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It felt like the most ironic turn of events of all time when I found out I had stage 3a breast cancer.

As a medical oncologist, who had specialized in the treatment of breast cancer for more than 10 years, I knew that breast cancer could affect anyone, but somehow, I thought in some cosmic way that it wouldn’t affect me. I mean, I had dedicated so much of my life to helping women fight this disease, I couldn’t possibly also 

 the disease, right? Wrong. At age 40, after having retired early from my practice, I discovered a large tumor in my breast that spread to local lymph nodes, aggressive chemotherapy, surgery and radiation ensued.

I had been an active yoga practitioner for 7-8 years before breast cancer and had known that it helped me with many things (chronic back pain resolved, I felt more energy, stress eased, muscles toned). And I had always thought yoga would be helpful to my patients who had complaints about weight gain or anxiety, which commonly accompany breast cancer treatment. But I had no idea the depth, or the breadth, of the benefit that yoga could have for a breast cancer patient until I went through it myself. 

I truly believe that yoga got me through my cancer treatment and helped me recover to a place where I feel much stronger, healthier and happier than I was before I had cancer. It is easy to think that cancer will change us for the worse, like we will have physical limitations, lost vitality or vulnerabilities as a result of the disease and the treatment, but yoga has taught me that with the proper perspective and approach, a breast cancer diagnosis can actually turn into a wonderful opportunity for growth and optimization of health in body, mind and spirit. Your “new normal” can still be the best version of you yet!

Study of the yamas and the niyamas of yoga philosophy helped me get my mind right, in the way that I thought about my situation during and after my cancer treatment. For example, focusing on santosha helped me find contentment instead of frustration with feeling sick during chemo or when the result of my breast reconstruction wasn’t perfect. Svadhyaya, or self-study, helped me to think about what I was learning through this experience, like patience or humility or how to ask for help. Asana practice was huge in restoring my range of motion after bilateral mastectomy, reconstruction and radiation left my chest wall and shoulders very stiff and sore. Losing my yoga practice was one of my biggest fears, and a slow and steady return to asana allowed me to prove to myself that I could get back to full strength and activity, which was so empowering. 

Pranayama, or breath practice, calmed my mind when I felt fear about the potential long-term outcome of my cancer, or when I was going crazy anxiously awaiting test results. I have since learned more about the underlying mechanisms by which yoga achieves some of these things, now coming to light through scientific research. There is fascinating research showing that yoga has anti-inflammatory effects in the body and does things like shift the balance of our nervous system toward rest and healing, and away from conditions of chronic stress. Finally, there is a growing literature of well-designed research documenting yoga’s benefits in cancer survivors in different areas, such as cancer-related fatigue, sleep, overall quality of life, and mood. Ongoing studies are investigating yoga’s benefits on other things like neuropathy, lymphedema, cognitive function, immune function, etc.

In these ways and more, yoga can support us through all aspects of the breast cancer experience, helping us connect to our true selves, to a place of peace, resilience, and overall well-being that can fill our days, both the good ones and the bad ones, with joy and ease. If you haven’t tried yoga yet, ask your doctor to recommend a yoga program with a teacher experienced with cancer survivors and give it a try. You won’t regret it!

Articles

A former oncologist discusses how yoga became a vital part of her recovery after a surprise breast cancer diagnosis.

How Yoga Helped Me in My Post Breast Cancer Treatment Journey

My daughter, Jill, had become a talented rock-painting hobbyist long before her diagnosis of breast cancer. She always left her rocks, with colorful pictures and inspirational messages, wherever someone might find one. Instructions were written on the reverse side of the artwork, to either keep a rock or pass it on. 

When she began cancer treatments, she often took rocks to Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, to share hope with others who were making the journey. She has generously painted hundreds of rocks, keeping none for herself. This is a poem I composed inspired by her selflessness, titled "

before slipping from the ripples of a creek

and with bold flourish, writing in white,

A poem from a mother to her daughter after her breast cancer diagnosis.

A Cancer Poem: Rock-Solid Strength

Over the past eight months, as the COVID-19 pandemic has swept across the nation, this idea has gained greater and greater currency. It’s an idea that transcends party divisions, an idea that many Americans see not as controversial but as common sense. In part, it’s why COVID-19 tests are offered free of charge around the country, why some states are waiving cost-sharing agreements for treatment and why there’s already talk of mandating that eventual vaccines won’t be provided at a profit.

These are necessary steps to prevent unnecessary American deaths. But they only go so far. That’s because, as we in the healthcare community know all too well, COVID-19 isn’t the only respiratory disease with costly and potentially lethal implications. Lung cancer is far and away the leading cause of cancer death in the country, and in many of these cases, the loss of life wasn’t inevitable. It was the preventable result of financial strain.

