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Talk Shows &
Stories : Caregivers
: Caregiver: When Your Brother or Sister has Cancer
Recorded February 19, 2002
Caregiver: When Your Brother or Sister has Cancer
Welcome and Participant Introductions
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Glenda Durham:
Hello and welcome to the American Cancer
Society's Cancer Survivors Network. I'm Glenda Durham, your host. Today
I will be talking to three guests from across the country, who have been
caregivers for a brother or a sister. As a cancer survivor myself, I am
pleased to be your host for today's conversation as we talk about
remaining positive while you are in the role of a caregiver; being a
caregiver for a sibling when you are a teenager; involving other family
members in the caregiving process of a loved one; dealing with the stress
of maintaining your own life and being a caregiver also; opening up to the
strong feelings that come from caregiving for a sibling; dealing with
those you are giving care to when they push you away; getting life back to
normal after being a caregiver.
Glenda Durham:
Our first guest is Donna Rae, a caregiver from Vermont, who is 42 and
married with two children. Hello, Donna Rae, and welcome to the
program.
Donna Rae:
Hi.
Glenda Durham:
You were a caregiver for your brother, who lived in Florida?
Donna Rae:
That's correct.
Glenda Durham:
He was diagnosed in 1992 with testicular cancer when he was only 30 years
old.
Donna Rae:
Correct.
Glenda Durham:
He had been complaining of back pain to his doctors, but his cancer wasn't
diagnosed for some time.
Donna Rae:
That's right.
Glenda Durham:
His first treatment was chemo, and after that he went into remission for a
year.
Donna Rae:
Mm-hmm.
Glenda Durham:
When the cancer returned, he had surgery to support his hip joint and
disks, which had deteriorated.
Donna Rae:
Correct.
Glenda Durham:
There were two months then, of being back and forth to normal, but the
cancer came back and he passed away in 1994.
Donna Rae:
Correct.
Glenda Durham:
During much of his treatment you were living in Vermont and traveling back
and forth to see him with your very young children, and helping to care
for him in Florida.
Donna Rae:
Yes.
Glenda Durham:
Thank you, Donna Rae, for joining us today.
Donna Rae:
Mm-hmm.
Glenda Durham:
Our next guest is Robert. He lives in East Texas. At the age of 60 his
sister was diagnosed with melanoma, and due to the distance between their
lives, he was in a position of offering daily telephone support while his
sister received very aggressive surgical treatment for her melanoma. And
it's been what, six years, Robert?
Robert:
Yes. It's going on six years.
Glenda Durham:
And how is she?
Robert:
She's wonderful!
Glenda Durham:
All right!
Robert:
No cancer. She just got a clean bill of health about a month ago.
Glenda Durham:
Now joining us is Catherine, a caregiver from California.
Catherine:
Hello.
Glenda Durham:
Hi, Catherine. I understand you're married and you're 29 years old.
Catherine:
Yes, I am.
Glenda Durham:
And you have a remarkable life. You were the caregiver for both your
sister and your mother.
Catherine:
Yes, I was.
Glenda Durham:
Welcome to the program, Catherine.
Catherine:
Thank you.
Glenda Durham:
Your mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when you were eight years
old?
Catherine:
Yes.
Glenda Durham:
And the cancer returned when you were 15, which was in 1987, and it had
spread to her lung.
Catherine:
It had spread all the way up into the lining of her lungs from her
ovaries.
Glenda Durham:
OK.
Catherine:
She had pneumonia and she kept going back to doctors and telling them
there was something wrong with her, and they never said anything was wrong
with her, and then in 1987 she was re-diagnosed, and that's how far it
went up.
Glenda Durham:
Oh! For the next 10 years after that re-diagnosis you were a caregiver
for your mother as she went through a series of surgeries and chemotherapy
until she passed away in 1998.
Catherine:
That is correct.
Glenda Durham:
But your sister had contracted leukemia in 1991.
Catherine:
Yes.
Glenda Durham:
And she was treated with chemotherapy at the same time as you mother was
receiving treatment.
Catherine:
Yep. They were in separate hospital rooms in the same hospital, and we
used to tease that we owned part of the ward.
Glenda Durham:
Oh, my. You were the caregiver for both of them?
Catherine:
I was one of them, yes. There were several. We have a pretty large
family. Large by American standards, I should say. [laughs] We had about
five people that were constant caregivers to both of them.
