I just heard someone say that time doesn't heal all wounds -- it just makes them worse. I guess it depends on the wound. I imagine losing a child is one wound that never really heals. But I've found that my cancer wounds -- both physical and emotional -- have healed with time. And a trip down memory lane proves it.

Two years ago I wrote about my wounds, fresh and raw and painful, on my Breast Cancer blog.

Confession
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005

Survivorship is the new cancer buzz word -- and what an important word it is. Once left to each individual to define, manage, and transcend, survivorship is now recognized as a distinct phase of cancer recovery -- just as important, and maybe even more so, than diagnosis and treatment.

Linda Griggs, a 13-year breast cancer survivor, clearly remembers the day her chemotherapy ended. With her therapy complete, her hair growing back, and her medical team sending her off to have a nice life, she thought she'd be fine. But she wasn't.

Three months after her last dose of chemotherapy, Griggs was depressed, consumed with worry about how her cancer might come back. And she realized that the end of treatment is not really the end. It's just the beginning.

Griggs told her doctor about her anxiety, about how she was just trying to make it to her next three-month-check up. When her doctor told her, "that's not living," something clicked for Griggs who instantly decided to start living -- really living.

Surviving is about self-nurturing, says Griggs, who has created a kit to help others survive cancer. On her website, she writes that there are a couple of other breast cancer survivor kits out there -- containing tissues, herbal teas, meditation tapes, medical appointment books, and breast cancer resource materials.

"This is not that," she says of her kit that focuses on the emotional upheaval cancer creates.

Griggs' kit is full of hands-on creative materials -- like an inner child notebook, complete with magic markers for journaling and expressing emotions. If you're angry, you can write down angry thoughts. If you're sad, write what makes you sad. Save the pages, tear them up, burn them, do what you wish -- but allow your emotions to flow, Griggs says.

The kit also includes a wooden box with instructions on how to create a healing shrine, a copy of Griggs' non-fiction account of the first five years of her cancer journey, and so much more.

Griggs, who also teaches healing workshops, guides others to understand cancer as a hero's quest. She says when something happens to us -- death, divorce, disease -- we are receiving a call to adventure. All bet's are off. We must start fresh, gather our spirit guides, collect ourselves, dive into the underworld, overcome, and then emerge full of wisdom of growth.

Griggs has emerged -- full of her own wisdom and growth. She is a hero -- on a quest to help others survive a disease that threw her way off track for way too long.

I feel fortunate to have received every cancer drug I needed to fight my breast cancer -- Adriamycin, Cytoxan, Herceptin, and every nausea pill, pain capsule, and anti-anxiety formula on the market. I got exactly what doctors thought I needed -- without worry about availability or funding or politics. I am lucky. Some in the UK are not so lucky.

Two targeted therapies for bowel cancer will not be used in Britain's state-run health system, according to NICE -- the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. NICE, the country's financial watchdog, determined the high cost of the medicines meant their use was not compatible with the best use of resources. Patients are angry because these same two drugs -- Avastin and Erbitux -- are used widely in the United States and in much of Europe. And while neither drug offers a cure for bowel cancer, both treatments have been shown in clinical trials to extend life expectancy by four or five months in some patients.

Based on doses given during the trials, it is estimated that the average cost of treating one patient with Avastin would be around 16,800 pounds and with Erbitux -- about 11,700 pounds. Apparently, this is too much. But according to Hilary Whittaker of the charity Beating Bowel Cancer, the decision to deprive patients of this medication is a scandal. I agree. And for these patients, I am sad.

"It's said that chemotherapy is like skiing in front of an avalanche. You do one thing wrong, and the avalanche is going to get you." -- Harvey Rushfeldt

Using the principles he learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, AA, helped Harvey Rushfeldt, 72, diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma last October, create a strategy for successfully living through the often grueling ordeal of chemotherapy. Rushfeldt sees both cancer and alcoholism as mortal threats and he approached his cancer treatments with the same 12 step attitude and perspectives alcoholics adopt on the one-day-at-a-time road to recovery.

Cancer is a physical disease. But it has striking affects on mental, emotional and spiritual wellness too. Worried Sick: The Emotional Impact of Cancer is a report done by Macmillan Cancer Support that illustrates the devastating emotional impact cancer can have for the patient and family living with cancer, and the lack of support services available to address these needs. Depression, anxiety, and isolation are common feelings. The entire experience of cancer can place a serious strain on the best of relationships. It can end less durable relationships. Divorce and separation can be an outcome of the stress of living with a life-threatening illness. Cancer patients report feeling alone and abandoned with no one they can really talk even when they do not live alone.

Personally, I know of a woman who was struggling through the grueling ordeal of chemotherapy. She had suffered all the physical side-effects of chemotherapy, such as hair loss, weight loss, weakness -- drained of any healthly glow. She was not in a good marriage to begin with, but at her most vulnerable and weakest moment, her husband actually turned to her and said, "Why don't you just hurry up and die." Up until that moment, she was not sure she was going to survive cancer. In that moment, she became determined not only to survive cancer, but her husband. Today, years later, she is a breast cancer survivor. True story.

For a surprising majority of cancer patients, the negative emotional impact of cancer far outweighs the physical reality of having cancer. The complete report -- Worried Sick: The Emotional Impact of Cancer -- is available as a PDF document.