Joel Schorn - Elf-Help for Coping with Cancer

Elf-help for Coping with Cancer Joel Schorn Illustrated by R. W. Alley Abbey Press Foreword A diagnosis of cancer touches every part of your life. Like a stone thrown into a pond, cancer ripples through your life and the lives of those around you. You have new fears and new feelings. You face a long and uncertain road.

You wonder what life and even God has in store for you. Through your treatment, youll experience some pain and a good deal of anxiety. Elf-help for Coping with Cancer offers ways to meet the physical and emotional challenges of cancer. In helping you cope in a positive way with your fears, feelings, and doubts, it suggests how you can react to your illness and also act in ways that will help you heal. It will also help you see how having cancer, despite the limitations and downright terrors it may present, can offer opportunities to grow closer to God and those around you, and to focus on whats really important. 1. Finding out you have cancer can be devastating. 1. Finding out you have cancer can be devastating.

In time, you will get past the shock and be able to focus on getting better and living with your new situation. 2. You have fears about the future, how youll feel, what will happen to your family. Its good to identify and acknowledge your fears, and even talk about them. Getting them out in the open makes them seem less frightening. 3. You have a long battle ahead of you, but whatever happens, dont give up! God is walking with you. 4. Real courage isnt being unafraid.

Its not allowing your fears to conquer you. Its OK to be afraid as you confront this disease. Youll find the courage to do what you need to do. 5. Its normal to experience negative emotions when you have cancer: fear, grief, and angerat the disease, at doctors, at life, even at God. Let yourself have these negative feelings. 6. Youll go through periods of telling yourself this cant be happening or its not as bad as it seems. 6. Youll go through periods of telling yourself this cant be happening or its not as bad as it seems.

Like fear, anger, and sadness, its OK to just want the cancer to go away. Turn that desire into hope and strength. Cancer can lead to feelings of hopelessness, as if life no longer has purpose. But your life is still full. Your loved ones, your faith in God, even coping with your illness, give you plenty of ways to find meaning in your life. 8. The stress and anxiety of having cancer might make you depressed.

Its not wrong for you to react this way. If depression becomes overwhelming, ask for help from counselors and your health-care team. 9. Whatever youre feeling, theres no correct way to react to cancer. Everyone is different, and your way of coping will be your own. 10. Its perfectly natural to ask yourself, Why did this have to happen to me? But cancer can happen to anyone. You didnt deserve it.

It happened, and the best thing is to focus on getting better. 11. Be prepared to give yourself time and do lots of waiting. God and others will walk with you. 12. One day, youll feel hopeful and confident, and the next, sad or depressed. Youre going to have many ups and downs. 13. Coping with cancer is a struggle. 13. Coping with cancer is a struggle.

But you will have joy, too. Celebrate your victories: a positive check-up, finishing a treatment, or just a day of feeling good. 14. Cancer brings many changes: not only to your health, but also how you feel, how you look, your expectations, your relationships. Life will not be the same. But change presents opportunities to grow. 15. Some of these changes will mean lossesof health, independence, lifestyle, and more.

Its important to let yourself grieve your losses. 16. You dont feel well, you cant get around as easily as you used to, you need help. Part of accepting your new life as a person with cancer is accepting your new limitations as part of who you are now. 17. Sometimes people feel guilty or ashamed when they get cancer. If you feel this way, try some self-forgiveness. 18. While your life will change, in some ways forever, it helps to try to live as normal a life as possible. 18. While your life will change, in some ways forever, it helps to try to live as normal a life as possible.

Keep up with your routines as much as you can. Do things youve always enjoyed.