The Breast Wishes Institute, for women concerned with breast cancer

Institute

Tools and Tips from the upcoming book

Bald Women Singing-365 Days of Hope and Healing
by Mary Olsen Kelly
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1. Biopsy Buddy
Take a friend or loved one with you to hear the results of your biopsy. Whether the results are positive or negative, it is better to have company. This is not something you want to hear when you are alone.

2. Knowledge is Power
Do research. Use the Internet, read books about BC. Listen to tapes to learn about cancer. Ask for a copy of your pathology report and learn what it means. Have your doctor explain it to you.

3. Best BC book written by a doctor
Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book, by Susan M. Love, MD, with Karen Lindsey.

4. Call it what it is
Find out the medical description for your tumor and use it when telling friends and family what you have. For example: "A small ductal carcinoma, caught very early, the most common and easiest to treat."

5. Talk to yourself
Silently "talk" to your inner self, the child self that is really frightened. Tell this self that you will make it, that together you will survive and thrive. Promise this young self that once this is over, you will do lots of fun and happy things. Make a list of the fun things you will do.

6. Visualization
Use visualization techniques to see yourself healthy. By applying the powers of your imagination, reshape internal images for your own healing.

7. Surgery
Once diagnosed, you become a medical statistic. A complex pathology report determines the future. Friends will want to help, family will offer support, but what kind of help do you really need right now? Think about it and let them know.

8. Make a Happy Book
Create a mini-scrapbook that you can take with you to all your doctor appointments and tests. I use a small, hand bound journal book with lines on the pages. Find photos of yourself and loved ones to glue into the front and back cover of the book. These photos should be chosen for their ability to make you smile. I have my infant nephew Kyle smiling at me, my husband Don, my sister Barbara and my best friend Diana, alongside photos of my cat Jet.

Use this book to write down what the doctors say. It is really important to keep track of their advice and comments. Write them down yourself or bring a friend and have them write for you. You will forget what they said otherwise.

While you are waiting for the doctor, or for the test, you have your book with you to cheer you up. Sometimes the tests are very scary sounding, and the book can do wonders to relax you, take your mind away to happier places, and make you smile.

9. Choose a healing image
I love the flowers of Hawaii. Right outside my front door is a huge, pink plumeria tree, covered with beautiful blossoms. It makes me feel lifted and inspired when I see this tree. I chose Pink Plumeria flowers as my healing image. The pink reminded me of breasts, and the fragrance is simply divine. I bought a postcard with a flower lei of pink plumeria and put it in my Happy Book. I also put pink plumeria images around my desk and my bed. I knew that every time I looked at the flowers pictured, I would imagine myself healing.

10. Healing songs
Choose a healing song, one that makes you feel great to be alive. Perhaps you have a favorite song you love to sing.

11. Healing chants
Create a chant that you can recite in your head while you are going through tests or treatments. I like the Beatles "All you need is love."

12. Choose a Healing Color
Wear it, surround yourself with it, meditate on it. I chose pink and visualized myself surrounded with Pink Mist. My healing image of pink plumeria reminded me of pink skin and health.

13. Surgery Party
Invite a group of women friends over to eat and bring gifts for you. Have each one write a message and place it in a lovely jar or container. Open the messages while you are recovering from your surgery. Take your time, don't read them all at once. Linger on the thoughts and the love that is all around you.

14. Healing Touch
In Hawaii we have a fantastic group of BC survivors who volunteer to give Healing Touch treatments to BC patients. Healing Touch is a light touch that is extremely soothing. For many years nurses trained to use this technique, now others are learning it as well. See if there is Healing Touch offered by your hospital.

15. Meditation tapes
Listen to them in doctors' offices, in bed, whenever you need them to focus your mind on healing. Keep the mind from going to a place of fear, direct your thoughts to positive and healing words, music, images.

16. Strong Positive Images
Choose some scenes from your life that really make you happy. Focus on them while you are getting treatments. It is really helpful to have some thoughts picked out in advance. This will help you to relax and resist feeling fearful or panicky during the tests.

I think about my husband Don, I visualize his smiling face, his beautiful body, his warm love for me. Or I concentrate on my little nephew Kyle who is the cutest, happiest baby in the world. I see him smiling and doing his funny laugh, and kicking his chubby little baby feet in excitement. Between the two of them, Don and Kyle can keep me cheered up through the toughest tests.

17. Great Books
Begin a terrific book that really captures your attention. Read that while you wait for your doctor's appointments and let yourself be carried away into another world.

18. Plan your celebrations
You need to have lots of rewards planned for yourself to celebrate your successful healing journey. Once you have finished your chemotherapy and radiation, have a party for yourself or ask a friend to plan a party for you. It is really important to reward yourself for the successful completion of this journey to health.

Make arrangements to take a fabulous trip to celebrate getting through your treatments successfully, celebrate that you will survive and thrive. This can be a driving trip, or a cruise, or anything that excites and thrills you. Make the plans, pay the money and arrange the trips now. When your treatments are over, you will have the most wonderful reward! All through the year, you can focus on the trip, knowing that you will be well and healthy again.