If you or someone you love has battled lung cancer, this likely isn’t a surprise. Over the past two decades, the average price of treatment has skyrocketed to exceed—by a margin of tens of thousands of dollars—the annual household incomes of most Americans. These costs cause lung cancer patients to declare bankruptcy at a higher rate than people with any other disease. They are also, quite literally, a cause of death—having forced patients to settle for subpar medicines and therapies or abandon treatment altogether.

These figures defy market logic. In just about any other industry you can name, as innovation advances and the efficiency of production increases, prices go down. Not so when it comes to lung cancer treatment, despite the fact that we know so much more about fighting the disease now than ever before.

Indeed, in recent years, precision medicine in oncology has gone from a pipe dream to a reality. Powerful, targeted therapeutics have transformed the once universally grim prognoses and life expectancies of lung cancer patients. From checkpoint inhibitors to mutation-specific drugs, these therapeutics are proving that a future can exist in which lung cancer is a chronic—but maybe not deadly—disease.

As long as treatment is unaffordable for most patients, though, that future is inaccessible.

, but it shouldn’t be the only month of the year when we focus on this injustice and intensify our efforts to address it. We have to recommit ourselves to investing not just in the next generation of lung cancer therapies but in the next generation of patients with lung cancer.

 and others are already doing this critical work, supporting underserved patient populations in many ways and fighting for them in the policy arena. However, the problems with pricing need to be tackled by the industry too. While politicians often talk about regulation as a cure-all, competition in the industry can have an even greater impact.

It won’t be easy. But if we harness the best of today’s minds and technologies to reduce the cost of drug discovery, reimagine the drug delivery chain and reform the pricing model, then lower-cost, novel alternatives to current drugs—drugs that might as well list “going broke” as a side effect—is possible. So, too, is a future where lung cancer is just a part of life, not a death sentence. A future where one of the big lessons of the pandemic—that 

—becomes a clarion call in the fight against lung cancer.

Sue Hager is Head, Patient Advocacy and Corporate Affairs for EQRx, an innovative biotech focused delivering high quality medicines at radically lower prices. Over the last decade, her advocacy efforts have focused on expanding access to personalized medicines in oncology.

The cost of cancer care is often an insurmountable challenge for many patients, in particular patients with lung cancer. Many of whom will die because they cannot afford treatment. Health care costs must not compromise care.

Health Care Costs Should Not Compromise Cancer Care

As we approach the season for expressing gratitude and good wishes to friends and family, I have one important thing among many to be thankful for: Colorado’s Early Blood Draw program.

Because it may have saved my husband’s life!

My husband, Les, was able to get a basic blood panel workup in Gunnison, CO through the Early Blood Draw program, which was covered by our health insurance. One of the things they checked was his PSA level. Doctors use the level of a man’s PSA (prostate-specific antigen) as one of the screening tools for diagnosing prostate cancer. When he was first checked in 2016, his PSA was at 3, which is towards the normal end of the scale. But then, later blood tests found it started going up and up and up. By March of 2017 it hit 9.77!

During that year, Les was advised to see a urologist who did a biopsy that came back negative the first time. But as his PSA level kept rising the doctors did an MRI and saw a tumor. By May of 2017 they did the biopsy again and it was positive.

My active, healthy husband of 27 years was now a man facing a diagnosis of prostate cancer.

After we got the diagnosis, we had a lot of soul-searching to do.

We’ve always been an active family, camping in the summer and snowshoeing in the winter. We love hiking in the mountains and our motto for campfire dinners is “If it can’t be on a stick, we probably won’t be eating it!”

We’re also very fortunate that we get to spend time with family, since our daughters and their husbands – along with our three amazing grandchildren – live only a few hours away and we all get together whenever we can.

So, when we had to look at all of the options for treating prostate cancer, we knew it was an important decision that could affect the quality of life for Les. We hoped he’d be able to keep taking part in all of the outdoor sports he enjoys, like hunting and riding his dirt bike.

We met with Dr. Craig Peterson, a urologist at San Juan Urology in nearby Montrose. He is a straight shooter with a great sense of humor, and he gave us several options to consider.

Maybe it’s because I’m the practical one in the family, or maybe it’s because I’ve worked at the Gunnison Bank for ten years, but once we learned about the five options from Dr. Peterson, I made a big spreadsheet with three columns for each treatment. Then we did our own research, plus I went to the websites Dr. Peterson recommended and I listed the pros and cons, and questions for each option.

Les and I discussed the choices and ruled out radiation as well as cryotherapy which could have left him with side effects for the rest of his life. We narrowed down the list to two main options, and considered radical prostatectomy surgery because it would remove the tumor. But it would also remove the entire prostate, making it highly likely that Les would have to deal with side effects of incontinence and impotence. I remember Les was also concerned about what would happen during surgery if the wrong nerves were cut, so he was not a big fan of that choice.

