By Books Writer Denise Turney

A loving family and faith in good outcomes are an effective combination when it comes to facing and overcoming breast cancer. The stronger your support system, the better. Yet, even with a strong support system, there are days when you may feel exhausted and worried. Expressing concerns with your oncologist and family practitioner can help.

Catching Breast Cancer

Catching the disease early is also key. Regardless of the stage of recovery, it can help to speak with other women and men who’ve experienced breast cancer. Open dialogue with people who are experiencing a similar challenge can protect you from believing that you’re isolated, alone or without options. Communicating and sharing with others who are going through what you are is also a great way to learn of strategies to deal with treatment recovery, inability to connect with colleagues in-person and financial strain.

Having a loving family and faith could give you the courage to inform loved ones about the disease and how it is impacting you. Even more, you would have one or more relatives you could discuss current events with, placing them lovingly against the backdrop of a challenge you experienced as kids and overcame. Being open and honest with someone who you’ve known since childhood can offer strength and comfort.

You Are Loved

It can also assure you that, regardless of what happens during treatment, recovery and beyond, you are always loved for who you are. And this raises an important point. Your background, health level, financial situation, home life circumstances, what you experience day to day – nothing – changes what you were created to be.

You are beyond words, beyond explanation, past any type of perception – an absolutely amazing eternal being.

A disease cannot take away your ability to care, be kind, trustworthy or courageous. Breast cancer also cannot take away your ability to love. Depending on what your passions are, you might also be able to continue to pursue your passions. For instance, if you love to paint, write, build crafts, sing or create architectural designs, you could continue to engage in those passions.

Connecting with Family and Friends During Breast Cancer Treatments

Should you find yourself feeling isolated and alone, on days you’re feeling better, you could call a relative or a friend and volunteer at a local charity event. Also, rather than to stay at home, you could spend a few hours a week hanging out with your sister, a brother or another relative-friend.

Joining a book club and attending book club meetings, preferably in-person, gives you the power of a shared passion. Engaging in discussions around your love for reading books in one or more genres, gives your mind a break from focusing on breast cancer. Furthermore, it allows you to laugh out loud, look at specific scenarios and celebrate big events that occur in the books with like minded book readers.

It’s these people who share your passion, as well as friends, including family members and childhood friends, who can help you tap into your inner power. These loving people can encourage you to keep going. They might tell you something like, “While you’re receiving treatments and pulling back on the hectic schedule you once worked at the office, let’s get involved in a charity.” Or they might suggest, “Instead of staying home all weekend, why don’t we go see that new comedy movie and grab salad and pasta from that great Italian restaurant near the mall.”

Shift Focus Away from Breast Cancer

Suggestions like these, especially if you take family and friends up on the suggestions, keep you from getting isolated and from feeling alone, even if you’re the only person you know who’s dealing with breast cancer. Each time you take loved ones up on an invitation to be social, you also help your focus to shift away from challenge.

Who knows? While you shift focus, you might stumble upon a new passion, something you get involved with that brings you joy for decades. For example, you might discover that you have a passion for creating gorgeous floral arrangements, quilting, ceramics, fishing, boating or teaching.

Family and friends can also help you to use food to treat and strengthen your body. To motivate you to invest in a healthy diet, family members might start eating healthier themselves. Additionally, family and faith in good can reduce worry and stress which, in turn, can help you to sleep better at night.

Breast Cancer Recovery

Blessings that a loving family and faith in good bring to your life extends across years, well beyond recovery from breast cancer. The love and support you gain from reaching out to family and friends and keeping faith in good can empower you even as breast cancer research discovers new ways to reduce deaths and symptoms associated with the disease. And fortunately, researchers continue to seek a cure.

In fact, breast cancer research continues to give women and men diagnosed with the disease hope. This hope and cure effort expands decades. For instance, six decades ago, in the 1960s, being told you had breast cancer could send a message that your life would be short.¹ That’s not so today.

The National Library of Medicine shares that, “Much of the progress in breast cancer was the result of the development of adjuvant chemotherapy. Fisher and Bonadonna showed in the mid-1970s that the addition of adjuvant chemotherapy to definitive surgery improved disease-free and overall survival in primary breast cancer.”²

Forward Strides

Fortunately, the number of deaths caused by breast cancer have declined. In fact, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shares that, “Deaths from breast cancer have declined over time, but breast cancer remains the second leading cause of cancer death among women overall and the leading cause of cancer death among Hispanic women.”³

Yes. Strides have been made, but there’s a good deal of work yet to be done. Reducing breast cancer deaths among Hispanic women and lowering the breast cancer death rate among African American women are two areas to focus on gaining good ground in.

Fundraisers, charity walks, ongoing efforts and attention on finding a cure and better treatments, especially treatments that produce fewer side effects, are wins. So too is connecting with loving family and good friends, allowing yourself to be loved and cared for. In this spirit, may Portia’s fictional story offer hope, empowerment and inspiration.

Resources:

1. https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.3322/canjclin.20.1.10
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4879690/#:~:text=Much%20of%20the%20progress%20in,survival%20in%20primary%20breast%20cancer.
3. https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/basic_info/index.htm#:~:text=Each%20year%20in%20the%20United,cancer%20than%20all%20other%20women.