to help her cope.
When I began researching cancer back in late February, early March 2006 it was to find the elusive answers to Leiomyosarcoma and through the years. I have watched all the videos and read most of the research on the internet about LMS which is the type of cancer that took my father April 03, 2006. I quickly learned some states have a better cancer mortality rate then others and maybe you may find your answer in another state of which you don’t live.
Also After reading the patient stories and watching the survivor videos. With thoughts that proton therapy or cyber knifing the tumor out or administering immunotherapy into your body…. may be the best approach. With the two best videos being: Lisa a eight year L.M.S. survivor doing her due diligence of always seeking the better option to meet her needs.
And Zelah Kropf | Leiomyosarcoma and the many other links and videos that I have discovered along the way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpp6BRk5Fh8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_1hlQNOXEQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIdDKl4i6_U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inMAdL1iYIQ&t=110s
Also Nancy McGuire, Age: 70 Great Falls, Virginia. While Thriving with Leiomyosarcoma Thanks to Research. Nancy McGuire is enjoying life once again after treatment for L.M.S. with trabectedin (Yondelis), a newly approved chemotherapeutic. Nancy stated that her
daughter, who lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia, found a sarcoma specialist Dr. Arthur Staddon at the University of Pennsylvania, . The first time I saw him, he told me the disease was not curable, however, that it was certainly treatable.. He then proceeded to guide her through numerous treatments over the past 6 ½ years, including trabectedin (Yondelis).
It has worked so well that I’ve been given a vacation from treatment.
For now, I feel Life is good, emotionally and physically.
If you think your last 14 years was tough try walking a mile in my brain: a mind is easily drowned in fear, like a fly taking a swim in lemonade, expecting the drink to be sweet but finding out it is deadly. Fear, itself, isn’t a loner. No, fear has a BFF and pals around with Worry. In fact, some would say Worry is the one who gets Fear all riled up in the first place, and I can attest to that. Many times in my life, Worry has spoken, and Fear has reacted. I can say I have successfully worried about thieves, fires, natural disasters, rabid dogs, living alone, dying alone, getting cancer. I’ve worried about just about everything a person can worry about.
Let’s be honest, though; the only success I had at such an endeavor was giving myself
https://vimeo.com/299329695 severe depression in 2006 and it got me nowhere.
http://www.leiomyosarcoma.org/life-expectancy/
I still have to fight the urge to have my car full of gas in case I need to make a quick getaway.
(I know, that sounds weird, but safety is no laughing matter!)
But then I always think of Joshua 1:6.
Joshua was a man who was given a huge task by God – one I’m sure he didn’t feel ready for. Can you imagine how he felt when Moses died and God told him that he was going to take over and lead Israel into the Promised Land? Fortunately, God knew Joshua was up to the task. In Joshua 1:6, the Lord commanded him: Be strong (confident) and of good courage, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. That day, Joshua had a choice. He could step out in faith and watch the Lord do the impossible through him…or he could stay in his “safety zone” and never find out.
So many people, including myself, regularly come to places in our lives where we haven’t been before. And when you’re inexperienced in an area, your natural tendency is to move back into the familiar. Fear always comes against us when we face new things. But if you think about it, everything you’re doing right now is something that at one time you had never done before. Instead of being afraid of new things, you and I ought to be excited about the new challenges and opportunities that God brings into our lives. Even when everybody else tells us it’s impossible, if we will step out in faith like Joshua and follow God,
He will give us the grace to go forward.
All along the way, I faced many obstacles I battled the fear of failure, the fear of not having enough money, and the fear of what others thought. But it always came down to the same question: Am I going to do what God has put in my heart to do? I’ve certainly made my share
of mistakes over the years. But through all of this, I learned a valuable lesson: When we step out in obedience to God while we feel afraid, then that releases the grace (or power) of God
to do what needs to be done.
It is unbelievable what God can do if you’ll fight your way through all the opposition that comes against you and say, “If God says I can, I can.” It’s important to remember that when the Lord calls us to do something, He also gives us the motivation and energy to press on through each challenge that comes. Maybe you’re thinking, Yeah, I’ve missed a lot in my life because
I was afraid to step out or fearful of what others might think. You know what?
I believe God has you reading this for a reason!
You can’t change the past, but you can begin today to follow your heart and step into the things God has for your life. Sure, there will be obstacles, and sometimes you will make mistakes. But you must be true to what God’s calling you to do. So I encourage you to find God’s destiny for your life. Find what’s going to fulfill you and all you’re meant to be to truly find happiness. Then choose to be bold enough to step out into an amazing, memorable, life-changing journey. When you step out into the unknown to do what you believe is God’s will, He may not give you an exact blueprint to work with, But He will guide you step-by-step all along the way.