19. Lots of journals
Write in a journal, or maybe more than one. I have one journal for the medical information, and another that tracks the letters and emails that I have sent and received, and another to my inner child to soothe and relax myself.

20. What to wear to same-day surgery
Wear comfortable pants, or sweatpants with an elastic waist. On top, wear a loose sturdy blouse or soft jacket that buttons down the front. After surgery, you will be stiff and you want sleeves that your arms can go into easily. Also, you will have a drain tube that will need to have attached by safety pin to the armpit of your blouse. Make sure the blouse is roomy enough to hold the drain apparatus.

21. Emla cream
Ask for Emla or numbing cream to be placed on the hand or arm where the IV will be inserted. The cream is applied twenty minutes to an hour before, then when the needle is inserted you won't even feel it. This cream is a life-saver! It can make the IV, blood tests and chemotherapy treatments so much easier. Don't forget to put the emla cream on the area where you will be poked. If you have a port, put the emla cream over the entry point of the port. If you receive your chemo through your arm, put emla cream where you think the needle will enter.

22. Ice
Keep ice on the wound area as often as possible. The ice really soothes the pain, and keeps the swelling down. When I left the hospital, the nurse gave me an ice pack. I just kept refilling it with ice over the next few days and found it to be very helpful. Ask for an ice pack when you leave, or buy several at the drugstore.

23. Listen to experts on tape
Audio tapes by doctors and breast cancer specialists are great to listen to while waiting for doctors, relaxing at home, or driving in your car. There are some wonderfully informative books on tape about healing, meditation, and visualization as well. But my very favorites were from the Healing Journeys Conferences. In this tape set, called "Cancer as a Turning Point," breast cancer survivors, authors, psychologists and doctors shared personal and uplifting messages of hope. These speakers inspired me tremendously. Check out Suggested Reading and Listening.

24. Affirmations
Say silently three times a day, "I am feeling good, I am recovering beautifully, I am on the right track."

25. Start a creative project
Begin writing a novel, painting a picture, sewing a quilt, or creating a costume trunk for your children or grand children. Crafts, artwork, sewing, needlepoint, sculpting, scrap-book making, whatever you like to do - start a new project. Work on the project during your medical journey, whenever you feel good enough. Keep at it, finish it, and then start another. Creativity is life affirming and deeply satisfying. I started writing this book, and worked on it all year long.

26. Start a healing journal
Write about your feelings, your experiences, your fears. No matter how many warm hearted friends you have to listen , at some point you realize that your need to express is larger than the tolerance of those who love you. There is only so much that loved ones will want to hear, and you need to express volumes. For your own sake and theirs, start a healing journal where you can write about anything you want or need to. This is the place to let it all hang out Ð no one is going to read it unless you let them. Write about your fears, about your spiritual connection, about what you are going through.

27. Working out
You can start to exercise as soon as your drain is removed. It is a good idea to take it easy, and keep you affected arm elevated. Watch for arm swelling. If you experience swelling, tell your doctor immediately.

28. Love letters
Write secret letters to the people in your life you love or have loved. Tell them all the things you love about them. Keep these a secret, bundle them together and tie with a beautiful ribbon or place them in a pretty box or large envelope.

29. Something in common
Realize that you now have something in common with Shirley Temple Black, Diahann Carroll, and Olivia Newton John. All have had mastectomies or lumpectomies.

30. Reach to recovery
Call the American Cancer Society and ask for a volunteer from Reach to Recovery to visit you in your home. They will bring gifts, teach you stretching exercises, and talk with your about BC. The volunteers are all BC survivors themselves and have lots of support and information to offer, or they can simply be a good listener if you need to talk.

31. E-Mail Dream Team
Create a group Dream team on your Internet address book and send an email to all those on the list every time you have news to share. Email is a god-send. You will not have the time or energy to talk to everyone on the phone, but you can keep them all up to date through regular communications. I sent a Dream Team email before and after my surgery, as I started each chemo treatment, a few days later to report on how I was feeling. I also sent emails during radiation, and as I was completing my nine months of treatment.

32. Breast Cancer support groups
The American Cancer Society has a monthly breast cancer support group, so do most hospitals and medical centers. I strongly urge you to attend these groups. The support and caring that you will find is unlike anything anywhere else. To be in the presence of women who have just gone through what you are facing is powerfully healing. You can't help but think after hearing each one share their story "If she can do it, I can do it."

33. Chemotherapy
Everything changes, the journey becomes quite spiritual at times, you are no longer the same. An honest look at chemotherapy and what you need to know to survive the rigors of a treatment that feels worse than the disease.

34. Choosing your oncologist
Visit several, interview them, see if you have a rapport. You will be spending a lot of time with this doctor, make sure you feel comfortable and cared for. Analyze the waiting room, is it clean, well decorated, comfortable? You will spend a lot of time here over the next months and years.