Glenda Durham:
OK, and your sister is now doing just fine?
Catherine:
My sister is wonderful! I tease and I say she'll be here to piss me off
[laughing] the rest of my life.
Staying Positive as a Caregiver
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Glenda Durham:
All right. Let's try the first topic that we're dealing with today:
remaining positive while you are in the role of caregiver. You had a
very, very challenging situation at a very young age.
Catherine:
Mm-hmm.
Glenda Durham:
And I know you know that trying to remain positive with a cancer diagnosis
is very important and difficult.
Catherine:
We would--we got to the point where we were so crude and so just
matter-of-fact about what everything--everything that was going on. The
bodily functions you have, the reactions you have to chemo, and we just
would make fun of it and exploit it for what it was, because you can't
explain it to other people, and if other people aren't going through it,
it's really hard to tell them you have to make really sick jokes because,
because that's the nature of life. [laughs]
Glenda Durham:
And the doctors probably make them, too, but they try to stay back behind
it.
Catherine:
Oh, yeah. They do. My mom's oncologist used to say she was too mean to
die.
Glenda Durham:
Oh! Well, my heavens. [laughs]
Catherine:
[laughing] It was just an expression, because she wasn't mean at all.
She was just one of the most warmest, most wonderful people you could ever
meet. She was a real fighter. She woke up with the spirit of fighting
every morning, and she was determined that she was not going to die from
this disease.
Glenda Durham:
Mm-hmm.
Catherine:
And when she did, we were all incredibly shocked because she had such a
will to live.
Glenda Durham:
Did her positive attitude help you maintain your positive attitude?
Catherine:
Oh, absolutely! It's helped me through every major trauma throughout my
life, and it's just been wonderful because I definitely have a sense of
humor and an outlook on life that not many people are allowed to
live--allowed to see.
Glenda Durham:
Well, let's ask Donna. How did being positive impact you when you were
caring for your brother?
Donna Rae:
His attitude was that he was never going to give up either, and even on
his answering machine--he was a tennis player--and even on his answering
machine he left this saying, you know, that he was going to be back to
playing tennis, and everybody should get ready. So because of his
attitude the rest of us fed off of that, and then I just involved my kids
so much with going back and forth to see him that their attitude and their
outlook on life--children don't see anything but rosy cheeks all the time,
so because of their attitude, he fed off of them and they fed off of him.
It was just a mutual rallying effort that kept the whole family going.
Glenda Durham:
Did that help you in coping with this?
Donna Rae:
It did, because--and what I did after he died, because of his attitude,
that was what encouraged me to, I don't know if you realize, but he wrote
a story when he was ill, and because of his attitude and the way he
promoted his cancer and how he dealt with it, whether it be with
professionals or with friends, that's what encouraged me to take his story
and publish it so that people could realize that cancer doesn't get people
down in the long run. That you still have a life and you still have a
very positive outlook on life that can get you through it.
Glenda Durham:
Will you tell us the name of your book?
Donna Rae:
Sure. It's Voices of Courage, and actually there's two of them. It's
basically a collection of short stories and poems written by cancer
patients, caregivers and professionals from around the country. They were
compiled and I published them, the first one in '94, and the second one in
'96.
Glenda Durham:
That's marvelous. I'm going to ask Robert how the use of humor helped him
in providing support to his sister when she had melanoma.
Robert:
We talked almost every day and tried to--tried to keep each other really
smiling and laughing. It seems like I've always had a knack when I go to
the doctors or the hospitals today, even. People around me, I try to get
them to joke, because I see so many sick people. There's a lot of sick
people, and my doctor says, "God sent you, Bob, because you make people
smile." I did that over the phone to my sister and still do!
Glenda Durham:
That's marvelous.
Catherine:
You have a wonderful, smiley voice.
Robert:
Thank you, ma'am. And of course, I've had cancer too, so she makes me
smile also. We've been there for each other.
Glenda Durham:
That's wonderful. Many people with cancer say that in some ways they are
more concerned about the family caregiver and how they are coping. Now
how did your loved ones help you remain positive as you took care of
them?