The second option at the top of our list was a procedure called high intensity focused ultrasound, or HIFU. Because his cancer was in the early stages and Les was healthy, and relatively young, Dr. Peterson said he was a good candidate for HIFU and he was trained to do the procedure. In fact, San Juan Urology is the only urology practice in all of Colorado that offers HIFU.

When I dug into the research for HIFU, I learned a lot of new terms and information, such as the fact that the FDA had cleared HIFU for something called “prostate tissue ablation.” That means the urologist directs ultrasound waves at precise points in the prostate to “ablate” or burn only the diseased tissue.

The more we learned about the safety of the treatment, the more it made sense. On top of that, the international studies show that the risk of impotence and incontinence is greatly reduced for HIFU patients.

After Les went through the HIFU procedure, which was done on an outpatient basis, Dr. Peterson had to put in a catheter but it was out in less than a week and he didn’t experience any incontinence. But Les had accumulated a month’s worth of sick leave from his job as an Equipment Operator with the Streets Department of the City of Gunnison, so he was able to take his time recovering, both mentally and physically.

Les underwent the HIFU procedure in July of 2017 and I can report that he’s had no side effects that have interfered with our sex life! 

The only downside to HIFU is that it is not covered by our insurance because Les hasn’t reached Medicare age, so we had to take out a loan that we’re paying off over time. I don’t mind that, because it’s much more costly if you don’t have your health. We also know that if his cancer recurs someday, we still have the other options available to us, including repeating the HIFU procedure if necessary.

All in all, we feel very lucky. We have a great doctor who gave us straightforward information about the choices available to us. My hope for others facing the same diagnosis is that they too will do the research and check out all of their options.

Our story could have turned out differently if Les’s cancer had not been caught in the early stages. That early detection would not have happened without a simple test – which is why I count the Colorado Early Blood Draw program among my many blessings this year— and next!

As the wife of a prostate cancer survivor, I’m eternally grateful for Colorado’s early blood draw program that helped my husband get lifesaving treatment early. 

Counting My Blessings As the Wife of a Prostate Cancer Survivor

You may think that you have faced adversity, but now you’re in for an actual life and death struggle. 

Like your mom before you, you’re going to be diagnosed with breast cancer. You’re later going to lose your mom to metastatic breast cancer, just as you lost your brother to metastatic prostate cancer. And your sister is going to be diagnosed with melanoma. Cancer will become a central animating feature of your life.

You’ll struggle to keep it together when you tell your husband and your two school-aged daughters that you too, have cancer. You’ll have to learn how to give up control and accept help, even from your children. It’s hard when you are used to feeling large and in charge, but you’ll soon discover that you feel the most empowered when you feel the most powerless.

It’ll be tough, taking its toll physically and emotionally. Cancer always leaves its scars.

You’ll pull through though, and the experience will inspire a life-change. 

You will quit your job and seek out an opportunity to help others. You’ll apply all of your life experiences to the challenge of leading the fight to save lives from breast cancer.

It will present its own set of challenges but don’t worry, you were made for this. You’ll meet people who will touch your heart in ways that you never imagined possible – and you’ll have to say goodbye to too many. You’ll learn that it’s okay to cry at meetings. It’s not a show of weakness, but a sign of purpose.

Along this journey, you’ll meet kids who are raising money to honor their mothers. You’ll meet patient navigators, like Susan, who will hold your hand through every step of your treatment. You’ll get to know some of the most brilliant scientists who are discovering how to help people like you. And you’ll partner with some innovative thinkers who want to help make significant changes to how our health care system works to improve the patient experience, accelerate discovery and address racial and geographic disparities.

And despite your family history, all of these people will give you hope for a better future for your daughters.

So, keep your head up and keep walking forward. You never know where the path will take you.

Interested in sharing your cancer story? Visit 

Paula Schneider, president and CEO of Susan G. Komen®, writes to her younger self on the lessons and challenges she faced as a patient with breast cancer.

A Letter to Myself: You Were Made for This Breast Cancer Journey

As an individual diagnosed more than 5 years ago with multiple myeloma, I have been struck by the reliance on the part of some cancer patients who place significant emphasis on clinical trials and research, and the desire to “battle and fight” the disease in order to seek cure and avoid untimely death. This emphasis also applies to healthcare providers and researchers, many of whom are the very originators of this focus. Offering hope supports that singular human need to achieve another state of being. As a need, hope is more than an emotional state with something that could be different in our lives. 

Hope is a multifaceted human need that drives one to achieve or craft one’s life in a certain direction. More than a guide or roadmap for ourselves, our families, our friends and beyond, hope can influence the essence of very fundamental human behavior from birth to death.

There are many ways of examining the concept of hope as it applies to the cancer patient. At its very core, hope and the patient may be seen through the lens of the quality of life or lifestyle, a religious orientation and faith, and the belief in the human soul.

