A Global Conversation on Cancer

Global Cancer Summit: CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta leads a panel of experts in discussing challenges facing the battle against cancer.

View the video 36:21

A gift to last: Joining Sue's Care Team lifts friend's sense of helplessness

Sue Hendler's latest column in the Whig Standard is written by her friend Karla McGrath. In the column Karla talks about Sue's care team and the gift Sue has given by letting her friends know what they can do to help.

Read today's column

You can read other columns by Sue Hendler by clicking on her name below, after Labels.

My visit with Sue

I think I needed some time to process my thoughts about my visit with Sue in Kingston before writing about it. It’s hard to know how to feel about sharing time with someone who has little left to spare: Honored to be part of her care team. Sad because she is too young to die. Horrified because we share the same disease.

My day with Sue was pretty uneventful (except for the part where her keys somehow ended up in my bag and I had to courier them back overnight from Ottawa!). I tried to let Sue take the lead; spending time with her when she wanted company and giving her space when she needed to rest or wanted to be alone.

Sue is very matter-of-fact about her prognosis and at one point she asked me what I thought happens to us when we die. ‘Nothing’ would probably have been my answer 10 years ago. I’ve never been religious and don’t buy into the angels-with-wings-on-a-cloud-in-heaven thing.

But I now think that there has to be more than ‘nothing’. Everything is energy, including all of the cells in our bodies. That energy has to go somewhere. That ‘somewhere’ is probably so out of our realm of thinking that we can’t even imagine it. Maybe we’ll exist in a very different form; maybe we won’t even have a physical form.

In Life is Eternal, Carly Simon sings “How and where my spirit will go? Will it soar like jazz on a saxophone, or evaporate on a breeze? Won’t you tell me please?”

However and wherever our spirits will go, I think it will be a surprise. I’m hoping it will be a good one!

As for Sue, some people might say that she’s in the process of dying. But I don’t think she’s there yet. I believe she’s still in the process of living.

The pleasure of the feel of sunlight on her face; the comfort of her cat curled up against her in bed; the care of friends and family that love her; peace and moments of awareness that she’s still living her life, regardless of the limitations and the number of days ahead.

In addition to freedom from physical and emotional pain, these are the things that I wish for Sue.

Lazy days of summer

I'm just back from a few days at Anne's cottage with Katey the Wonder Dog. As you can see, she enjoys paddleboating and is well dressed (and safe!) in her Outward Hound lifevest.
Judy's dog Otis came today and they got along great. Maybe Otis will come over sometime and we can all go to doggie play group: about a dozen small dogs and their humans that meet behind our pool each night at 7:00 to play and chase each other up and down the hill (the dogs, not the humans).

I promise not to turn this into a 'dog blog', but we're still in the honeymoon stage, so please forgive me for all the doggie pictures. Do feel free to oooh and awww though. :-)

In keeping with the intended theme of this blog, I should mention that there were seven women at the cottage this weekend, all 'breast cancer friends' (but definately not 'friends of breast cancer'!!!). As usual, there was tons of food and I ate too much. The lake water was wonderful and the company even better.

CT Scan Results

I had my oncology appointment today and wasn’t surprised that the news from my last CT scan (June) was good. I figured that, if not, they would have called me by now. It’s likely that I will need radiation on the nodes in my chest wall at some point, but they are currently stable. For now at least, the treatment (Faslodex) seems to be keeping the cancer under control.

I once heard a speaker say that cancer is directly linked to stress and usually appears about 2 years after a traumatic event in your life. It made me retrace my steps and think about what was happening at that time. Two years before my original diagnosis, I went through a painful breakup with someone that I thought I would spend my life with. Two years before it returned, I was in an impossibly stressful situation in my work life.

Coincidence? I’m not sure. But what I do know is that the current stress-free life I'm living has been great for my health. Here is a picture that Anne (secretly) took of Katey & me in the “Om tent” beside the gentle rapids at her cottage a few days ago.

Peace above me
Peace below me
Peace at my left
Peace at my right
Peace onto me
Peace in my surroundings
Peace in the universe

Me and my doctor (2), by Sue Hendler

Me and my doctor (2): Living for now, preparing for then

In today's Whig Standard newspaper column, Sue Hendler resumes a conversation with her oncologist, Dr. Yolanda Madarnas, she began in her last column.

Read the article

Read other articles by Sue Hendler by clicking on her name after Labels below.

Connections

Today was my monthly Faslodex injection day. On the walk to the cancer clinic from the side street where I usually park, I came across a woman wearing a scarf on her head, leaning against a lamp post. I asked her if she was OK and she said her legs were shaky, so I offered to walk with her.

As we very slowly made our way to the clinic, she told me that she was going for blood work in preparation for her next chemo. When I told her about my cancer history she said I looked great and I think it gave her hope that I was doing so well.

We never exchanged names and I’ll probably never see her again, but she hugged me when I left her at the blood work room. I’ve had so many similar encounters: exchanging stories with someone in the waiting room; having the person next to me in the chemo room wish me well.

We are all strangers. We are all connected.