by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | May 6, 2020 | Uncategorized |
Hi Everyone!
Something new and wonderful! For those of you who would like to meet me and discuss the challenges and rewards of being diagnosed with this cancer, I am hosting a first time support group via an online Zoom meeting. Zoom is a lot like Facetime or Skype. I will post a link here, and at the time of the meeting (10:00AM this Saturday) you just need to click the link I am posting. It will ask you to open Zoom and when you click that link, the Zoom software will open and if you have a camcorder on your computer we will be able to see each other and if you have a microphone we will be able to talk to each other. Chat is also available on Zoom meetings.
I will post an invitation with the link here, hopefully by tonight. I talked to my web designer yesterday, and if this is something we want to do, it will be made part of my website, and in the end I will send invitations to those who want to participate via email. Doing the invites down the road will help keep anyone from “crashing” the support group, I get a lot of spam email and spam blog comments now.
Check back later for the link to our group, and looking forward to “meeting” you! Just got to thinking, the pic of myself posted on this site is pretty old, it’s from when I first founded this organization! I am older and heavier now, I need to update that photo with an honest one!
Hope to meet you soon, and hope to make this a permanent and ongoing group, we all need it!
by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | May 4, 2020 | Uncategorized |
I’m doing a second post in a day, be cause I want to focus on one thing, ZOOM! I’d mentioned maybe we could all get together “real time” on a Zoom video. It would be kind of like Skype.
I am a professor and with the virus in our midst now, I am teaching online. My classes meet Tuesdays and Thursdays on Zoom. I create a Zoom link for my students and we all meet at 9AM. We can all converse and see each other (if we have a built in Camcorder and microphone). It’s okay if they come in a little bit late and leave a bit early.
It’s actually pretty great, and I feel like I can get to know my students. I see them on the couch holding their dog, see their kids in the background (no one is in school now). We can all drink coffee together!
I think, lacking support groups anywhere for this cancer, it would be great if we could all meet on Zoom every week or so? Someone, Erica, left me a comment after my last post asking if we could do it May first…. but I just read her comment today. She lives in Hungary.
You know, we could have an international support group! I’d asked Erica if we could meet this Saturday at 4PM Central Time. If she says yes, or if any of you do, I’ll post a Zoom link for us. Anyone have a better date or time for a weekly meeting? Let me know!
You can email me at Carolyn@Appendix-cancer.com or leave a comment here. I’d really like to get to know you!
by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | May 4, 2020 | Uncategorized |
I told you I would think of ways my cancer affected me. Uncertainty was what I had the most trouble dealing with after my diagnosis.
My future was uncertain: whether I would be able to raise my kids was uncertain, whether I’d grow old with my husband was uncertain, whether I’d be able to hold my job, or any job was uncertain. Whether I could go on vacation next year, ever go back to school for my Master’s degree.
The definition of uncertainty in the Merriam-Webster dictionary includes: “an almost complete lack of conviction or knowledge about an outcome or result”. The outcome or result being my life.
Not just would I die soon, but whether I could we go on living certain of anything. Could I plan a future? When I thought about it, most of our lives are based on future plans. We plan where we want to work someday, where we want to go with our children, watching our children grow up, attending our sister’s, daughter’s, or friends upcoming wedding. The family reunion next summer. Where we would love to go on vacation. What we want to do with our off and personal days. How we want to celebrate family member’s birthday or our own anniversary.
I was so upset at people who told me I was lucky, because they were sure I lived one day at a time. I did for a long time live one day at a time because my future was so uncertain, No, it was not a good way to live, not contemplating a tomorrow. It is a very difficult way to live.
And then when I finished treatment, the surgeries and long months of chemo, people cheered for me. I was done, I’d beat it, I was a survivor and could get back to my normal life! Everyone assumed I would “get back to normal”, but normal was gone.
I wanted to stay on chemo, it was the only tool I had to fight the disease and I tolerated it pretty well. After chemo, the uncertainty really began. Would my cancer come back? When? I had scans every 3 and then 6 months, all to see if it had come back yet. Even annual scans were hard. It was life in limbo, unsure still if I had a future or not. After I finished chemo I could not say the words “next year”.
I read a book that so helped me, because someone actually understood how I felt. It was written by two cancer survivors. The book is “Dancing in Limbo: Making Sense of Life After Cancer” by two cancer survivors, Glenna Halvorson-Boyd and Lisa K. Hunter. They knew exactly how I felt. I recommend reading it, you won’t feel so alone. I know I felt very alone after cancer treatment ended.
I now can plan for next year, I can plan future events. But I think after cancer, though I plan a future, I am aware that we can never be really certain of a future.
There is a church in Chicago that intrigues me, but I’ve never been, it’s an hour and a half drive. The LaSalle Street Church. My favorite Christian author, Philip Yancy, wrote of the church and said it was in Chicago halfway between two neighborhoods, one of the richest and one of the poorest. It was his favorite church. He lives in Colorado I believe, but still attends occasionally. The homeless poor could sleep on pews in the sanctuary. The wealthy could contribute to the poor. Christianity really took place there.
I don’t actually attend a church (I’m kind of in church when I’m in the woods and see God everywhere), but I have faith and love to listen to good online sermons. The above church had a sermon this week I want to listen to about “The Idol of Certainty”. Certainty and and the lack of certainty impacted me so greatly for so many years. Can you idolize certainty? Did I?
Hmmm…everything is online so I will give a listen to it.