Hope can produce a quality of life which may be considered a lifestyle. That is, our daily behavior from birth onwards is built around a series of ideas, principles, concepts and other’s thoughts that from a belief system and ultimately organized as a lifestyle. While the concept of lifestyle is a complicated phenomenon, the idea of grouping the many forms of individual human behavior into a set of mostly observable behaviors can have, at its core, the idea of hope. Hope may well be the driving force as we traverse our way through life. And part of this is the idea that hope is an amazing gift from God which underlies the very essence of a positive quality of life or standard by which we live from birth to death.

In many organized religions, hope is part of the foundation of religious faith which is built around the omnipresent force commonly referred as the concept of God. And, as some religions have espoused, the human soul is the person’s window to God, which guides our thoughts and beliefs about our future, and ultimately to our understanding about the hereafter. Hope also helps to form three other aspects of human behavior.

These three beliefs are the belief in the human soul, belief in our own future, and finally, a belief in the hereafter. Aside from biological growth and development, the human being also learns, accepts, and inculcates into our being the beliefs in the human soul, our own future, and the hereafter forming our human core. Hope, then, becomes a primary vehicle for understanding human existence.

So, how do we make sense out of this? My own interest in this topic grew out of my volunteer work as a moderator for a digital support group for people with Blood Cancers.

This group is nationally supported by ANCAN, a cancer information organization. In my moderating work I was struck by the almost exclusive interest on the part of participants in medications they were taking, clinical trials they were participating in, details about their chemotherapy designs, and related topics.

Initially, I was shocked to listen to the conversation. As a psychologist, I had much more anticipated that discussion questions about, “What are you feeling? How are you coping? What is your family doing to help you? Are you ever angry about getting cancer? If so, how do you express yourself?” And to my professional amazement, these discussion points never came up and when asked if they were interested in talking about this, there was only some quiet grumbling.

The good news is that silence almost always works, so after a moment or two, one brave soul said, “you know, I always wanted to know what it will feel like when the “end” for me is near?”Understandably, this generated a good deal of healthy discussion. So, from a hope perspective perhaps what I call 

 organized in a way that is emotionally acceptable to the participants.

As mentioned earlier, hope can also be viewed as a form of quality of life or lifestyle in which some have built their style of living around the concept. Virtually everything they do involves some consideration of hope. One’s personal thinking about self, spouses, extended and close-in family, siblings, employers, friends and acquaintances, neighbors and virtually all others that we have contact with have hope woven into those relationships. Hope that it will remain the same, or that it will change for the better, or somehow be different. Hope is tightly woven into our very essence or being and is the principle upon which we judge and evaluate virtually all our thinking concerning the past, the present, and the future.

From a practical point of view, the concept of hope is difficult to understand, especially in the presence of catastrophic disease. Disease challenges us to live beyond the confines of the disease as we know it or come to understand it. One way of understanding this is to examine the emotional role of medications at the center of disease treatment, most especially cancer treatment. The principal advocates of this are first the practitioner who provides the diagnostic understanding of the disease and prescribes the medication to “fight” the disease.

And second are the patients who often develop an fixation around the current medication, the clinical research around new medications, and the overall effectiveness of both. What is interesting to note is this author’s own experience with his multiple oncology physicians wherein the regular monthly appointments are almost completely focused on the efficacy of the medications that fight the symptoms of the disease itself and the side-effects of the disease fighting medications. Only under a few rare circumstances have we have conversation about feelings, emotional coping strategies, and end-of-life expectations.

Hope is a complex concept that each of us has a multitude of thoughts about. Conceptually, hope may be characterized as a religious phenomenon involving the idea of God and eternal life. On the other hand, but clearly related, hope can be considered a common part of the human ego or the emotional and biological structure of the human person. Finally, while hope is thought to be a universal aspect of all persons, its parts and dimensions certainly have cultural components that differ for all human beings. How one defines hope is both individualistic and group or culturally determined.

Hope does not equal living per se. Some have the idea that if they go through life embracing hope that they are truly living. Yet, hope alone does not and could not define living.If all our ideas, actions, behaviors, thoughts, and the like are based solely on hope, then indeed we are deferring the present reality for the future which is, by definition, hope oriented. While living, meaning the past, present, and future, does contain elements of hope, it is the totality of the hope concept that is problematic as it could keep us from what is happening because we are focused only on hope elements for the future. It is a sort of childhood version of, “when I grow up, I’m going to be…”.Hope for the past, present, and future is necessary, but it is the totality of it that does not constitute living in and of itself.

As mentioned, hope feeds the soul with a sense of identity which enables the person to live beyond the current situation that individuals find themselves in. As humans, we are complex individuals who are relatedly close, but not a copy of one another. We are created with the idea of a soul or a sense of self that combines our past, present, and the future. This is best understood as a combination of behaviors, religious beliefs, thoughts, feelings, guidelines, cultural belief systems and the like that can structure how we think and behave. This is most especially the case as we contemplate future thoughts, wishes, desires, and behaviors. How our soul is developed will determine in part how we will behave in the future. And for many, our souls have an exceptionally large religious or spiritual component which serves to help guide us through all our days on Earth.

