Uplifting: "Cancer Etiquette" Book Helps Friend's Surgery

[quiverfull7]

I cannot thank you enough for sharing in the past about the book "Cancer Etiquitte" or how ever you spell it!!!! My friends surgery is today and I got my copy of the book yesterday. I am about 1/2 way through and I just can't thank you enough! It's truly filled with amazing insight and is so helpful! Thanks Janet for posting the thread with it in!

 

[janetupnorth]

YW, KG is full of useful tips if you read his serious stuff!

 

[pampered.chris]

Where is this post? My Grandmother is currently battling Breast Cancer and is having "old-timers" when it comes to this. I would love to have better understanding when talking to her.
thanks

 

[janetupnorth]

http://www.chefsuccess.com/f48/prayers-my-friend-40883/

 

[pampered.chris]

http://www.chefsuccess.com/f48/prayers-my-friend-40883/

Thanks Janet!!

 

[quiverfull7]

Thanks Janet!!!!!!!!!

 

[The_Kitchen_Guy]

YW, KG is full of useful tips if you read his serious stuff!

Most people accuse me of being full of something else.

When it comes to cancer, I'm serious about fighting it, however, I fight it by being completely irreverent and laughing about it as much as I can.

Not long after I was finishing my protocol, a 13 year old from church was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She went into Kid's Horsepistol on a Thursday, got her chemo over the weekend and went home to be miserable on Monday. She repeated the process every two weeks for a couple of months.

One Sunday when she was in, after church, a bunch of us caravaned to Kid's Horsepistol to see her. She was a typical chemo patient, tired, crabby and, in a word, miserable. Everyone was walking slowly and softly, and whispering the usual stupid stuff because no one knows quite what to say.

Well, I strolled in like I owned the place and boldy said, "Hey! You look awful!" He mother looked at me like I'd just run over the family dog. The patient looked at me with one eye and looked like she was about to shout at me, like she had crabbed at everyone else. I reached up and took hold of her chemo bag and said, "WELL, what's in the cocktail shaker today? Anything good?" The church members dropped their collective jaws, they couldn't believe someone would behave like I was in a hospital room. The minister was smiling, he knew what I was up to.

I looked down at the patient - a smile was starting to curl. "Oh, Cisplatin! Are you lucky! WONderful stuff!" She was starting to giggle. "It'll make water taste like aluminum foil and wait'll Wednesday!"

"Why?" her mother asked.

I looked down at the patient and said, "That's when you'll spend the whole day with your head in a bucket." She started laughing and was trying to hide it.

The next Sunday after church, she and her mother sought me out. Her hair was gone and I started calling her "Fuzzy." Her mother said, "You were exactly right! Tuesday night, she called me into her bedroom and was puking into the bucket. In between gasps, she said, 'Just like he said!' I said, no, he said Wednesday and I looked at the clock - it was 4:30 on Wednesday morning! How did you know?"

I just smiled and said, "Because I had the same stuff every Monday and every Thursday, I was like a seasick sailor in a hurricane."

Fuzzy is about to graduate from college, and I'm the only one that's allowed to call her anything but her real name.

 

[Kitchen Diva]

Most people accuse me of being full of something else.

When it comes to cancer, I'm serious about fighting it, however, I fight it by being completely irreverent and laughing about it as much as I can.

Not long after I was finishing my protocol, a 13 year old from church was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She went into Kid's Horsepistol on a Thursday, got her chemo over the weekend and went home to be miserable on Monday. She repeated the process every two weeks for a couple of months.

One Sunday when she was in, after church, a bunch of us caravaned to Kid's Horsepistol to see her. She was a typical chemo patient, tired, crabby and, in a word, miserable. Everyone was walking slowly and softly, and whispering the usual stupid stuff because no one knows quite what to say.

Well, I strolled in like I owned the place and boldy said, "Hey! You look awful!" He mother looked at me like I'd just run over the family dog. The patient looked at me with one eye and looked like she was about to shout at me, like she had crabbed at everyone else. I reached up and took hold of her chemo bag and said, "WELL, what's in the cocktail shaker today? Anything good?" The church members dropped their collective jaws, they couldn't believe someone would behave like I was in a hospital room. The minister was smiling, he knew what I was up to.

I looked down at the patient - a smile was starting to curl. "Oh, Cisplatin! Are you lucky! WONderful stuff!" She was starting to giggle. "It'll make water taste like aluminum foil and wait'll Wednesday!"

"Why?" her mother asked.

I looked down at the patient and said, "That's when you'll spend the whole day with your head in a bucket." She started laughing and was trying to hide it.

The next Sunday after church, she and her mother sought me out. Her hair was gone and I started calling her "Fuzzy." Her mother said, "You were exactly right! Tuesday night, she called me into her bedroom and was puking into the bucket. In between gasps, she said, 'Just like he said!' I said, no, he said Wednesday and I looked at the clock - it was 4:30 on Wednesday morning! How did you know?"

I just smiled and said, "Because I had the same stuff every Monday and every Thursday, I was like a seasick sailor in a hurricane."

Fuzzy is about to graduate from college, and I'm the only one that's allowed to call her anything but her real name.

Sniff- that warmed my heart...

 

[raebates]

I found exactly the same thing when my friend was going through chemo. Thanks to KG's advice, I did my best to treat her with the same sarcastic attitude I've always used. We cried together. We laughed together. She named her IV stand Stanly Steel Pole, and I gave her a really rough time about spending the night with some guy she's not married to. The weirdest reactions weren't to my attitude. They were to hers. Some people actually got offended that she was joking about some of the aspects of her disease. I reminded her on more than one occasion (thanks to KG's wisdom) that this was her experience. She could handle it in whatever way she found necessary. When she called me crying that it just wasn't fair. I agreed. I told her everything about this sucked. It wasn't at all fair, and she had every right to get ticked. When she called me laughing about her psycho IV that wouldn't let her move any more than 10 feet without having a meltdown, I laughed with her.She's doing well, and the news lately has been good. I'm thankful to KG for all of his advice and support. The whole experience would have been harder without his info.

 

[sklay723]

I have a very close friend (my son's Godmother) who is helping her MIL through breast cancer at this very moment. They are just starting what will be a VERY long journey for them...she was diagnosed just last month and they are still running tests to find out what stage she is at. From what we're able to piece together (isn't it great that NONE of the doctors seem to want to talk to each other?), she will probably need a radical mastectomy, plus chemo and/or radiation. I just emailed my friend the Amazon link to this book, but I may just try to find it and buy it for her as a gift...no one in their family has ever had cancer and they are having such a terrible time right now. Thanks so much for this information...it sure does help those of us who want to help but don't know what to say or do. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

 

[cathyskitchen]

Wow, KG, great story. You remind me a lot of my grandfather (sorry! It's a compliment, really!). He called it the "horsepistol", too! He died of prostate cancer years ago, but had a smile on his face until the very end.

 

[The_Kitchen_Guy]

It's a right of passage - you have to cross a certain age threshold to get away with calling it a horsepistol.