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Tools for Healthy Survivorship

 

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Tools for Healthy Survivors

Survivor:  From the time of discovery and for the balance of life,
an individual diagnosed with cancer is a survivor

National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship

Healthy Survivor: A survivor who gets good care and lives as fully as possible is a Healthy Survivor.
                                                                     Wendy S. Harpham, MD

My cancer diagnosis made me a “cancer patient.” My hopes, expectations, attitudes and actions could not change the fact that I had been diagnosed with cancer and had become a cancer patient. But I could take steps to make my life after cancer the best it could possibly be.

So from the time of my diagnosis on, I’ve been developing tools that have helped me make my life after cancer a “good life.” I hope that by sharing the tools that have helped me, you’ll discover tools that help you.

From cancer patient to Healthy Survivor

Days after my diagnosis in 1990, I received a pamphlet from the National Coalition of Cancer Survivorship that introduced me to the term that changed the landscape of having cancer forever after: survivor. At the time, individuals with cancer were arguing about whether they should be called “survivors,” “thrivers,” “activists” or another label.  But I was a practical-minded internist. When I learned that “survivor” was the accepted term used in the oncology literature, I immediately began thinking of myself as a survivor.

Useful as this term is, I found it limited because it says nothing of quality of life or the patient’s role in recovery and quality of life. You are a “survivor” whether you are receiving optimal therapy from highly qualified physicians or taking snake oil from charlatans. You are a “survivor” whether you are reveling with gratitude for each and every day or totally incapacitated by uncontrolled pain or fear of recurrence. I didn’t want to just survive; I also wanted to thrive emotionally and spiritually.

So years ago I introduced an additional term: Healthy Survivor. “Health” implies a wholeness of body, mind, and spirit. You can be a Healthy Survivor no matter how sick you are or how bad your prognosis, because Healthy Survivorship is not dependent on biology or medical outcome; it’s about making your life the best it can be, and accepting what is. Healthy Survivorship is about embracing your life—whatever the circumstances—and finding happiness today while hoping for a better tomorrow.  

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Thought for the Week

Nobody is born knowing how to be a Healthy Survivor. Patients learn how to become Healthy Survivors by learning how to get good care and live as fully as possible after illness or injury. 

Sometimes “getting good care” means taking treatments that bring a Healthy Survivor to the brink of death, because that is the only way to have any chance of long-term survival.

Sometimes “living as fully as possible” means feeling painful emotions that make a Healthy Survivor miserable, because new possibilities may only first become visible after grieving permanent losses or getting through anger, disappointment or other unpleasant emotions.

 

Poems

The View from Remission

My first round of treatment was six months of intensive chemotherapy. I had hoped that after my last treatment I could put my cancer completely behind me. But I had unpleasant physical and emotional aftereffects.  Determined to be a Healthy Survivor, I wrote this poem to help me focus on the silver linings, the positive outcomes of an unwanted circumstance.  I would never choose to have cancer; but my “view from remission” made my life better than ever, in certain ways. 

Click here to read poem, “The View from Remission”

 

Hope

While writing chapter 8 of Happiness in a Storm—Hope—I realized that I was analyzing the hope patients may feel without ever defining hope. When I tried to write a few sentences of definition, a poem emerged that captures my sense of hope.

Click here to read poem, "Hope"

 

Variations on a Theme by Niebuhr

The opening verse of the ever-popular “Serenity Prayer,” which some people call the “Courage Prayer,” brought me comfort and inspiration during the moths of my initial treatments. Over the years, as I’ve worked hard to be a Healthy Survivor, I’ve taken the liberty of adding verses to help me face the challenges of repeated courses of treatment and a variety of aftereffects. With credit to Niebuhr’s work and a Talmudic (Jewish writings) proverb, I wrote an expanded poem.

Click here to read poem, "Variations on a Theme by Niebuhr"

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Insights & Handles

Handles, insights, and words of advice

At the right moment, a few simple words or phrases can be more helpful than all the sophisticated discussion in the world. This section offers handles, insights, and words of advice that may help you find serenity, courage and wisdom. On a regular basis, one or two of the older entries will be replaced with new thoughts and discussions.

"A cancer diagnosis encourages us
to know both the fragility and hopes of life,
and with that knowledge to live most fully"

                                                              Wendy S. Harpham, M.D.

 

"The intimate knowledge
of what might have been lost (and might yet be)
makes me feel today and everyday
in a wonderfully intense way."

                                                                  Wendy S. Harpham, M.D.

(excerpted from View from Remission)

 

 

"Everywhere the old order changes,

and happy are those who can change with it"

                                    Sir William Osler

 

 

"An attitude of gratitude

brings blessings."

                                              Sir John Templeton

 

 

When you're having "one of those days," remind yourself,

"The best I can do
is
the best I can do."

(And, the best is good enough!)

 

You are not a statistic; you are an individual.

 

 

"It ain't over 'til it's over."
Yogi Berra

      "Please don't let me die before I die."
Prayer

"While there's life, there's hope."
Cicero

Dr. Harpham discusses the shared messages of these three quotes.  For text, click here                    


 

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This website is not a medical consultation service. Any information or opinion expressed is provided only to supplement information provided by your doctors and nurses. It is not intended as a substitute for competent medical care. Any use of the information in this website is at the user's discretion. Dr. Harpham disclaims any and all liability arising directly or indirectly from the use or application of any information contained in this website.

Copyright 2000 by Wendy S. Harpham. All rights reserved. Last updated January 9, 2008

P.O. Box 835574 Richardson, Texas  75083-5574
harpham [at] tx.rr.com

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