Make Time for your Breasts!

Isn’t that a great title?  It’s from a page on a website called Pinc Box and I think all women should read it.  Actually, everyone should read it, because then men could encourage the women in their lives to take the time to have regular breast check-ups. Click here to read: Make Time For Your Breasts

Send Breast Cancer Gifts from PincBox!

Breast cancer is the most prevalent type of cancer in women, so it makes sense to be vigilant and have regular checks.  Whether you do this monthly yourself (a great idea) or at least have your doctor do a proper breast examination every year and have a mammogram every two years once you turn 40, some kind of check-up is vital for early detection.  If you feel a lump, get yourself off to your GP quick sticks!  It may not be anything sinister but it’s much better to find out early if there is something to worry about.  Breast cancer caught early is very treatable.  So, when did you last check your breasts???

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How Counselling Works

When you’re feeling overwhelmed, stressed, depressed, anxious, alone or just not coping, counselling can support you and help you to understand how you respond or react to life’s happenings and why.

Being supported through difficult times can be a catalyst for change or help you adjust to or accept challenging circumstances.

What you can gain from counselling

• Personal Growth – a greater awareness of your thoughts, feelings and how you behave

• Moving forward – an awareness of any repeating patterns or behaviours in your life

• Sense of empowerment – learn to recognize old behaviours and do things differently

• Shared perspective – feel validated and supported in your efforts

• Structured support – gentle guidance in setting and achieving your goals

The relationship between counsellor and client

Working closely with another human being who takes the time to really listen and understand you and your concerns – without trying to ‘fix’ things for you – can be very helpful if you are going through a difficult period in your life.  The counsellor focuses on your current needs and problems in each session, working ‘in the moment’.

How often do you see a counsellor?

Clients usually come once a week for six to eight sessions.  You then reassess your needs together and may have several more appointments at less frequent intervals.  Sessions usually last for 60 minutes.

Confidentiality

It is normal for counsellors to make some notes after a session; this is to ensure progress and continuity in your treatment.  Sessions are private and confidential and any personal details or notes taken are stored under lock and key.

Details regarding your counselling may be discussed with a supervisor because it is important for all counsellors to receive supervision from another trained practitioner to ensure they are properly serving your needs.  However, your anonymity will always be preserved.

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A new grief…

I am currently confronting something that has been creeping up on me over recent years, but is now right in my face.  The actual number that goes with my age has never worried me but I’m becoming increasingly aware that the more years I pile up, there are things now happening to my body that I don’t enjoy.  I now have osteoarthritis in my knees and can no longer squat down, because they simply will not bend as fluidly as they used to when I was younger.  If I have to retrieve something from underneath my desk, this takes a concentrated effort to not only get down but to get up again.  Fish oil, glucosamine + chondroitin and slow release pain-killers definitely help and I’ve almost accepted this reduction in movement.

However, I am now being faced with the slowing down of my mental capacity.  I have just started a week in a homestay to learn a foreign language before meeting a friend to spend three weeks soaking up the culture of the country.  I studied for several months using CDs but nothing has prepared me for the difficulty of learning from a professional teacher.  He is determined that I will learn ‘properly’; this means understanding the grammar.

I am someone who constantly bemoans the appalling standard of English used by the majority of people these days – those to whom this is their native language.  There seems to be a cavalier attitude towards using the correct tense of words, or understanding that past, present and future tenses even exist.  It drives me nuts when I hear a newsreader using a word incorrectly or see journalists writing badly constructed sentences.  People in these professions especially ought to know better.

Now I am being forced to reassess my judgment.  While I agree with my Italian teacher’s opinion that you cannot learn to speak a new language if you don’t know the correct way to write or say things, I now realise that it’s not so easy to learn.  I believe that being taught properly while we are in Primary School and continuing into High School is the best way to go.  Our brains are young and super absorbent at this stage of our lives.

My grief now is that I feel I’ve left it too late to learn another language; my brain is just not capable of retaining information the way it used to.  Why, oh why didn’t I start lessons when I first thought about it – about 35 years ago?!  What makes it sadder is that I think the anxiety I’m suffering because I can’t remember from one lesson to the next what I’m supposed to have learned, is actually making it even harder for my brain to store the new knowledge I so desperately want and was so excitedly anticipating.  Knowing this isn’t helping… getting older sux!