Catherine:
That is really, really, really hard. The only--the best way, since I had
two, I had two different dichotomies going. I had my mother that was sick
at the same time, and then my 16-year-old sister, and when you're still in
your teenager years, you're not always the most optimistic person. So it
was very hard to keep her upbeat, but my mother was easy to do, because
she always wanted to see life through our eyes and see how we saw the
wonder and amazement that existed even just in smelling the roses,
stopping and smelling the roses, enjoying simple things. Just giving us a
real zest for life, and that was the best thing that my mother could ever
have done is to make sure that we enjoyed the time that we had with her,
and have wonderful memories that when she was gone, we could still reflect
back on what it is we missed and why it is we missed them. My sister now,
she's--she's a pistol.
[laughter]
Catherine:
She has two thoroughbreds that keep her busy, and she is just--she likes
to work a lot. She's gotten so used to being independent that it's really
hard for her to be dependent on anybody because I think once you go
through chemotherapy at--and I think some things have changed with
her--her chemo treatments, they did some things to her mind, I think, and
she's just trying to keep an up--I think it was easier at the time that
she was going through cancer to keep an open outlook and an upbeat
appearance to just be wonderful to her than it is today, because now we're
getting older. She's been in remission for over 11 years now, and she
still has some problems from the chemo. I think you always do, but
she's--it was easier [laughing] to deal with her when she was sick,
because she was just--had that one-track mind of trying to get better.
Robert:
Isn't that wonderful?
Catherine:
It is. And now that she's better.
Glenda Durham:
At advanced years many of us have now been diagnosed with CRS, and it
doesn't take chemo to do that. This is an official medical diagnosis of
"Can't Remember Stuff."
[laughter]
Donna Rae:
I thought it was called a senior moment. What is that?
Catherine:
I have those myself.
Humor and Caregiving
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Glenda Durham:
Tell me--anybody come in here on this, please--how did the use of humor
help you get through this experience?
Donna Rae:
This is Donna Rae. I'll just give you an example of my brother and I.
All of us in the family have blonde hair, and basically his main issue
with life that he really wanted to get across was to be able to tell a
blonde joke to me every day. [laughs] So he would call me up, even when he
was sick as a dog, and he would just say, "Hey," and then he'd tell me a
joke and then he'd hang up the phone, and it'd be like, "You know, you got
me again!" It was just one of his favorite things to do, and I really
looked forward to that. I think he must have heard every blonde joke
there ever was and he told them to me because I couldn't believe there
were so many out there!
[laughter]
Donna Rae:
But it was just his chore, I think, that he had to get that point across
to me that he could find out these jokes even when he was very ill.
Glenda Durham:
That's very resourceful!
Donna Rae:
[laughing] Oh, yeah. I think he was on the Internet a few times.
Robert:
You have to--pardon me, this is Bob. You have to keep going, and you have
to live every day, and when you have somebody very, very sick that you
don't know how long they're going to be around, you try to make it the
very best you can every day for the rest of their life. And after all,
that's what we do for each other anyway, even when you're not sick!
Donna Rae:
That's true.
Catherine:
I agree.
Donna Rae:
Yep.
Catherine:
It's hard to explain that to people, though, who haven't been through--I
guess I should say post-traumatic stress disorder, because that's what
they call this sometimes, is when you're first--when your family is
diagnosed with this, you can go through PTSD symptoms, and nothing--it's
not that easy to cure those symptoms. But you always have a richness and
you enjoy life a lot more, I think, than you do people who haven't had
something so traumatic happen to them.
Robert:
You've learned to slow down and smell the roses every day.
Catherine:
Exactly.
Robert:
You know, we all live in such a fast, fast pace today that until something
like this happens to one of our loved ones or to ourselves, we don't
really think too much about what life's all about, and all of a sudden
it's realistic, and you wake up and you say, "Golly, take each day as it
comes and do the very best you can with it." Have a little fun. Make
other people smile, and that's a wonderful thing you learn through this
horrible experience.
Catherine:
I agree.
Donna Rae:
I think also, in addition to appreciating every day, that it also gives
you a goal in life that what you do, whether it be personally or
professionally, that hopefully you have an impact on people. That's the
way I've gone about it ever since David died, and that if I don't
hopefully have some kind of an impact, whether it be to make somebody's
day better or to give them an opportunity that they may never have come
across, then I feel like I've wasted my time. So that is how I've pursued
it: that he taught me a lesson and I'm hopefully teaching other people a
lesson.
Robert:
That's wonderful!
Glenda Durham:
Yes.
Catherine:
I agree. I'm the same way with my family, my friends, everyone I
encounter. I just try and say something nice and show kindness.
Donna Rae:
Exactly.