This is especially the case for those of us with a terminal illness whose end can and is predicted in terms of time-based sequences and levels of disease. The longer the time with the disease and its level provides a statistical determination of the average life span. Hence, the role of hope and its foundation in God becomes even more important to the cancer patient as one prepares for life hereafter. Perhaps the final and most significant statement about hope is the question about God being eternal life. As cancer patients and others face the probability of near death, the idea that God is about eternal life gathers increasing importance and meaning. As human beings facing imminent death, the idea of the hereafter takes on ever-increasing importance. And, for those of us raised with a concept of God as part of our intellect and being, at the very essence of hope then is an ever-strong belief that God is responsible for our hopeful belief in our daily existence and in the afterlife.

Hope is indeed a complex issue for all human beings to deal with. While this complexity applies to all human beings, it is particularly relevant to those whose illness or age is such that it is likely to be more imperative. Hope provides a livable statement about quality of life. As an alternative to the idea of hope as a pathway for disease-fighting, hope can provide a set of statements or directions to be followed for the living of a quality life. While the concrete approach determining a sort of mechanistic attitude is a normal human process, hope can be useful for conceptualizing a much broader approach to living. The dimensions of this are endless and usually involve other people, family, friends and perhaps even volunteering yourself to assisting others in need.

Even though cancer patients must follow a structured path of treatment for disease resolution, that path does not preclude additional elements which have a broader appeal and usefulness for the patient. In fact, an attitude of belief that the future may be pre-determined because of the disease, adding other dimensions like hope to one’s living can strengthen one’s approach and add richness to their quality living. 

To this end then, hope is a gift and becomes the essence of a quality of life issue for us. We surround ourselves with the idea that hope is a gift, and one which has been nurtured by ourselves over time and often nurtured by other people in our lives. We have been taught or otherwise learned that the idea of hope provides one of the principle ways to achieve happiness in life even within the context of catastrophic disease. As we move through our own individual stages of development, hope is a human quality that enables us to create opportunities for positivity and peace of heart.

Hope is a potent ally for the patient with cancer, and it is a response that helps inform a patient's journey with cancer.

Hope And The Patient With Cancer

I like to call myself a triple threat, but not in the way that you think. First, I am a registered nurse, having practiced oncology nursing for ten years and I currently work at a cancer center.Second, I am a survivorship program coordinator/nurse navigator, meaning I provide ongoing support and resources to cancer survivors through the survivorship program that I have led for the past three and half years. Third, I am a breast Cancer survivor.

Diagnosed in 2019 and am currently having a treatment free interval of one year and three months. To say that I thought I knew about cancer would be an understatement; I always thought I 

 what patients went through from diagnosis to surveillance, but I had 

 idea, until I went through my own cancer journey.

Even though I had never experienced cancer on a personal level, I always knew working in oncology was for me as my love and compassion for people led me to this field. Healthwise, my family has issues with hypertension, heart disease, kidney disease but not cancer. However, that all changed on Valentine’s Day 2019 when I had my yearly mammogram, which was clean; one health screening ticked off my mental checklist for the year. Two months later, in April 2019, I had my yearly gynecology appointment, my second health screening mentally checked off. As my gynecologist proceeded to examine me, he asked if I was doing my breast self-exams.

“Oh no,” I replied smugly, “I wait for you all to do it,” meaning I rely on my yearly mammograms and gynecology breast exams to determine if cancer was in my future. As he moved from one breast to the other, he lingered, and then turned to the nurse, giving her a verbal order, “We need to get a referral for a left breast ultrasound.”

He turned to me and said I had a lump in my outer quadrant of my left breast, but “it was probably nothing” and to take Vitamin E, which would help reduce the inflammation that it probably was, because as he put it, my mammogram was “clean.”This was on a Friday, so of course I worried all weekend, just “knowing” it was cancer…my fingers kept lingering over the “lump” in my breast; mentally thinking how could I have missed this, why wasn’t I doing my breast self-exams, and 

One biopsy, two surgeries, radiation therapy, a Tamoxifen tablet daily for 5 years later and I am a breast cancer survivor. Sure, I am still dealing with treatment side effects, such as breast swelling, axillary web syndrome or “cording,” intermittent hot flashes, depression, and anxiety, but I believe in the power of positive thinking, and have a prayer of gratitude.

In addition to being a breast cancer survivor, I am also a wife to my husband of 31 years, mother to two daughters, grandmother to two granddaughters and one grandson, identical twin to my sister Cindy, and sister to my two brothers. But of course, I am also a daughter, granddaughter, college student in a Nurse Practitioner Program, and a friend to many. I identify with all these things and they all identify with who I am, especially the cancer. However, I do not define my life by having had cancer but it has definitely changed who I am for the better.

