tired of all the cliches about battling cancer, fighting the good fight, discovering the hidden strength within, and so on.

Here's a funny article titled, "Loved Ones Recall Local Man's Cowardly Battle With Cancer". This is from The Onion, a satirical news site.

Have a good laugh!

P.S. Channel 8 here in Singapore has filmed a documentary about me and my fight with cancer. The program is part of a series titled, "In The Face Of Death". It will be in English with Chinese subtitles. Broadcast is next Tuesday, November 4 at 10:30 p.m.

Donate For The Cure

My friend's sister, Deborah, is doing a three-day walk to raise money for "Susan G. Komen for the Cure" and National Philanthropic Trust, which fund breast cancer research, education, screening, and treatment.

If you can donate any amount at all to contribute to Deborah's effort, and more important, the foundation's effort to find a cure for breast cancer, please click HERE.

As I've said before on this blog, I think a cure will be found within the next decade. That's not just idle speculation. My prediction is based on what I've been reading and where I've seen cancer research heading in recent years. In fact, it was two years ago when I predicted this, so there are only eight more years to go. If I could just hold on for eight more years...

Improv Problem-Solving

Imagine this: You're in the kitchen making dinner and your four-year-old son throws a kitchen utensil at you and screams, "I HATE YOU!" Quick. What do you do? (The projectile missed you, by the way, so no first aid needed.)

This happened to a friend of mine. She was going through a divorce and her son wasn't taking it so well. Most of us in this situation would yell and send the kid to his room for a time-out. In earlier times, that kid would have been spanked until his bottom was blue.

But it so happens that my friend does improv comedy for a living. When she found herself facing off against her little ball of anger, she didn't go with the common response. Instead, she turned to her improv skills. She asked herself, "What do I have? What do I need?"

What she had was an incredibly tense situation with a frightened, angry little boy. What she needed was to remove the tension and fear so she could reassure her son that he was loved. She needed to get beyond the behavior and deal with the cause of the behavior.

So she fell down dead. She grabbed her stomach and theatrically reeled around the room gasping for breath and then collapsed on the floor. The heaviness in the room dissolved, her son laughed, and they were able to talk through what had happened.

I've never forgotten this story my friend told me. I use this improv technique myself now.

When I was told after my lung biopsy that it was indeed cancer in my lungs and not an infection, I saw the fear and sadness in Tony's and my friend Michelle's eyes. I asked myself, "What do I have? What do I need?" I had two of the people I loved most in the world scared out of their wits, thinking they were going to lose me. I needed to take the fear and heaviness out of that room. So I cracked a joke and made them laugh. The world seemed right again. We could still laugh.

When Toby throws a tantrum because I won't take him swimming, I ask myself, "What do I have? A little boy who's angry that his mommy can't play with him like she used to. What does he need? Reassurance that his mommy can still do things with him and pay attention to him." So instead of yelling at him, I take him to his room and read books with him - something quiet and physically less strenuous that I can do and that makes Toby feel he has me all to himself.

I recommend you try this yourself. Next time you're faced with a tense, crisis-like situation, stop for a minute and ask yourself, "What do I have? What do I need?" A little improv could improve the way you deal with a crisis.

Cancer Psycho

I recently saw an episode of the TV show, "Desperate Housewives". One of the characters has cancer and has just finished her chemotherapy treatment.

She gets home from the hospital one day and sees that a possum has ruined her garden. She freaks out, buys an air rifle and stands vigil at night, waiting to kill the little critter. When her husband tries to talk her into going back into the house, she screams at him, "This thing has invaded our home! I am NOT going to let it defeat me!" Of course, we all know she's talking about the cancer, not the possum.

This is something I'm not sure everyone surrounding a cancer patient understands. You'd think somebody battling cancer would have bigger things on her mind than a furry animal ruining her garden. But I know exactly why she went pycho about the possum.

I've had similar psycho moments, or moments when I've wanted to scream at somebody. Ants in the house, dishes coming out of the dishwasher with caked-on food still on them, kids running amok with nobody to enforce the rules, and so on. These everyday, seemingly petty things are more disturbing than the big looming threat of death by cancer.

Why? Because cancer is an abstract threat. It's something that I can't really control, so there's no point in throwing a hissy-fit about what those cancer cells are doing inside my body . But making sure my kids are learning to say "please" and "thank you", keeping my house in order so I know where everything is, simply being able to control what goes on under my own roof - these are things that I'm having to let go because I don't have the energy and strength to deal with them most of the time.