At this low point in the nation’s history, Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected to his first term as President of the United States. In his inaugural address of 1933, FDR delivered this well-known line: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Roosevelt understood this: Fear has the power to paralyze us, when we most need to act. Fear would have us retreat, when we need to advance forward. Some of us are hard-wired for fear. Some fears are rooted in previous experiences. We’ve been threatened, rejected or hurt. I’ve been there. How about you?
Fear takes hold when we feel powerless. While Faith in God gives us the power to overcome fear. Fear binds us to an ordinary life. While we may not easily eliminate fear, we can overcome it. Each fear that we overcome opens the door to something extraordinary.
Some of us have experienced terrifying panic, heart-breaking disappointment, or mortifying embarrassment. Perhaps like me you’ve helplessly watched children step into the path of danger. Maybe you’ve received a rejection letter for a job you desperately needed. Have you ever stepped into a bosses office with your fly open? I’ve done that! We also fear of having those feelings again. So we avoid the locations or situations where those feelings were felt. For some of us this resulted in avoiding things like close relationships, going outside, entering large buildings, and I thought I would fear crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.
However, did it anyways and Am Glad I DID!!!
Other fears exist because we have a strong ability to imagine the worst. Fears of flying in a plane, fears of germs, or fears of public speaking tend to fall in this category. Whatever the source of fear, when we let it overpower us it becomes like a ball and chain, or a prison without walls. The phrase “fear not” appears in the King James Version of the Bible 62 times. In the Bible, commands to “fear not” usually come from God or one of His angels. Before Joshua led the Hebrews into battle against their enemies, God said, “Fear not,” (Joshua 8:1).
When the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to announce that God had chosen her to be the mother of the Messiah, he said, “Fear not,” (Luke 1:10). Having FAITH is Power for the Powerless: God knows fear is a problem for us. This is why God appeals to us to “fear not.” God doesn’t condemn us for our fear. He wants to free us from it. Every time God says,
“Fear not,” He adds a promise to be there with us, to help us. When God says, “Fear not,” it’s an invitation to trust, and grow our faith.
God invites us to rely on His power and not our own.
God gives us the power to overcome fear. Fear binds us to an ordinary life. While we may not easily eliminate fear, we can overcome it.
Each fear that we overcome opens the door to something extraordinary.
1. Name your fear.
Sometimes when fear creeps up on us, the source of the fear isn’t obvious. When you feel afraid, identify what it is you’re afraid of. Name it. Write it down, if it helps.
Say, “I’m afraid of ______________.”
2. Arm yourself with God’s promises.
Replace the armor of fear with the armor of God. Write down and become familiar with passages from the Bible that encourage you to lean on God. Read them aloud to yourself daily. To start with, here’s a great list of verses on overcoming fear.
3. Surrender your fear.
In many situations fear serves and important purpose. Fear of death helps us keep our eyes on the road so we don’t swerve our car across the center line or into a ditch. Fear of pain keeps us from putting our hand on a hot stove. But fears that hold us back from living, loving and leading can hold us hostage. Surrender these fears, one at a time. Give them to God with a simple prayer. Say, “God, please take this fear of _________ from me. I give it to you.”
Keep praying it until you let go.
4. Imagine your success.
We have an amazing ability to influence our outcomes, simply by our imagination.
Many people have a habit of imagining the worst. By doing this, we set ourselves up for failure. Set yourself up for success by imagining a successful outcome. Set yourself up for success. Visualize success in your mind–what it looks like, feels like, sounds like, smells like, and tastes like. Write it down in a simple, story form, with you as the main character.
5. Act out your new story.
We must exercise our faith to strengthen our faith. Using the success you imagined as a script, take your first steps. You may feel weak knees at first, but keep going. Pause to rest and catch your breath if you need to. When you’re ready, take a few more steps. But set your feet firmly in the direction you want to go, committed to going forward. Allow the story to change as you move forward into your new adventure. The story won’t unfold exactly as you imagined it.
But whatever happens, always imagine the success that God promises.
Keep exercising your faith, and it’ll grow.
Whenever we struggle with a fear that’s holding us back from fully enjoying life,
it’s an opportunity to trust God and strengthen our faith.
Cancer Survivor — Seattle Cancer Care Alliance
https://vimeo.com/50119313
https://www.seattlecca.org/patient-stories
Despite advances in cancer care, the disease remains the second-leading cause of death behind only heart disease. Cancer’s association with mortality can wreak havoc and create fear on an afflicted person’s psyche, affecting their emotional and psychological well being, including mood and daily activities, say oncology experts and patients who aren’t afraid to speak out.