As a result, I am an advocate for women to become familiar with their breasts; it’s important to do a breast self-exam. It is also important to know if you have dense breasts, because not all breast cancers show up in mammograms. Therefore, ask your healthcare provider, if you need 3D Mammography (Tomosynthesis) or additional imaging. Life is a gift, not to be taken for granted.

Did I do this prior to my diagnosis? I sure did. I took my health and family for granted and did not fully understand the depth of what cancer patients faced. However, now I face each new day grateful for my health, grateful to still be with my family and grateful to be able to connect with my patients in a more meaningful way.

Understanding cancer as a professional is one thing, but once you go through the journey it takes on a whole different understanding. 

Living As A 'Triple Threat' Breast Cancer Survivor

In the silence of the room, I caught the surgeon’s eye. He had been quiet for some time, just staring at me and back at a paper on his desk. He had asked me why I had come to see him alone, which was uncommon because my husband accompanies me for all my doctor’s appointments.

After a few minutes of staring at each other, I knew the surgeon didn’t know how to tell me that the histology tests that he was looking at showed I had cancer.

I decided to break the silence. I’m never that brave, but I did it.

“Yes, follicular carcinoma, a type of thyroid cancer,” he replied.

What followed later were words that meant nothing to me at the time. I cried uncontrollably. He tried to ask me for my phone to call my husband. I couldn’t hear him.

When you’re told you have cancer, the world around you feels like a bee nest. Actually, thousands of bee nests. Everything buzzes.

He grabbed my phone and luckily the last number called was my husband’s. He told him to come back to the hospital.

I was wailing. I wanted to tear my clothes. I threw my shoes and walked with stockings. I felt numb. I wanted to hit my head on walls or cut myself to see if I was still alive, that it wasn’t a nightmare.

My miracles started at choosing a caring surgeon. I feel like if it wasn’t for him I would be like the thousands of patients who die because they don’t know where to go next after a cancer diagnosis.

In less than one hour that I was in his office, he had booked me an appointment with an oncologist and a counsellor, which rarely happens.

The oncologist told me that I had a ‘good cancer’, that it is an easily treatable kind. That was noise to me, I told myself, “that must be how he consoles to his dying patients.”

I cried throughout, I didn’t hear much. I later learnt why it is important to be accompanied when receiving cancer news. My husband was doing the listening for me.

The second miracle was the surgeon referring me to an oncologist who understood the intrigues of public and private hospitals.

In Kenya, radioiodine treatment is only available in one government hospital that serves patients from over six neighbouring countries.

The oncologist warned us the waiting list was long. We assumed long meant one month or two.

At the government hospital, a clerk removed a black book and wrote my name on it. Then she lifted her head slightly and said I would go back to treatment in April. But they could call me earlier if I was lucky.

I should have been happy at that moment, that at least my name was in the black book awaiting treatment, but I started crying again.

It was September, and I was booked to start treatment in April the next year.

Eight months for cancer to eat my body and leave me dead, I thought.

Cancer makes you lose interest in everything. I wondered why I should shower or eat or comb my hair if I was dying in a few days anyway. I found it hard to resuscitate my maternal self and take care of my son who was eight months old then. I had stopped breastfeeding him, on doctor’s advice, as I waited for treatment.

Focusing on your death is emotionally and physically draining. You spend the nights wondering who will be at your funeral, what they will say, if your child will get a ‘saint’ for a stepmother, and thousands of bad thoughts that pitch a tent in your mind, occasionally making you anxious and miserable throughout.

One day, I realized that death from cancer rarely happens as an accident. It’s not quick. It happens slowly, so is the treatment and the physical and emotional healing that comes after.

My third miracle came a month later. My husband got a phone call from the hospital. I got a slot just after 

The next day I was at the hospital by 4.30 am, waiting to take a radioiodine pill.

The admission process was windy and tiresome. At 3pm, I bid my husband goodbye, it felt like a farewell, and I was ushered into a room with four men wearing hazmat suits, to protect themselves from radiation.

They removed a pill from a casing and gave it to me and another patient to swallow.

They sandwiched us and walked us to a hospital ward up the stairs, and locked the doors behind them.

It was a two-bed ward. It was old, built 13 years ago and no renovations ever done. The toilet seat was half-cracked. The nights were cold as the cracked window freely let in wind. No visitors or nurses or doctors were allowed in. The food and medicine were slipped through the door.

Being in that kind of environment for five days and nights taught me many lessons. We take for granted many things, which to some people are luxuries. When you are told you have cancer, you think that you are very sick, until you see other cancer patients.

I started focusing on the positives. My cancer wasn’t advanced, I wasn’t coughing out blood and I wasn’t being admitted in the ward for the sixth time like the other patient in the room.

