by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | Jul 28, 2011 | Uncategorized |
All of us diagnosed with cancer know how the bottom can fall out of our lives at any time. We know we are not promised tomorrow. We live with that.
I recently went to lunch with a friend who is our local chapters “Compassionate Friends” director. It’s an organization for parents who have lost children. She recently lost a second child, and she found others who had also. At lunch we talked a lot about her second loss. How heartbreaking, I can’t imagine. She said now she has no fear of death, as it’s the only hope she has of seeing her children again. She met another parent recently who had lost one child and now had lost another to a car accident.
I got a phone call last Friday. If I don’t know the caller via caller ID, I don’t usually answer. But the caller ID had a name, though it was from an area code I didn’t recognize. On a whim, I decided to pick up the call. When I did, the caller asked me what my name was. Weird. I asked her what HER name was. Then she asked if I had a daughter by the name of Angela. I said yes. She told me my daughter had been involved in a motor vehicle accident, she was at the scene. I started shaking uncontrollably. I asked loudly and repeatedly if she was okay. I knew she was driving home from a southern part of our state.
She said my daughter had rolled her vehicle but appeared to be okay, with only scratches. She put my daughter on her cell phone…my daughter was hysterical, apologizing and apologizing for wrecking the car. I didn’t care a bit about the car. My daughter was sobbing. I was terrified. I talked to the police at the scene, they told me the car was totaled. I told them to call an ambulance and take her to an ER to be checked out as it was a bad accident. I was terrified, The good Samaritans who had pulled her out of a window of the inverted car stayed with her until the ambulance came. They later called me to tell me what hospital she would be taken to. When I got my act together, I packed a few things and my other daughter and I embarked on the 2 hour trip to the hospital she was taken to, We arrived just as she was being given ER discharge instructions. She was tearful and traumatized, but well. I was so, so grateful.
She had several items in the car, including a $1500 laptop, I got a hold of the police, they had towed her car to a body shop 45 minutes away. I left my daughter and her sister at a shopping mall with lunch money while I went to go retrieve her items. I figured she didn’t want to see the car. When I saw the car at the body shop, I started shaking again. The car was totally destroyed, mangled. Roof caved in, gas tank ruptured, both axles broken, windows crumbled, doors mangled, hood crumbled. I didn’t even know if it was safe to enter to retrieve her items. How had she survived that with only scratches on an arm and a leg??? A miracle for sure.
I retrieved her items….with difficulty and a few cuts and bruises. Glass and jagged metal everywhere. There was an inch of gravel and dirt on the floor of the car.We got home and tried to get the gasoline smell out of the items I had retrieved. Her computer, amazingly still works,as does her MP3 player and cell phone, though the computer battery casing was damaged. The only loss was her glasses, I’m sure they left her face when the windshield shattered. We can replace those. She doesn’t remember a lot of the accident, maybe God’s way of saving her from the trauma. The ER said they had never seen anyone with so few injuries in a roll-over.
I am so, so grateful. Two miracles in one family. We are truly blessed. As a nurse, the Good Samaritan act offers limited coverage if I stop at the scene of an accident, so I’ve been reluctant to stop. From now on I will.
by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | Jul 19, 2011 | Uncategorized |
Just wanted to let everyone know that the Heat It To Beat It walk is back again this year! I traveled to Baltimore last year for the walk and it was GREAT!! It is a beautiful walk in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and funds raised go to research for cancers like ours that spread into the abdomen (peritoneal surface malignancies). They were great about providing snacks and drinks…..even chair massages etc. after the walk! A DJ was present and they even had warm up dancing!
Last year, the inaugural walk hoped to have 300 attend and to raise about $50,000, I think. In the end 500 attended and $100,000 was raised, it was a HUGE success. I was able to meet and have dinner with Dr. Sardi there, which was a real thrill. We had communicated via e-mail and phone for 5 years, but had not yet met before then. He is someone I truly admire; he is an excellent HIPEC surgeon who tries to give even those of us with high grade tumors and extensive cancer a chance. He is passionate about research into our disease. He is also a very caring and easy to talk to person. I truly have him on a pedestal. I hope to get to hang out with him again for a bit this year. I plan to go every year, and this year I think I even have enough frequent flyer miles for the trip! Baltimore also has a great rail system, I stayed at an inexpensive hotel near the airport (Inner Harbor hotels are VERY pricey) and the hotel would provide transportation to and from the railway, which cost only $3.50 for an all day pass. The train went straight to the Inner Harbor. It was great! I’ll stay in the same hotel this year as it had a perk I LOVED…..free milk 24/7, I love milk and never seem to get any when I travel. First hotel I’ve visited that had free tea, coffee AND milk!
