100 Perks of Having Cancer: Plus 100 Health Tips for Surviving It (4 page)

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100 Perks of Having Cancer

Health is complex. It does not just include the physical. You can’t claim

to be healthy by only considering your physical strength when you’re a men-

tal and spiritual train wreck. These tips cover all the bases. And they’re dang

easy, too!

Think of these tips as a menu of sorts, not an instruction manual. And

just like picking vegetables from a garden, you take what you can eat now,

and leave the rest until it looks ripe to you. My hope is that you will come

back and revisit the list, because chances are, as you see how easy the tips

are and how your choices are positively affecting your life, you’ll be ready

for a few more.

I don’t belong to any advocacy groups and I don’t have an agenda, hid-

den or otherwise. My only “ulterior motive” is to share the knowledge I

have accumulated over my twenty-plus years as a registered nurse, and my

years since a stage-3 cancer diagnosis, so that maybe others will be helped.

Through exchanging and sharing information with others, I would love to

create a tangled and twisted web of health and happiness. (Now, that’s a

place I wouldn’t mind being trapped.)

Please feel free to contact me for any reason at susan@MOON-Organics

.com.

Before You Get Started

The book you are now holding is not the

proceed from chapter to chapter that

work of just one author, but two. Flo’s

you will be hearing the voice of two

perks are a collection of inspiring insights

distinct writers.

and humorous anecdotes documented

Also, we would like to emphasize that

over the course of a year as she was

none of the information in this book is

undergoing treatments for cancer.

meant to override the advice of your

Susan’s reader-friendly health tips

doctor. Any change to your daily regimen

were written to correspond to Flo’s

should be discussed with your personal

perks, but with the intent to promote

healthcare professional, especially if you

the best practices for living a healthy

decide to add supplements to your sur-

lifestyle. Please keep in mind as you

vival plan.

Perk #1

Cancer Made a

Blogger Out of Me

L
ife following a cancer diagnosis is

an emotional roller coaster. Like

most people when diagnosed with a

life-threatening illness, I underwent the

typical stages of grieving: denial, anger,

bargaining with God, depression, and

acceptance. I can almost pinpoint the

exact moment that I transitioned from

depression to acceptance. It was a beau-

tiful day in October, six months after

my initial diagnosis, and my body was

under assault from a dif ficult round of

chemotherapy. I was lying in bed, look-

ing through the window as my mother

collected the last of the tomatoes from

my greenhouse. I was feeling too sick

and exhausted to lift my bald head from

the pillow. It saddened me that I was

not out there with her, enjoying the

Flo the blogger.

sunshine and harvesting the fruits of my

labor.
It’s just not fair,
I thought.
I set those seeds, I grew those plants. I should

be the one picking those tomatoes. Cancer sucks.

While wallowing in self-pity, I came to an important realization. It sud-

denly dawned on me that feeling sorry for myself was not going to help

me get well. As a psychologist, I knew that positive emotions, such as hap-

piness, joy, and love, help to boost the immune system and enhance heal-

ing. Negative emotions, such as anger, bitterness, and depression, on the

I 5 J

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100 Perks of Having Cancer

other hand, have been proven to suppress the immune system. Since I

needed a healthy immune system to fight cancer, a positive attitude was

vital to my recovery!

I convinced myself that cancer wasn’t
that
bad; hey, it even had its perks.

For example, since getting cancer, not once did I have to help with the dishes

at big family dinners. The thought of that made me smile, and instantly I

felt a little better. I then issued myself a challenge: if finding one perk could

bring a smile to my face, then I would find 100 perks of having cancer. To

keep me focused and committed to my goal, I decided to blog these perks.

(Please note that while this book is written in the past tense, all 100 of my

perks were written and blogged as I was actively undergoing cancer treat-

ments, over the course of about a year.)

Since I have always enjoyed writing, blogging became a creative outlet

for me. It also gave me a sense of purpose. After spending nearly twenty

years in the helping profession, a big part of my life was missing when I

stopped working for more than a year. Through my blog and the response

from my readers, I knew that I was still helping people, if only by making

them smile.

Blogging also connected me to so many kindred spirits. Seeing new posts

from my fellow cancer bloggers was like getting an e-mail from an old

friend. I loved to grab a cuppa and find out what my cyber friends were up

to:
What health tips will Susan share in this post? How did Rachel’s scan turn

out? Who made Marie’s Friday Round Up? What shenanigans has Nancy’s pig

gotten up to this week?
These people became part of my support network as

we shared our highs and lows. Blogging has been, for me, one of the most

therapeutic perks of having cancer.

It is good to have a creative outlet when you are dealing

with cancer. Try blogging, journaling, gardening, painting,

or whatever it is that lets your creative juices flow.

PERK #1: Cancer Made a Blogger Out of Me

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HEALTH TIP #1

You Don’t Have to Be Picasso to Benefit

from Art Therapy

T
he word
therapy
has such a broad range of connotations, doesn’t it?

There’s cryotherapy, psychotherapy, physical therapy, chemotherapy (of

course), and the ever-dreaded maggot therapy—Ew, I’m not making that

up—and that’s just to name a few.

But there’s one kind of therapy that provides you with improved health

and, as an added bonus, something you can hang on your wall.

Introducing . . . art therapy.

Art therapy has been around for about forty years, but because it isn’t

available everywhere, not many know about it. According to the American