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How joining a cancer support group can help you in remission

It can be distressing trying to tell people who haven’t had cancer how it feels, no matter where you are on the journey.  However, this can be especially true for people who are in remission.

Popular mythology is that you’re okay now, you’re better, so why aren’t you celebrating?  Even the survivor often thinks this way and then feels guilty because this isn’t their truth.

The reality is that as more people survive cancer, it has become apparent that survivorship has its own challenges.  Often there are lifelong side effects as a result of treatment and while it’s great that you did survive, your new life can be very different to your pre-cancer one.

Even if most side effects eventually disappear it can take a long time to recover your energy and feel up to tackling the most mundane tasks.  The shock felt after receiving a diagnosis of a life threatening illness and the uncertainty about whether it will come back can take years to come to terms with.

Cancer treatment isn’t something anyone would volunteer for and the various regimens for it can be brutal.  The onslaught of surgery, toxic drugs and being burnt by radiation very often leaves psychological as well as physical scars.

The best way to deal with this is to talk with others who really do understand – fellow survivors.  By being able to express all your feelings about your cancer journey to people who have shared that experience is a valuable way of making sense of it.  This can be a great help when trying to work out what your new normal is and finding ways of accepting that.

With the best will in the world, it is impossible for people who have not been through it to really understand. Join a support group as soon as you can; you will find help and encouragement throughout the whole process.  However, it is never too late to join a group.

One member of the organization I work with (www.lifeforce.org.au) came to us 16 years after his diagnosis and discovered why he hadn’t felt truly alive for all that time: he had never had anywhere to process what he’d been through.

This quote says it all (from Bill W, one of the founders of AA):

“All we have to share is our experience; what we have not experienced, we cannot share.”

This is not only true for cancer patients, survivors and their families but for anyone who has had life throw a curve ball at them.

Never be afraid to ask for help.  It isn’t a sign of weakness but of strength, and shows a willingness to do whatever you can to get your life back on track.

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HAVE YOU BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH CANCER?

Receiving a diagnosis of cancer is a traumatic experience.  One minute you’re ‘normal’ and the next your entire life has been turned upside down.

It can be hard, even impossible, to talk to family members or friends about the roller-coaster of emotions that you have been commandeered into riding.  When someone is diagnosed with cancer, they and their family can feel shocked, disbelieving, frightened, without direction or simply numb. Talking things through in confidence with someone who understands the emotional challenges of cancer can be extremely helpful.

Speaking individually to an experienced cancer counsellor can ease the sense of isolation you may feel and help you to find ways of facing the challenges ahead.  This also applies to family members, friends and colleagues.  By talking to a counsellor they can explore their concerns and anxieties openly without needing to shield the person who is ill.

Why cancer counselling?

Research shows that counselling can be significantly useful in helping individuals and families face and meet the many challenges that a cancer diagnosis brings with it.  This has been shown to improve their quality of life.

During counselling, patients and families can learn how to cope more easily with their emotional issues. This helps them to communicate their needs better when speaking to Health professionals.

Counselling helps in easing any tension in relationships with family and friends. Optimistic but realistic outlooks replace the burden of positive expectations.  Just saying “I’m being positive” doesn’t actually mean much, although being optimistic can always help you to enjoy life more in the here and now.  However, if fears are present (and why wouldn’t they be?), then it is healthy to talk about these and get them out into the light of day.

How might you feel?

Some responses you might have to receiving a diagnosis of cancer:

• Shock: “What??  No!”
• Denial / Disbelief: “It’s a mistake, those aren’t MY test results.”
• Withdrawal: “I can’t/don’t want to talk to anyone.”
• Feeling isolated: “Nobody understands.”
• Anger: (“*#@^!!!”)
• Loss: “But I’ve so much more I want to do with my life.”
• Body image issues: “Will I look like a freak?”
• Fears associated with sexuality and intimacy:  “No one will every desire me now.”
• Fear and uncertainty: “What’s going to happen to me?”

Anything you feel is valid and deserves to be acknowledged, not only by those around you, but also by you.

Seeking individual counselling or becoming part of a support group can help you to find this acknowledgment.

After a cancer diagnosis, you might feel as though you have no control over what is happening to you and this can be very frightening.  Uncertainty is often one of the most difficult things to deal with.  You might feel as though cancer and its treatment have taken total control of your life and this often leads to feelings of powerlessness.