Glenda Durham:
Are there any other things that you've found helpful to others trying to
keep a positive attitude?
Catherine:
Don't watch the media [laughing] or listen to the news!
Robert:
[laughing] Tell lots of jokes!
Catherine:
[laughing] Tell lots of jokes!
Donna Rae:
I think, too, that a lot of people that are in the early diagnosis stage,
their family members, or whether it be that they're trying to explain it
to a child, just letting them know that they're not alone and that what
they're feeling is normal--or, well, as normal as anything can be. But a
lot of people freak out and think, "Oh God. I'm taking this all wrong!"
or "Maybe I'm approaching it the wrong way" or "I shouldn't be feeling
this way." They need to know that it is perfectly normal to experience
that, and that if they can explain it to a child through a child's eyes,
taking a writing that is written by another child about how to explain
prednisone or whatever it might be--that if you can explain it in that
way, the child will understand it better and make your life easier along
the way because you don't have to worry about how they're experiencing it
or what they're feeling in the long run. It's a mutual understanding that
it's OK to feel this way and that it's OK to express yourself.
Robert:
That's so true.
Catherine:
I agree with that wholeheartedly, too.
Glenda Durham:
Catherine, as a teenager you grew up under a very difficult set of
circumstances.
Catherine:
Yeah, the rules didn't apply to me. [laughs]
Glenda Durham:
How did you find suddenly being in an adult role?
Catherine:
It's still--it's hard to adjust to other people because, like I said, when
you've gone through so many traumatic things all at once and you turn
around and you look at what other people have or haven't been through, you
can't share the same things with other people as you would--people who
haven't--at least try to make themselves better, if that makes any
sense.
Donna Rae:
Mm-hmm.
Catherine:
I had a hard time relating to people my age. I had a hard time relating
to people from where I was from, so I sought out other--I went to Russia
and I tried to pick up Russian, and I did pick up Russian. I'm fluent in
Russian now, just to make some kind of contact with something that
wasn't--was different than what I was experiencing here at home. So it
was nice to reach out to different cultures and travel through different
countries to see what people were doing. I even had the opportunity to go
to see some of the hospitals that were in some of the third world
countries, and I was kind of astounded at how differently they treated
diseases than we do over here. So, it was--I've tried to keep my eyes
open and just look out and see what's around in the world, and not be so
singular and focused on what I'm going through so much, if that makes any
sense.
Glenda Durham:
Oh, it sure does. Tell me, Donna Rae, what was the most difficult
situation or time for you, and how did it make you feel as a
caregiver?
Emotional Stories from Caregivers
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Donna Rae:
Probably the most difficult was when one of the--it was actually the last
time I was in Florida. He--the physical therapy people--he had already
become paralyzed, and the physical therapist was in his room giving his
range of motion exercises for his legs because of his attitude that he was
going to return to normal, but, you know, he never gave up, and so he
proceeded with all treatments. But anyway, the physical therapist
basically broke his leg, because the bones were so frail, during the range
of motion. So he had to make a decision, David did, of what kind of
treatment to pursue, to either lie in bed with traction or to have surgery
to put a pin in his bone and basically repair it. And watching him make
that decision, which to him it was easy, he went ahead and had the
surgery, and then watching him come out of surgery, he was in intensive
care, and he couldn't get off the respirator because by then the cancer
had already spread to his lungs. So the most difficult thing for me was
watching him in intensive care, struggling, wanting that darn respirator
out of his mouth and out of his throat, and knowing that he couldn't get
off of it. It was just a two-day procedure of trying to get him to
understand that you got to let it go. You got to just leave that
respirator in for now. Let it do the work, and then when he eventually
came up to his hospital room, he still was on the respirator, but his
attitude, you could see, it was driving him nuts because he couldn't talk,
but his attitude was, "I'm going to beat this! I'm going to beat this!"
And when he came in--I mean, when his friends came into town that weekend,
they were there to visit, he basically wrote down on a piece of paper he
wanted me to go home, because I had already extended my stay by a week and
a half because of all the surgery and everything, and I was heartbroken.
I said, "No, I want to stay to see you through this." And he said, "No,
go home. My friends are here. I want to spend some time with them, and
you need to get home to your family." And so I left, and he died the next
day.
Catherine:
Oh!
Donna Rae:
So that was the most difficult thing, because it's like I look back now.