A study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that about one in three cancer patients ends up wrestling with a mental health disorder, supporting the strong need for intervention. Although the study was conducted by German researchers, experts in the U.S.
say, “cancer patients here endure similarly high rates of mental illness.”
“The most common psychiatric issues cancer patients face are anxiety, depression and adjustment disorders,” says Teresa Deshields, a psychologist and manager of Psycho-Oncology Services at the Siteman Cancer Center at highly rated Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. Adjustment disorders, as the name implies, involve difficulty coping with a stressor,
or major life event, such as cancer.
[Cancer] “It changes the way you see life,” says Deborah Przekop of Mercer Island, Washington, who learned in 2010 that she has terminal non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Soon after telling her family, she joined a support group to talk with other cancer patients and survivors and eventually sought help from Dr. Jesse Fann, Director of Psychiatry and Psychology at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, to stay focused and motivated. Doctors who diagnose, treat and care for cancer patients haven’t always addressed the psychological and emotional side effects of living with the disease.
CHECK OUT: Is a Cancer Insurance Plan Worth the Cost?
Helping cancer patients fight mental stress. Patients don’t have to live with such overwhelming feelings, Fann says. Rather, experts say, cancer patients and survivors dealing with persistent psychosocial issues should seek help from qualified mental health professionals with experience caring for cancer patients.
If the hospital, cancer center or another health provider that delivers cancer care doesn’t have their own mental health specialists on site, experts recommend asking your cancer care team for referrals to community providers. A psychiatrist also can prescribe medication to counter depression, anxiety and insomnia, and other symptoms that are common side effects of chemotherapy and radiation without interfering with the cancer treatment, Fann says.
A Well-rounded cancer programs offer support!
MORE: 5 Tips to Pay for Expensive Cancer Treatment
Cancer care programs that integrate psychosocial care into their patients’ overall treatment make getting help more convenient, Fann says. Some programs also provide support to those with cancer who aren’t already patients, too. “No one knows what you’re thinking unless you tell someone.” Deshields and other experts say every cancer patient reacts differently to their cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Many have all the support they need in their inner circle of family and friends, while others prefer to go it alone. Some people insist on always being positive, while others find they frequently need to vent. Experts say, that’s OK; there’s no one, acceptable approach to deal with cancer. “Find your way, instead of trying to fit into someone else’s path,” Deshields says. When she’s feeling able to do so, Przekop plans to devote more time to counseling other cancer patients. She says she enjoys living more now that she has accepted her mortality.
“I think about cancer every day. It doesn’t go away,” Przekop says.
“But I’m not sad about it because I’m given this day.”
Dr. Jesse Fann, ‘He calmed me down’
The day Deborah Przekop was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2010, her head started spinning. It didn’t stop until she met Dr. Jesse Fann, a psychiatrist at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA). Przekop had heard her oncologist tell her that she had stage four cancer for which there was no cure. She doesn’t recall much after that but her daughter tells her she asked two questions: “Do I have five years left?” “Probably, with treatment,” her oncologist said. “Do I have 10??“Possibly,” he said. Przekop was 68 and she saw her life contract before
her eyes. She knew she needed help processing next steps, so she made an appointment with Dr. Fann, medical director of psychosocial oncology at SCCA.
“From the first five minutes in his office, he calmed me down,” says Przekop, who has been
in remission since 2013 after three years of chemotherapy. “He wouldn’t tell me what to do, but he would make suggestions and give me options to consider. It broadened my perspective about being sick and going through chemo all those years.” Dr. Jesse Fann chats with patient Deborah Przekop, who started seeing him in 2010. Dr. Fann, named one of Seattle Magazine’s Top Doctors in its 19th annual list, has spent more than two decades acknowledging that cancers attack not just a person’s body but that person’s psychological, social and spiritual bedrock. He is one of 56 SCCA physicians on the Top Doctors list.
A cancer diagnosis is typically accompanied by an overwhelming amount of information — type of cancer, how much it’s progressed, options for treatment. The focus of both doctors and patients is often on deciding the best way to attack the cancer and less on the emotional toll that cancer can take. But Dr. Fann knows that this disease has both physical and emotional components. “There is still stigma, and some people unfortunately think it’s a sign of weakness if they feel depressed or they’re not being positive enough,” he says. “Addressing emotional needs is an important part of getting through cancer care. Our services are no different than any other service here. They’re designed to help people get through their cancer diagnosis and treatment as smoothly as possible so they can get back to doing the things
they want to be doing.”