At the time I prayed that if I was healed that I would renovate that ward. Cancer can give you a new purpose on earth. So, I struck a 

I told Him if I was never to be admitted to that dilapidated ward again, I’d look for money and make it comfortable for future patients. The bargain was my breakthrough. It gave me a reason to fight my hardest through treatment.

Then God granted my wish and I started wondering where I’d get $40,000 to rebuild the ward. A scan showed cancer had cleared with only one round of radioiodine treatment.

Six years later, I crowdfunded and kept my part of the bargain.

I’m 10 years cancer-free, taking thyroid hormone drugs daily, sometimes battling with post-treatment side-effects like extreme fatigue, but I will never stop focusing on the positives and finding out where they could lead.

Ms Mwango is a Thyroid Cancer Survivor and a mother-of-two. Her seven-year-old daughter was born two years after her cancer treatment. She lives in Nairobi, Kenya.

One cancer survivor details her winding treatment journey, and how by making herself a deal found the faith to keep moving forward. 

'I Struck a Deal With God': A Cancer Survivor's Story on Finding Faith

­­After months of treatment for stage 4 HPV-related tonsil cancer, I rang the bell to signify my last day of treatment. It’s a moment that many cancer survivors remember and look forward to while undergoing treatment. In that moment, I truly believed that immediately my life would get easier.

But for me and others who have endured cancer treatment, this good news does not reflect the full story of cancer survivorship.

I’m a devoted husband and father of three who lived a healthy life. Being diagnosed with stage 4 head and neck cancer at 44 came as a shock. As I underwent treatment, including radiation and chemotherapy, I recorded end-of-life videos for my children trying to provide them with life advice to best prepare them for my absence. My friends and family deemed me a fighter, giving me the nickname “

” for my strength as I persevered. It’s a nickname that sticks with me today as I advocate for patients, survivors and caregivers worldwide.

Even before treatment began, I chose to have a feeding tube understanding that many head and neck cancer patients undergoing radiation end up dehydrated due to third degree burns developing in their throat as treatment progresses. The side effects from radiation lingered throughout and beyond my treatment. After surgery, chemotherapy and seven weeks of radiation delivered to the same area of the mouth and throat, most patients develop third-degree burns and radiation-induced severe oral mucositis, or sores, characterized by significant pain and the inability to eat solid food or drink liquids. The body responds to these burns by producing saliva so thick it’s impossible to swallow. I can vividly recall my constant misery and the fear that the sores, the loss of my sense of taste, my inability to speak normally and the constant choking on my saliva would never subside.

Many of these side effects from therapy lasted up to four months beyond treatment, and some lingered for years, with no treatment options other than available pain killers. For many patients, these side effects can lead to depression as their quality of life has dramatically changed.

Ringing the bell, it felt like I had succeeded, and all would be well. What I didn’t realize was that radiation is the gift that keeps on giving, and that the next few weeks would be the most painful yet. My saliva became increasingly thicker. I choked and gagged at least 20-40 times daily and sleeping became almost impossible. Then, I developed neuropathy from chemotherapy, which presented as a slight numbness in my hands and feet. It was several years post-treatment before my saliva slowly returned.

Three years after my diagnosis, the American Joint Committee on Cancer 

updated the staging system for head and neck cancer

. It effectively downgraded many head and neck cancer stages due to, among other factors, the success of prevention, diagnostics and current treatment approaches (surgery, radiation, chemotherapy). While these are all positive signs of success, it does little for the aftermath of survivors like me.

As treatment outcomes improve and more people live beyond cancer and redefine what survivorship looks like, there is a growing unmet need for therapies to reduce or eliminate the devastating side effects of treatments. Biotech companies are working diligently to improve the challenges of severe oral mucositis (SOM). Galera Therapeutics is one of these companies and its therapy is in a phase 3 trial to assess its ability to reduce the incidence of SOM.

I have hope that surviving the aftereffects of cancer treatment will improve. Throughout my work as a patient advocate, I hear regularly from patients with cancer worldwide that these side effects are among their top fears that will affect their quality of life.

After being diagnosed with cancer, my first thought was to survive. When I realized I would, I wanted to live my best life. I’m fortunate to have a “normal” life – working full time, exercising regularly, traveling and living my life to the fullest with my wife, kids, family and friends. But I still cannot eat most foods without having something readily available to drink. As a result of my neck dissection, I get Charlie horses in my neck regularly from something as simple as flossing my teeth or looking down for too long. Similarly, from radiation, I developed a stiffness in my neck which aches constantly.

Every day, I’m grateful to be here. However, having therapies available that eliminate or lessen these side effects could help cancer survivors do more than just survive. They have the potential to help us live a better life after beating cancer, and we need more of them.