Last year I had a booth to represent the Appendix Cancer Connection at the walk and hope to this year also.
I’ve communicated with many of you via phone and email, and if you attend the walk, please look me up, I’d love to meet you in person! The link to the walk’s web site is here: Heat It To Beat It.
Please try to come!!! You’ll be inspired! If you can’t attend but want to sponsor my walk, my site is Carolyn’s Heat It To Beat it Site. Donations for sponsorships will go to Heat It To Beat It research!
by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | Jul 5, 2011 | Uncategorized |
Sorry I’ve been away so long! I like to post once weekly, but am really behind! Too much school!
In my palliative care class, we had to interview someone different from ourselves about their thoughts on death and dying from a spiritual perspective….I interviewed my Catholic neighbor as I am unfamiliar with Catholicism. Most people I know are pretty much like myself, I’m sorry to say! I wished I’d had some Muslim or Buddhist friends. I need to diversify!
One woman in my class interviewed someone from a clannish blue collar working group in the Appalachian mountains….people who lived near or at the poverty level. I thought hers was the most interesting interview.
In their culture, if someone was in hospice and expected to die, they had something similar to a wake with the dying person present. A sort of party with music, food and dancing. People shared their memories of the dying person,with the dying person present. They had a video of pictures of the dying person at the party, and everyone could go tell the dying person how much they meant to them, say their final goodbyes in person.
They also had a raffle and silent auction with money raised to help for burial (as none of them could afford it) and to make the dying person’s last wishes come true….to visit a place they wanted to visit or to fly to see a distant relatives etc. In a strange way that seemed kind of morbid, but on the other hand, it seemed kind of great! Wouldn’t you in some ways want to hear your eulogy while you were still here? To leave this life knowing you’d made a difference to people, to be celebrated while you were alive instead of after you were gone?
I attended recently the funeral of my friend’s daughter. She was only 27. My friend had lost her only other child at age 25 five years ago. Many wonderful things were said about the daughter. She’d been valued and loved. I wish she could have been present to hear how much she’d been loved and appreciated. To have seen the video of her life and photos of her life at her wake.
Are we doing it backwards?
I used to work at a hospice at a volunteer. I worked with dying patients, and I could talk to them about their feelings and fears and thoughts as they were dying. It was a good experience.
For my palliative care class I had to do a narrated Power Point presentation. We all chose our topics….I chose near death experiences, visions of the dying. I’ve read lots of books about that, and the cool thing is, of those who are conscious near death, 50-67% experience near death visions of angels, of heaven, of those who have died before them coming to take them home. My neighbor, who died of pancreatic cancer, saw her husband, who preceded her in death by 10 years, sitting in a chair in her room in the days before she died. Another friend who had a sister died of colon cancer at age 30 said her sister saw angels in her room in the days before she died. I’ve read several books by hospice nurses speaking of these visions…of people who at the time of their death felt that they were only crossing from one room to the next. Who were accompanied to their next part of life. A good book about that, written by hospice nurses, is Final Gifts.
While I am a cancer survivor of 10 years, and feel that may mean “cured”, a word not often used in the cancer community (as most would say I am only in long-term remission), cancer has left me feeling always vulnerable. I know of those with my particular cancer who’ve had recurrences at 14 years. I know how the bottom of my life can drop out any time. I don’t take tomorrow for granted. I no longer assume a future (at least here). I have gotten older..which implies vulnerability in itself. I know my days are numbered…..if not by cancer, then something else. We are all born terminal. We need to contemplate that and come to terms with it. In that sense those of us with cancer are ahead of the game.
by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | Jun 25, 2011 | Uncategorized |
Post cancer, I had had so many doctors (16-17 at one count), and spent so much time in medical facilities for appointments,scans, tests and chemo, that when I was ready to surface, the last place I wanted to be was a medical facility (hard to go back to work under those circumstances when you are a nurse). So I didn’t go right back to work. But I am used to being busy, and felt I needed to do something good with my life, so I played piano a lot for institutionalized seniors a lot (was great to be around people who got to be OLD!!!). Even though the elderly had deteriorating bodies and used canes and walkers, they were alive in their 80s!!! I dreamed of being able to get old, even if it meant using canes and walkers and having wrinkles.
I also delivered Meals on Wheels to the elderly and handicapped (nothing new, I’d done that for many years prior). But I felt I still needed to do something more. A soup kitchen opened up in a church near my home, so one day I just showed up and asked if they needed help. They said “sure!”. They really had every thing covered and didn’t need me to do much, but I stayed anyway, it was a good thing. Since there wasn’t a lot that needed doing, and they had a piano in the hall, I played piano for those eating, it gave me something to do.