Counselling allows you to take back some control over your life and provides you with some semblance of security again. It can help you to enjoy your life despite the illness.

While it can be terrifying to think about it, it is natural to want to know what is likely to happen to you so that you can plan for your future.

Sorting out your affairs so that everything is in order is often very confronting but it can also be helpful.  Even though it’s likely to be painful for you and your family to talk about dying, it can also provide an opportunity to talk about what is important to you all and develop deeper levels of intimacy with each other.  Regardless of how long the cancer patient lives, everyone benefits by being open and honest about what they value in their relationships.

Many cancer patients feel as if they have lost control of their lives.  Talking to a counsellor can help you to regain a level of control over how you cope.

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Christmas – are we having fun yet?

We are brought up with the idea that Christmas is a time for grandparents, parents, children, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins to get together and enjoy each other’s company. The reality is often very different for some people.

Some are separated geographically from their families by employment or migration and it’s impossible to travel.

I got my first-ever counselling client by putting up posters round my neighbourhood with this as a banner across the top. My counselling studies had taught me that Christmas is often a time of anything but ‘fun’ for a lot of people. And that’s exactly what my client told me; he hated Christmas because he came from a dysfunctional family of origin and had co-created his own dysfunctional family. He was now on his own.

In many cases, a person’s family of origin is something that was anything but harmonious and loving and the last thing they want to do – like my first client – is put themselves under emotional stress by pretending that everything is fine (and we all know what the definition of F.I.N.E. is don’t we?).

No matter what the reason, if you are a Christmas ‘orphan’ and you haven’t managed to make a new family of choice with close friends, this time of year can be incredibly lonely.

My Christmases have always been pleasant, generously hosted almost every year by my cousin and his wife. The Christmas just past was particularly happy because their first grandchild was there for all of us to meet. However, while the advent of an addition to this particular generation was truly joyful, it was also bitter-sweet for me. I couldn’t help missing my Mum, who would have been the baby’s Great Grand Aunt. She died three years ago this Christmas and I still miss her and think about her almost every day. At first I was puzzled at my sadness because last year I was fine, but when I thought about it, it made sense that I would be aware of the hole where she used to be in our family while cuddling the newest member of our family.

While Christmas is traditionally a time for families getting together, this year I’m going to make a concerted effort to stay in touch with the remaining relatives in my small extended family and try to catch up on a regular basis. After all, relationships are what make life worthwhile and we need to nurture them more than once a year.

I hope you had a happy Christmas and if not, may you find friendship and love during 2011.

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Sad, sad, so sad

A member of one of the support groups I facilitate has just died. She was 36 years old and had a daughter whose fifth birthday was exactly a week before. I feel incredibly saddened at the cutting short of such a young life.

Naomi was originally diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 28 and that’s when I first met her. She came to the support group all through her chemo and then called me a year later to let me know that she and her partner were getting married. Later on she excitedly told me that they were pregnant and everyone who knew her from the group was thrilled for them.

Imagine our shock when she returned to us a few years ago with cancer in her remaining breast; a different type and virulent – it had already spread to her bones. She came to our meetings every single week since then whenever she was well enough to do so. For a while oral chemo kept things stable, but then she noticed new lumps and bumps popping up all over her upper body that were very painful and more scans showed that the cancer was now in her liver as well. Reluctantly she agreed to IV chemo in the hope that she would at least see her little girl start school.

Her worst fears about going through IV chemo again were put to rest and this time round she coped reasonably well for six cycles. Her results were very encouraging so she declined ‘just one more round’. Unfortunately the good results were fleeting and within three weeks her cancer markers were through the roof again. They tried another type of drug but this almost finished her off so she made the decision to stop all further treatment and focus on having the best quality of life she could. Her oncologist fully supported her decision.

She came to a meeting three days before she died and told us how she had written letters for her daughter to be given to her on every birthday until she’s 18, she had made a list of her artwork and which pieces she wanted to go to which friends, she had filled in an Advance Health Care directive and finished off their tax! She said that she wasn’t worried about her little girl because she knew she had her daddy and four grandparents all ofwhom have been very involved in her care already. She felt sure that her husband would remarry one day and she hoped it wouldn’t be too long, because she wanted him to have a happy life and be able to provide their daughter with a mother influence.