Jason Mendelsohn is a father, husband and cancer survivor. He serves as a patient ambassador for and Secretary of the 

. Jason travels around the world to educate people about HPV-related oral cancer. More information about his work can be found at 

For head and neck cancer survivor Jason Mendelsohn surviving cancer was only the beginning of his journey as handling severe side effects from treatment altered his day-to-day life. 

When Surviving Cancer is only the Beginning

When we meet someone for the first time, the encounter has the power and visual equivalent of a poem, a painting or a song. Life is full of these events that seem random. Instead, they are highly symbolic and meaningful.

Just as a river’s confluences, life’s confluences happen in everyone’s life traveling from some strange places, moving constantly and bumping into our side. As the years pass, they keep reproducing and taking forms of encounters, coincidences or occurrences. I have been blessed with these wonderful invisible connections; we are all spiritually linked.

I have been snowed under with cancer for many years. Consciously, I avoided talking “about it”. Later, when I intended to convey my feelings, my mind was limited to deep brown somber holes. Despite trying to connect with others, my melancholy prevailed.

The liberation came when I had an enlightened encounter with Pamela Worrell-Black, a superb social worker with Fairfax Inova Hospital, who begged me to attend a free retreat offered by a nonprofit organization for breast cancer survivors called Casting for Recovery. I bluntly rejected the idea because I was determined to leave behind everything that had to do with cancer.

However, Pamela’s persuasion was stronger than my rebuff. She described the positive effects of that retreat. Finally, I accepted that someone from the organization would call me and then my second marvelous encounter emerged … enter Carol Stevenson. She is one of the sweetest and kindest volunteer-leaders of Casting for Recovery. Carol — who is also a survivor — talked to me for an hour and a half on the phone. She was so caring and compassionate, and I treasured the loving things that she confessed to me.

It all started on a glorious weekend in a locality appropriately called "A Place Apart"; Shrine Mont was formerly a hotel that dates to the 19th Century and now is retreat and conference center located in Orkney Springs, Virginia. The mountains were waiting with undisturbed silence.

I visited this idyllic place supposedly to infuse my dreams, heal my soul and learn how to fly fish, a therapeutic exercise that would help to minimize the effects of the radiation and chemotherapy received and to prevent and protect from lymphedema, a side effect of breast cancer surgery.

We were just 14 women with a variety of concerns, feelings, reactions, and resentments. To belong to this group, you don’t need a special education or a doctorate. You did not need to have an extraordinary talent nor speak a second language. You could be fat, tall, have curly hair. You could be tan, yellow, Black or white. It did not matter to have a domineering personality or be timid as a bird abandoned in the snow. Here, money or recommendations did not count. The only creepy common denominator was having suffered from breast cancer.

At the retreat center, the discussions were very informal. We had a ritual space near the chimney where each one of us guided by counselors redefined our illness, shaped our hopes and, most importantly, strengthened our connections and humanness. Gradually and slowly, we gave ourselves permission to glimpse into our inner strata.

The group (my first ever) ignited great personal transformation. I did a great deal of confessions. I was forever talking; I could not stop telling happy stories and cracking jokes. I was singing and dancing. I reverted into the person that I used to be. Finally, I was able to reconcile with my younger self, the one that left Chile — the same soul that escaped to America because she could not handle the pain of losing her mother to cancer at age of 49. Now, I know that geographical therapy never works.

During the healing sessions, my mind was filled with restorative thoughts and my quest was expanded. It was an incredible experience that enhanced my life. It taught me that individuals, no matter where they are coming from, are universally connected by love, strength, empathy and spirituality.

I had the privilege of being assigned the experienced river guide, Phil Gay, a master casting instructor that has lead CEOs on fishing excursions to some of the most enthralling rivers in the world.

During my training, Phil, instructed me to watch a group of fish that gathered around the one I had caught with his aid. Utterly astonished, I discovered an entire underwater world of fish bonding. The dynamic of camaraderie was developing just before my eyes; a group of fish surrounded the “unfortunate captive” rushing to his side like sharing perhaps some sort of pain or conveying messages. But even more remarkable was this kind of interspecies attachment — a sort of tacit comprehension, a demonstration of solidarity proper of human beings. They narrowed the circle around him soundless and paused. They seemed to understand what was happening and their conduct struck a poignant chord with me as I visualized a funeral.

Attending this healing retreat gave me a profound emotional perspective with a chance of rediscovery. I sensed a deep passion for life; I felt liberated and pampered.

However, in communion with the valuable lived experience and seeking a meaning to all of this, I believe the most outstanding lesson of this journey was the parallel of the social and emotional affiliation between our group of courageous women and the amazing collective cohesion detected amidst the school of fish.

Nora Massignotti-Cortese, is a journalist, artist and workshop facilitator. She can be reached at bertognott@aol.com

Talking about cancer can be a great burden but sharing one’s story can be liberating. Even if you share it while fishing. 