Tag Archives: inspiration

Jul 23 2012
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My Life.

Reflection.

I’m finishing up a clinical term for school, and finally have some time off to sleep and reflect, before starting my final year in September.  Now, people thought I was crazy for wanting to go back to school for quite a few years and get my degree in Cancer Radiation Therapy, but I have never regretted my decision.  Through my personal life, my volunteering, and now my work, I have had countless experiences with cancer, each helping to shape the person I am today.

When I started my clinical experience at the Cancer Center in Kelowna, I admit that I was very green.  I knew I wanted to make a difference, but I was just starting out.  Since then, I’ve had experience working all over the Province.  I have treated children, new parents, great grandparents, and everyone in between.  I have worked with some amazing people who have inspired me to be a therapist like them, and to be honest I have worked with some people who have inspired me to be anything BUT a therapist like them.  Every experience, good and bad, I feel I have learned from, and I know I won’t forget it.

People ask me why, after everything my family has been through, would I want to work with cancer patients every day.  But in my mind, I feel that after everything, how could I not want to?

For those of you who are not quite sure what I do, I’ll give you a quick rundown.  Radiation therapy is a cancer treatment that can be done on its own, with chemotherapy, surgery, or hormone therapy.  A patient will come anywhere from 1 to upwards of 40 times.  They come once a day usually for a month, so I get to know patients and their families.  I get to be a friendly face on their journey, and help them along.  I don’t treat people like they are sick, I treat them like they are human.

I’m not saying that everything is sunshine and rainbows.  Death is something real, and it isn’t easy.  I’ve had patients die.  I’ve had patients coming to terms with a 6 month prognosis.  I’ve had a 25 year old with a new born baby who wasn’t going to live to see his child grow up.  Nothing about what I do is easy, just like nothing about cancer is fair.

My goal is to always be a person who cares, a person who smiles, and a person who helps others.  My past has helped shape me into the person I am, but it doesn’t define me.  In everything I do, I don’t listen to the angry, bitter, hateful people, I listen to the positive, hopeful, inspiring people.  I take pride in what I do and how I live, and encourage others to ignore the outside voices and just stay true to what you believe in.  Be accountable to yourself and to those who you care about, because those are the only opinions that matter.

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Apr 23 2012
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My Life.

Share Knowledge. Share Life.

When I was 18, I honestly didn’t understand what cancer was.  I knew it sucked, and that I had lost both grandfathers as well as my cat to it, but I admit that I was ignorant to the details of this disease.  My older brother, who was 22 years young, had been sick for a few weeks while doing his midterms at University.  We joked about him having a cold for so long because I was usually the one who got sick, he rarely even had a sniffle.  It had been weeks of this when the doctor suspected pneumonia and instructed him to go to the emergency room for a rather routine procedure to deal with the fluid in his lungs.  A routine procedure turned into his lungs collapsing and him going into shock.  I met my parents at the hospital that night when I got off work at 10pm.  I didn’t fully comprehend what was going on, things were a haze for me.  I remember they wouldn’t let me into the ICU for a few days because I came down with a cold (see, I told you).  Then, just as I was feeling better, my brother was being transferred to a regular hospital room, “hooray!” I thought.  I remember walking down the hall of the hospital to his room with a ‘tra-la-la-la-la’ attitude.  At that instance, I saw my mom at the end of the hallway, walking towards me like a heat-seeking missile.  “We need to talk.”  She said while dragging me into a family room.

Cancer.  It’s such a small word that packs a hurricane force punch.  My brother was transferred to the major hospital in Vancouver and began his treatment.  Because he was lucky enough to have a rare type of cancer, he spent most of the next year living in an isolated room the size of a closet.  He needed a bone marrow stem cell transplant to potentially save his life, and I was his match.  I went through with the whole procedure and it was nothing as I had imagined it, just mild discomfort.  When I thought about the horrible pain that my brother was going through 12 floors up, mild discomfort was insignificant.  After my brothers transplant I signed up to be an unrelated donor, because if that was all it took to save someone’s life I’d do it again in a heartbeat.  I can only imagine what would have happened to my brother if I hadn’t been his match.  It is those thoughts that have motivated me to fight for those people who have yet to find a match.

Patients have about a 30% chance of finding a match in their family; the other 70% rely on strangers to save their lives.  Sadly, only 2% of our population are registered to be unrelated donors.  People are dying because they can’t find a match; you could be that match.

One of my life goals is to educate people about unrelated stem cell and bone marrow donation.  If you think that the only way to donate is a scary and painful surgery done through your hipbone, you would be wrong.  Sadly though, you would be part of the majority.  Over the past 10 years, great advancements have been made in the donation process, allowing for over 85% of donors to use a process called peripheral blood stem cell collection.  What this involves is similar to donating blood platelets.  You have one needle in each arm that acts on a closed loop to filter out stem cells from your blood and then return your blood to you via the opposite arm.  It isn’t painful, it isn’t scary, and you can watch a movie while you donate.  Nobody is automatically on the registry, you must sign up, which basically means you fill out a form and do a simple swab of the inside of your cheek.  It’s that simple to begin your first step towards saving a life.  When I talk to people about being an unrelated donor, I usually get the same few responses: I have no idea what that is, I’m not tough enough to go through that, or I’m sure there are enough people registered.  The one that hurts me the most is when people say that they would do it if they knew the person.  Well, they may be a stranger to you, but to somebody they are a parent, a sibling, a child, or the love of someone’s life.  And you could save them.