I spoke to the group about how sad it was to hear Naomi’s story but that she was an inspiration to all of us and a shining example of what we hope to achieve in our groups by not being afraid to talk about the reality of her situation. She has been a wonderful teacher to all who have met her on the cancer journey and will always be remembered for her wit, intelligence, tenacity, humour and her “shining star” qualities.

Long may she shine; God speed darling girl.

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Grieving the loss of a breast

After I had my mastectomy the breast cancer service did their best to match me with a volunteer in their peer support service but unfortunately the closest they could come up with was a woman who was 15 years younger than I when she was diagnosed, happily married and who had radiotherapy, not chemo like me.  About the only thing that we had in common was that we’d both had a mastectomy.

She told me, of course it didn’t worry her that she’d lost a breast; her husband loved her anyway.  Five years before my diagnosis my husband had walked out leaving me with our youngest child to raise.   All I could think was that if a man left me when I was whole, what chance did I have of anyone else wanting me now I was mutilated?

The volunteer said that her teenage children kept her spirits up by including her in all their activities and that her parents had been a tower of strength, stepping in when her husband needed to go to work. Her sisters took her to the hospital and minded the children when her husband took her away for a week to a spa to celebrate the end of her treatment.  My son lived in another city, my older daughter had a toddler to look after, my younger girl was born with a disability, my widowed mother was quite frail and my only sibling lived in New Zealand.

Five years down the track the woman I spoke to never thought about the fact that she’d had breast cancer, and life was ‘wonderful’.  I felt guilty because I didn’t want to hear about how marvellous her life was when mine was bloody horrible.

I know she was trying to give me hope but at the time I felt as though no one wanted to hear how devastated I was; that my fears were foolish.

So I just got on with things, putting on a brave face.  I told everyone that it was ‘only a breast’ after all. The important thing was that I was alive… wasn’t it?  When I looked back on that horrendous year I could see that while I might have been walking around, I certainly wasn’t ‘alive’.

The other women in the breast cancer support group I attended were unrelentingly upbeat.  The implication was that if you weren’t positive all the time you either wouldn’t get through it or the cancer would come back.  It seemed no one wanted to hear how I truly felt.

At the end of my treatment I had a breakdown.  I left town, sending my daughter to live with her father.  It was a year before I was able to work again.  My new oncologist referred me to the most wonderful support group.  I was encouraged to express all the feelings I had about having breast cancer and how frightened I was that every ache and pain must be bone cancer and every headache a brain tumour.  Their loving acceptance of exactly where I was at was the best possible medicine for me at that time.

It wasn’t until after reconstructive surgery that I realised that I’d never grieved the loss of my breast.  I chose to have an operation where my new breast was made using tissue from my tummy – major surgery.

After the operation, I was felled by the most intense anger.  I’d been so desperate to have the surgery that I didn’t really let myself think about how huge it was and how it could all have gone wrong.  But now that it was over, I was consumed with rage about the fact that if I hadn’t had this **** of a disease and lost my breast I wouldn’t have had to put myself through three separate donations of my own blood in the weeks before the operation, ten hours of anaesthetic and micro-surgery, followed by the torture of being forced to lie completely still in the one position for 12 hours after I woke up.

Because I was studying counselling at the time I realised that this anger was actually grief at the loss of my breast.  A classmate came to visit me and let me get all the tears, anger, hurt and pain off my chest – no pun intended!

My reconstructed breast is wonderful and despite the emotional agony I went through afterwards, I have never regretted having the surgery.  I’m just sorry that I didn’t know how to grieve losing my original breast before I made the decision to have the surgery.

Today, I can believe that the volunteer was telling me the truth about her husband because I have now had a wonderful relationship with a beautiful man who wasn’t at all fazed by my battle scars.

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Grief and Different Kinds of Loss

Bereavement is the state of loss.  Grief is what we feel in reaction to a loss.

Different kinds of loss

Although the following is not a complete list and items are in no particular order, here are some events that can trigger loss:

• the death of a loved person
• moving house
• losing your job through being fired / made redundant / retiring
• end of a relationship / separation / divorce
• any event that takes away your sense of safety or order
• the death of a pet
• being robbed
• serious or life-threatening illness
• miscarriage / infertility / abortion / birth of a disabled child
• amputation
• a shattered dream

Different feelings

When you lose someone or something you love or is important to your day-to-day happiness and stability it hurts.  As well as being sad, you might feel many other confronting emotions that surprise you.  It’s important to know that anything you feel when you have suffered a loss is perfectly normal and to allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling, because grief wears many faces.