When he was in medical school, Dr. Fann chose to become a psychiatrist, attracted by the opportunity to get to know his patients in depth and by the immense scientific potential in the field of helping them through difficult times. He decided to focus on oncology because he wanted to work in a medical setting, unlike many psychiatrists who choose the specialty in part because they are not interested in or comfortable treating physically ill patients. “To be able to help people going through such a difficult time in their lives was something I found extremely gratifying,” he says. Fann, who has been named a “Top Doctor” six times by Seattle Magazine, says that up to a third of patients experience significant depression or anxiety during the course of cancer treatment.
The Integrated Psychosocial Oncology Program at SCCA (IPOP) is unique among cancer centers in its goal to incorporate psychosocial care into routine cancer care. While other cancer centers also acknowledge the importance of psychosocial care, they typically refer patients to outside providers. The IPOP program has been so successful that the American Psychosocial Oncology Society has asked Dr. Fann to develop training to help other cancer centers implement a similar program.“ One challenge and barrier to people receiving psychosocial care is that it tends to be fragmented and separate from other aspects of oncology care,” says Dr. Fann.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oI0jVN4TTI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9QAyP3bYmc
At SCCA, IPOP represents a team-based, collaborative care approach that includes social workers who can help deliver and coordinate care and are key members of each clinic’s oncology team, as well as specially trained psychiatrists and psychologists, all of whom provide treatment on site at SCCA to make accessing psychosocial care convenient for patients who are visiting the clinic for treatment. All SCCA patients — not just those who are referred by their oncologists or those who self-refer — are screened for signs and symptoms of distress early on in their care at SCCA and are followed throughout treatment to ensure that their needs are adequately addressed, though counseling, medications or a combination of both.
This helps the psychosocial oncology team identify patients who may need support but may
not have sought it out. “Usually it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease,” says Dr. Fann. “It’s often people suffering in silence who don’t get enough attention.”
The screening questionnaire helped identify a need for treatment for one of Dr. Fann’s current patients, who has survived two different cancers. “One of the questions asked if I was suicidal,” says the patient, who requested anonymity. “I tried to answer very honestly because I knew hiding something was not good for me. My response was yes.”Dr. Fann helped the patient understand that his depression was both common and treatable.
Today, the patient feels much better, thanks to Dr. Fann’s treatment and “excellent” bedside manner, enhanced by their shared background. The two swap engineering jokes (apparently, they exist): Dr. Fann has a B.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University; his patient is a retired engineer. Another patient, Ron Robbecke, worked with Dr. Fann to trial several different medications to help him sleep and calm his anxiety before landing on the right one. “He was always willing to try something different,” says Robbecke, who began seeing Dr. Fann after his chronic myeloid leukemia diagnosis. Robbecke was in active treatment for 13 years.
“I knew I needed help and I was hoping that someone like Dr. Fann would be behind the door, he really changed my life.”
Cultivating an attitude of gratitude and acceptance. Like those patients, Przekop credits
her time with Dr. Fann to reshaping her outlook on life. He showed her how to accept that life,
in and of itself, is a gamble, a crapshoot, a series of events that often can’t be controlled. “After seeing him for a while, my life was so happy. I would go to chemo and I would be so happy,” says Przekop. “I had never been so happy in my whole life. Is that the craziest thing you’ve ever heard?” Despite her sunny outlook, Przekop realizes that her cancer is likely to return. “Since they can’t cure me, I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. I never know if this blood test will show it’s back or that scan will show something,” she says. “Dr. Fann helped me accept that life can change in an instant, on a dime, and it does all the time. He helped me make it a part of my life to accept change and to appreciate what I have.
It’s not what happens in your life; it’s how you cope with it.”Przekop found her time with
Dr. Fann so helpful that she keeps in touch with him even after her treatment has ended.
“He became part of my life and who I was,” she says. Although oncology is traditionally associated with treating physical disease, Przekop thinks that addressing mental and emotional health is even more important. “It’s so valuable because whether you’re going to live or die, you have to be emotionally able to cope with that.” That sentiment reinforces for Dr. Fann why he chose psychosocial oncology as a specialty. “A lot of people ask me if it’s depressing to work in the cancer field,” he says. “I don’t find it depressing at all. I find it really inspirational to see how strong and courageous people can be in the face of adversity. Aging is hell,
“Sometimes they just need a little help along the way.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpYwcTFVnv8
Mental Illness and Cancer: How One Affects the Other (Part One) … Irwin’s pilot study
of proactive psychiatry consultation for patients with cancer and mental illness enrolled three times (Part Two) … One of the most challenging aspects is that often times, the severely mentally ill cancer patient is difficult to engage. Their symptoms are unlike those of
someone who is not also suffering with … cancer!!