In Canada, we only have one organization for this called One Match.  In the USA, there are organizations such as Be The Match, DKMS, and Gift of Life.  I encourage anyone who is even slightly inspired by my story, to read up on these organizations and consider registering.  Knowing that you are saving a life, giving somebody a second chance, and allowing a family more time with the ones they love; It’s a beautiful thing.

Please feel free to ask me any questions you may have, I will ALWAYS have time to talk to people about this!  Or anything really!

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Apr 13 2012
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My Life.

Inspiration.

The following is a journal entry from a few years ago.  It may give you a better understanding as to why I live my life the way that I do.

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Nobody expects to get that phone call.  Nobody expects to pick up a phone and have the world crash down on them.  For me, that day was July 7th, 2007.  I was at home, my parents were in Vernon, my oldest brother was working up in Alaska, and my other brother was at home here in the city.  The number on the call display showed Seattle Hospital.  A woman on the other end of the phone asked, “Is this the residence of Roger?”

“Yes.” I replied.

“What is your relation to him?”

“He’s my older brother.”

“I’m very sorry, but your brother has been in an accident.  He is being airlifted down from Alaska as we speak.” Her voice cracked as she fought her own tears. “You are going to need to get here as soon as possible.  I am very sorry, but we don’t think he is going to survive.  I am so sorry.”

I stood there in a moment of nothing.  Who knew that the sound of the world crashing down on them was cold, calm silence?  A flood of emotions then hit me at once: denial, anger, frustration at life.  It wasn’t fair.  My brother deserved to live.  No, he didn’t just deserve to live, he didn’t deserve to be in that accident in the first place.  My brother had already lost a year of his life to his battle with cancer: a battle that almost killed him a few years before this accident.  He is the strongest person I know, he fought back and regained his life only to have it slipping away again, and it just wasn’t fair.  I began to pace- a habit of my brother’s that I made fun of him for doing.  I figured that this was as good a time as any to start the ritual myself.

A few hours later, my boyfriend and I met my parents at the hospital in Seattle.  Oh the hospital, a place where life begins and ends, and creates some good stories in between.  Now, I had seen my brother in the hospital for months on end during his cancer treatment, but he had always still been himself.  Even when his body was being battered with chemotherapy and radiation in preparation for transplant, he still had a spark of life in his eyes.  I was unprepared for what I was about to walk into.  My brother had essentially drowned.  Having his body in the water for who knows how long, did not just produce ‘pruned’ fingers like the ones I get if I sit in the bath too long.  His entire body was swollen.  His hands were like paws and his face had seemed to lose all of its features.  He was not breathing on his own; the magic of tubes and machines was doing that for him.  I held his hand for a while, a team of doctors and nurses were buzzing about but I heard silence, my mind was trying to process everything.  As I walked into the waiting area I made a beeline for the washroom door, proclaiming to my family in the most normal voice possible, “I’ll be right out.”  When I heard the click of the door behind me, I collapsed into the wall, and then sunk down lower than the floor and just cried.

Even though it wasn’t technically allowed, we all slept on the floor of the intensive care unit family waiting room.  Actually, I didn’t sleep, I paced.  I think I was afraid to sleep because the sooner I slept, the sooner the next day would come.  I wasn’t ready to deal with what the next day could bring.  The doctors had told us that if he made it through the night we would have a lot to be hopeful for.  It was a very long night, but he made it through.  A few days later, the tube was removed from his throat and he was awake.  My brother had survived when they thought he wouldn’t, again.  The next week he was back at home in Canada, chomping at the bit to go hang out with friends.

Sometimes it almost doesn’t seem like it was real.  Perhaps it was my crazy imagination running down a very dark road.  However, I can’t slip into denial, and I especially can’t slip into disregard.  Things happen for a reason, whether they are great or horrible, they exist to shape each and every one of us.  They exist to challenge us, to push us, and to strengthen us.  What good is living your life if you are not accountable to it?  Some people do not have the fortune to take their lives for granted.  They have fought for every additional day on this Earth.  Shouldn’t we fight alongside them?  Seeing my brother get to live his life, even the day-to-day boring stuff, keeps me motivated to live my own life.  Not just to live, but to live in a way that helps others get to live their lives too.

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Apr 13 2012
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My Life.

My Grandpa.

My grandparents are very important people in my life. I grew up lucky as a child to live in the same house as my grandmother and grandfather. I love them both dearly. When I was 10, my grandfather passed away from cancer.

Instead of staying in a hospice, we had a hospital bed brought to our house so that he could go in peace surrounded by those he loved in a place he called home. He was a goofy, accordion playing sweet man who I miss to this day. It breaks my heart that even now, 15 years later, I sometimes still find my grandmother by herself crying, and when I hug her all she says is “i miss him so much”. This is what all love should aspire to be.

Lately she has been going through lots of old boxes and things of his showing me old letters and pictures. Last night she said that she had found something, it was an envelope with my name on it. She didn’t know anything about it and he must have left it with his belongings. The envelope was fragile and worn yellow with age. Inside was a guardian angel and a note that read “to sit on your shoulder, watch over you and keep your spirits high”. I was overwhelmed. He has always been my guidance even though he is not with me anymore, and I feel like he knew that.

So if you’re up there on the internet in the clouds reading this grandpa, I just wanted to say “thank-you for my present, thank-you for the time I got to spend with you, and thank-you for inspiring me to be a person like you”.

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