I can't drive anymore so I have to depend on the kindness of friends to help me with my errands. Luckily, I have no shortage of friends who are offering all sorts of help so I'm thankful for that at least. But every time I have to ask somebody for a ride to the hospital, every time I see that Toby's teeth or Josie's hair haven't been brushed, every time I see the floor in the kids' room littered with books and clothes with nobody around to reprimand them for it - all of these things are reminders that I'm losing control. I've become a lame-duck mother.

So those of you who are dealing with cancer patients, the next time that patient goes psycho over something that seems petty and meaningless to you, think about the possum.

I can't go after cancer with an air rifle, but I can hunt down a garden pest with one.

Hypocrisy and Expectations

I often write in this blog about ways I try to be a better person. I probably make myself out to be some kind of saint from the looks of the comments and feedback I'm getting from you. But the fact is, I fall short of being the generous, open-minded, patient, perfect mother and wife you might think I am from reading my blog.

I think you'd all agree that you, too, believe in being kind-hearted, tolerant, caring, and a walking repository of the values and traits we want our kids to have. But do you always live what you preach? Do you always walk the talk? Of course not. Does that make us all hypocrites?

I knew a guy who was in a position of power and influence. What he said affected the way people made their decisions and lived their lives. To my great disappointment, one day he showed himself to be a weak, spiteful, selfish, and childish character - the direct opposite of the facade he'd been putting on for the people who looked up to him. I wrote him off as a huge hypocrite and felt nothing but contempt and disappointment toward him.

Then I asked myself why I was so disappointed. Was it because I actually expected him to be perfect? Did I really believe he was the pillar of virtues he preached to others? Who was I kidding?

I think when it comes to living the virtues we aspire to in ourselves, we're all hypocrites to a certain extent. Actually, "hypocrite" is the wrong word. I think what we do is set up expectations of ourselves and others. I'd like to be a patient, kind-hearted, forgiving, generous person. I talk about these virtues to my kids and I talk about them in my blog. I try to live them, but I often fail. But then I try the next time. And the next time. I try because I have expectations that I can be the person I want to be.

I think we all have an idea of the kind of person we want to be and we succeed and fail in turns. When we fail to practice what we preach, we're not necessarily being hypocrites. We're falling short of the expectations we've set for ourselves. It's when we start lowering those expectations or stop having expectations altogether that we should start worrying.

Best Mommy Award

The other night, I was tucking Toby and Josie into bed for a second time. I have a routine. I tuck the kids into bed at their bedtime, and then I go back in before I go to bed to tuck them in again, cuddle them, kiss them, and whisper "I love you" to them.

I put my mouth to Josie's ear and whispered the usual promises of love that I always do to Josie and her brother. She usually just turns over in her sleep and that's all. But this time, she turned over and mumbled in her sleep, "You're the best mommy in the world."

I've sometimes imagined what it would feel like to win an Oscar. I'd win one for best original screenplay - a film that would be ground-breaking in its genre and eye-opening in changing the way people think. I imagined I'd walk up on stage in front of all those people and millions of TV viewers and say two words: Thank you. And then just walk off. So terribly cool and minimalist.

But winning an Oscar couldn't possibly feel as good as the Best Mommy Award I got from Josie the other night. And unlike an Oscar, which is bestowed upon the winner by a panel of judges who really mean nothing to the winner personally, my award came from the only person (other than Toby) who's qualified to give it and the only person whose judgement really matters to me.

So I accepted my award and whispered back to Josie, "Thank you."

Chemo Fun

I had the best chemo session ever two days ago.

First, the facts. I had my second cycle of the Avastin + Ixempra combination. Before the treatment, I went over my test results with my doctor. The chest X-ray showed some improvement, with a bit less opacity ("ground glass") in the lungs and a bit less fluid in the lining of the lungs (pleural effusion) than in the previous X-ray of September 22. My tumor markers were better, with two of them going down and one of them increasing by just a little.

Overall, pretty good results - enough to believe this chemo combination is working and we should stay on course. According to my doctor, I've been feeling weak, tired, and breathless lately because my steroid dosage has been lowered, not because my cancer is getting worse. So that's good news.

As for why this last chemo session was the best I've ever had... Tony left work early, picked Josie up from school and brought her over to see me at the chemo clinic. Josie climbed into bed with me and we shared some food together. We made a tent over our heads with the blanket so we could hide under there and tell secrets to each other. I had so much fun just sitting and chatting with her, hugging and snuggling her. It didn't matter that I was hooked up to an oxygen machine and had an IV drip pumping chemo drugs into my body.

We giggled and laughed and told each other stories. It takes so little to make a kid happy. And even less to make that kid's mom happy.