35. Get a port
Many women receive their chemo infusions through a port rather than a vein in their arm. The port makes it much easier for the IV to be attached and for the liquid medicine to enter the body. A port will save your veins from collapsing. I had a port installed in my chest on the left side and was grateful for it every time I received my chemo.

36. Chemo gifts
Before you start your chemotherapy, go out and buy yourself a gift for every chemo treatment you have scheduled. If you have eight, buy eight gifts. Wrap each gift individually and label it by number. Hide the gifts until it is the day of the first treatment. After your treatment open the first gift. It is really nice to have something special to look forward to on a day that can be challenging.

OR

If you have a friend who asks what she can do for you, suggest that she send you a chemo gift on each day you have a treatment. A dear friend of mine, Jan Amos, invented this idea. She used to be a nurse, and she sent me eight beautiful bath products over the six months I was receiving chemo.

37. Get a flu shot
Go to your Internist or family doctor and ask for a flu shot. As a chemotherapy patient, you have priority for a shot even if they are running short of supplies.

38. Chemo buddies
Make sure to bring a girlfriend with you to each chemo treatment. This will help to relax you and make the treatment easier. A friend will talk, distracting you from what you are going through, together you can laugh and catch up with each other's lives. It doesn't matter what you talk about, as long as it is happy and uplifting. Talk about boyfriends, make-up, children, your favorite movies and songs. Just anything to take your mind off where you are and what you are doing. This will be so beneficial!

I took my sister with me twice, my Mother once, my girlfriend Diana once, and my friend and massage therapist Pandora twice, my husband's sister went with me the last time. On each occasion, my chemo buddy went with me to see my oncologist first, then we had a little bite to eat at the hospital cafeteria, then to healing touch, then to chemo. This proved to be a very good schedule. After healing touch I was so relaxed and receptive to the treatments, and having a girlfriend there was delightful.

39. Bring a picnic
Pack some food, bring some drinks, and set up a picnic on the table near your chair. You can eat while receiving chemotherapy, having some food actually helps to keep your blood pressure from dropping and generally cheers you up. My chemo buddy and I would take all kinds of goodies, offer them to the chemo nurses, and have a wonderful time.

40. Anti-nausea drugs
Make sure to stay right on schedule with your anti-nausea drugs or you will have the unhappy experience of really understanding the meaning of the word nausea. There are so many types of anti-nausea drugs these days that you will probably not feel nauseous at all. Yay!

41. Water
Drink as much water as you can the day before and the day of your treatment. Before, during and after the chemo are going in through the IV, drink water. The water will flush the chemo through your system quicker and keep you hydrated. I found that there were certain days after chemo treatments when the taste of water was vile. I couldn't drink it. Instead I drank fruit juices, lemonade, and carbonated fruit drinks. After several weeks, water tasted good to me again. Whenever you can tolerate it, drink at least eight to ten glasses of water a day.

42. Liquid Gold
When singer and actress Olivia Newton-John went through chemotherapy, she visualized the drugs as liquid gold that was going into her veins and healing her.

43. Magic Potion
Think of the chemo as a wondrous magical potion that will instantly heal you forever. Imagine the potion running like lightning through your body, zapping any mutant cells with pixie dust.

44. Eat what you want
This is one of those times when you get to eat what you want. The steroids and anti-nausea pills actually make you hungry. The doctors and chemo nurses advise you to eat high protein, high calorie foods so that your blood can build back up.

45. Cravings
I had strange cravings in the middle of the night. Sometimes I was so hungry at 3:00 AM that I had to get up and eat something like peanut butter and bread. Or Cheese. I haven't eaten either peanut butter or cheese in decades because of the high fat content. But, while on chemo I had such a craving for cheese that I asked my husband to pull into a grocery store as we were driving. I bought a huge block of cheese, it just looked so good! I haven't eaten cheese in ten years at least. But while on the chemo drugs I craved it desperately. After treatments were completed, I no longer had an interest in peanut butter or cheese.

46. Weight gain
When you start chemo, you expect to lose weight. The opposite is true. Most women gain weight because of the steroids and anti-nausea drugs you are taking. Water retention increases as well. It is fairly common to gain at least twenty pounds. To avoid gaining a lot of weight, watch your fat intake and try to get some form of exercise every day.

47. The Good News
After you stop the chemo, the weight will drop back off pretty quickly, especially if you reduce calories and increase exercise. A lot of it is water weight and bloat and will come off in the first months.

48. Sunshine
You will probably need to stay out of the sun while you are on chemo. The skin becomes thinner and more delicate, sunburn and sun damage can be a problem. Wear a hat and sunscreen if you are out in the sun. Try to take walks or swim in the early morning or after sunset.

49. Tai Chi
Learn some Tai Chi movements. The slow graceful dance-like meditation will center you are make you feel much stronger and calmer.

50. Deep Breathing
Oxygenation is very important. Breath deeply, do deep breathing exercises. There is evidence that cancer cells do not like oxygen, so the more oxygen you breathe the better.

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