You might experience:

• anxiety
• anger or even rage
• disbelief
• emotional numbness
• an inability to perform routine tasks
• a sense of being separate from others/ behind a glass wall
• sadness
• despair
• loneliness

All these feelings are part of the healing process but not everyone will experience all of them.

Responses to any kind of loss will be different for everyone and will be shaped by each person’s personality, the way they were brought up, family support (or lack of), cultural and spiritual or religious beliefs.

How you can help yourself

It’s essential when you’re grieving that you are gentle with yourself.  Accepting and acknowledging that you are going through an experience that is traumatic may help you to manage your reactions.  It’s perfectly normal for people to sometimes behave in ways that aren’t usual for them, so don’t become anxious that you’ve lost the plot.

Keeping things to yourself can cause stress to build up inside you.  Find a way that works for you to get your feelings out.  You might want to write in a journal, draw, paint, use a punching bag, bash your bed with a tennis racquet or scream into some pillows. Remember, grief can be caused by the loss of anything that was important and meaningful for you.

If you enjoy massage, this can be a great way to help ease some of that tension that can build up in your muscles.

Talk to someone you trust about how you’re feeling. This could be a family member, friend, your minister/priest or a counsellor.  It’s important that whoever you talk to just listens and acknowledges how you are feeling without trying to fix it for you.  Some people find it helps to share their experiences in a group situation with others who have had similar experiences.  Contact your local church, community centre, GP, Life Line (131114) or National Association for Loss and Grief (info@nalag.org.au) to find out about support groups in your area.

Grief is always personal and it’s important not to allow others to trivialise it.  Just because an event that feels like a bereavement to you may not be viewed the same way by other people doesn’t make your loss any less valid.  Allow yourself to go through the process and you will eventually come out the other side.  Bottling things up and denying feelings that already exist, doesn’t make them go away.  On the contrary, you can get stuck in them and this will impact on your ability to eventually move forward and live your life fully.

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Sadness

Have you ever noticed how when asked how you’re feeling, it’s perfectly acceptable to say that you’re depressed?  The usual response is, ‘who isn’t!’

But what happens if you tell them that you’re feeling sad?  People are really uncomfortable with that response.  I think it’s because they think they have to do something to make you feel better, whereas being ‘depressed’ is such a ubiquitous term these days that it has very little meaning. It’s not seen as a feeling; it’s like saying you’re ‘hot’ or ‘tired’ or ‘hungry’, which are all physical.  I definitely don’t want to trivialise true depression, but that is a medical condition; sadness is a human condition that we will all experience at certain times in our lives.

Someone once told me about a friend whose husband had died and six weeks later he couldn’t understand why she was still a mess.  He thought it was time she went back to work and ‘got her mind off things’.  This friend had been very happily married for 30 years, but in his view it was time she moved on!

Sadness or grief is what we feel in response to a loss in our lives. When we think about a loss most of us think of this in relation to the death of someone we loved, although there are many other different events that can trigger feelings of grief.  I’ll write more on that another time.

As a society we don’t really know how to handle loss.  Work places grant three days’ bereavement leave to allow people to make funeral arrangements and then they’re expected to get back to work, almost as if nothing has happened.

It hurts to lose someone you love and some people might feel as if they’ll never recover from the loss.   They worry that the intensity of their feelings means they’re going mad or ‘losing it’.  Grief is an extremely personal experience and whatever you feel is normal.  It’s important also to remember that there’s no definite period of time that works for everyone to move through grief.  It takes as long as it takes.

There will always be triggers that can bring up feelings of grief you thought you’d moved through.  Events such as anniversaries, birthdays or even an outwardly happy event such as a new baby’s arrival in the family can deliver an emotional jolt for many years to come.  Regardless of what event triggers feelings of sadness for you, be gentle with yourself.

With a good support network of empathic family and friends, most people are able to work through grief on their own.  However, reaching out for extra support from professionals, support groups or educational classes can help promote the healing process.

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