Over time I got a little more involved in the soup kitchen. Then one day, the person who managed the soup kitchen said she would be out of town for 6 weeks, and the kitchen would close unless some one offered to take charge. Don’t know what got into me, but I said I’d do it. I created soup recipes from compiled recipes on-line (I don’t like to cook!)…at any rate, the soup kitchen did very well the 6 weeks I ran it. Then the woman who ran it came back and said she was moving to another state…did anyone want to take it over? Since I’d done it for 6 weeks, I thought,why not?
I bought the groceries with the same frugalness I used at home. We had a basket there….”donations accepted but not expected”. Since it was open to the public, not just the poor and needy,we had many come. Our numbers increased from 30 to over 100. I still played dining music for the guests, requests included. We all sang happy birthday to anyone who came on their birthday. It was a great thing! We had the homeless, the poor, the lonely and even business men in suits come as they enjoyed the food (they left big donations in the basket). My kids volunteered there in the summers. The soup was so popular we even published a free soup recipe booklet for the guests.
We ran into a problem, as I shopped cheap and many donated….we began to turn a profit!!! It was a kind of crisis! I called a meeting of the soup kitchen staff about our profit problem. We decided to donate the profits monthly to the needy. We donated to a family whose child needed surgery, to a woman newly diagnosed with cancer, to the Haitians after the earthquake, we put together 30 Thanksgiving baskets for the needy.
A local columnist went incognito to all of the soup kitchens in our county and then published an article with “soup kitchen reviews”…ours came out on top!!! He was intrigued by me and later interviewed me for an article…it was great and helped get information out about appendix cancer.
The woman who started the soup kitchen moved back and wanted to take it over again, so I gave it back to her. I volunteered there still for a few years, then got busy with work (back to the hospitals!).
My church just bought a new building with a full kitchen and dining area…I miss my soup kitchen so offered to start one there! Don’t know if they’ll take me up on it, but I hope so! I know how to make mass quantities of 15 different soups!
by Carolyn Langlie-Lesnik | Jun 19, 2011 | Uncategorized |
I am ten years post my life-changing cancer diagnosis. I am so,so very grateful I lived to raise my kids to adulthood…they were 10 and 11 when I was diagnosed and are now productive adult members of society. They need me much less than they did then, and for that I am grateful. I am not as central in their lives now, and for me that is a good thing. I celebrated vs. dreaded their leaving the nest…it was a gift for them to leave me and not for me to leave them. My perspective is different than most parents.
Tonight I went to the Caring Bridge site of an appendix cancer patient I’ve followed for a few years. We’ve communicated on and off for several years, but not recently. She also had signet ring appendiceal cancer and had been through 2 HIPEC procedures..with recurrences following both. I learned she died last month at the age of 33. So young. I’ve developed friendships with several appendix cancer patients who have lost their battles in the end. I had a close friend my age, also a nurse, who was in med school and doing well. She had a lower grade appendix cancer than I had and so much to live for…she also lost her battle a year ago. I had another appendix cancer friend from the Philippines who had only been married for 5 years and who had two very young children…she also lost her battle. We were close, we communicated frequently even as she was dying. She sent me gifts that to this day I value. I think of her every time I look at them. I’ve lost many friends. I don’t know why I survived and they didn’t. When I finally get to heaven, there are so many I want to meet and spend time with. I wish things had turned out differently. But I also know of many survivors, like myself.
I was researching survivor guilt on wiki tonight. I feel badly that I survived when others haven’t, but I don’t think I have survivor guilt. During the sermon at my church today,they spoke of a woman who experienced the terrible poverty of those she met in Africa while on a mission trip. She said she didn’t feel guilty for her relative wealth at home,though…it was a gift from God. But she said she knew how important to her to be grateful for that gift. I think I’m much the same….and I think I need to use the gift given to me to help others. I do try. I’m not interested in Facebook on a personal level, but my website designers created a Facebook page for my Appendix Cancer Connection organization, and it has become a support group of sorts for those diagnosed, for which I am very grateful. You can check it out at Appendix Cancer Connection Facebook.
Just for fun, this funny youtube clip was presented at my church today (the topic today was gratitude)….and I could totally relate, I grew up with the black rotary phones! I also still always request a window seat on flights…I still feel the “wow” factor when I see the clouds and our country from the air! Check it out: Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy, it will make you smile!! We have so much to be grateful for!