I should have stayed one more day. What the heck difference does one day
make? But he sent me home, and I know it was because he didn't want me
there with my children to see him die, but at the same time it was
difficult watching that whole process and then walking away and being--you
know, not being there at the last moment.
Glenda Durham:
It sounds like that still causes you pain.
Donna Rae:
It does! It does, but you know, in my heart I know he did it on purpose,
but in the long run I wish I had stayed one more day.
Robert:
Isn't it amazing how much strength so many of these people that have this
horrible disease--
Donna Rae:
Mm-hmm.
Robert:
--can maintain throughout their whole sickness?
Donna Rae:
Yeah.
Robert:
It just boggles my mind! I think about the word care-provider and it's
really, in my case, not very--a good way of explaining it, because my
sister, bless her heart, is probably stronger than nine rows of
garlic.
[laughter]
Robert:
She--even though she was sick, and they did all this horrible surgery on
her, not only did she never give up, but she's the only one that didn't
know she had it, I think! You know, she just kept on going every day like
everything was just fine, and I had never actually seen the pictures of
the postoperative until two weeks ago, and she had this operation and she
never would send them to me, even though I couldn't be there with her.
In fact, she didn't want me there during the operation.
Donna Rae:
Mm-hmm.
Robert:
And she e-mailed me those this last week, and I cried for two days.
Catherine:
Wow! I was a photography student, and I took photographs after my mom's
worst surgery, and they just had staples going all the way from her stem
to her sternum, as she used to say.
Robert:
Mm-hmm.
Catherine:
And that was--yeah. When you--and I made sure I documented those, no
matter how hard it was.
Robert:
Yeah, it's tough, isn't it?
Catherine:
I still can't look at them. I'll come across them every once in a while,
and I'll just put them away real quick, but I made a little ode to my mom,
when she died, on my web page.
Robert:
Well, Linda had this melanoma, and it started--it looked like a little
raisin on the corner of her eye, and they had to do the operation went
clear to her collar bone.
Catherine:
Wow!
Robert:
Of course, she's always been such a delightful lady. She was in the Miss
America Pageant. She's five-foot-eleven and a willow, and at 65, even at
65, 66 years old, she still looks like she's 40, even with this operation.
And of course part of her cheek's gone, but the plastic surgeon did
fantastic on her, and she, like I say, she's a go-getter, and bless her
heart, she's been strong with me, and then I turned around and had cancer,
and she was there for me every day, so I guess what this whole life's all
about, isn't it.
Catherine:
Yeah.
Glenda Durham:
What are some of the ways you can suggest for people becoming involved in
caregiving that may be frightened by the prospects of taking care of
someone with cancer?
Catherine:
I don't think it's so much a frightening aspect to take care of someone
with cancer, I think the frightening aspect is taking care of yourself,
because if you care about that person and they mean something--mean
something to you in your heart, of course you're going to be there for
them, but remembering to take care of yourself is the hardest part.
Taking time out to enjoy some of the things that you need to enjoy, and
taking a break from somebody else's, this is somebody else's biggest,
frightening scary problem, and taking a break from that every once in a
while is the most generous thing you can do for yourself and for the other
person, because it keeps you mentally fit for relationships.
Robert:
Don't you think times through the years, I'll be 71 years old in
June--
Catherine:
Wow.
Robert:
--and when I was very, very young, you know, if somebody had cancer, it
was kind of like measles, chicken pox or something that was contagious.
Everybody was scared to death even to be around them, and they alienated
themselves from even a lot of their loved ones, and I think that the
education that you people have done a lot to, and need credit for through
the years, is that people aren't as afraid to be involved as they were at
one time, and I've noticed that change over the years. My son lives with
me, and I had throat cancer and had to have 33 radiation treatments, and
of course, this sister, Linda, was on the phone with me all the time, but
he was right there with me every day too, and he still lives with me and
looks after me, and you know, you don't have kids like that very often, if
ever. [laughs]
Caregivers: Dealing with Being Pushed Away
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Glenda Durham:
Let me ask you all, we'll start with Catherine. How did you feel when
your sister needed to push you away--
Catherine:
Oh, it was awful!
Glenda Durham:
--and how did you cope?
Catherine:
It was the most painful thing. There is one thing. I had brain surgery,
like--I had brain surgery. My mom had abdominal surgery, and then my
little sister was diagnosed with leukemia, all within four months of one
another.
Glenda Durham:
Mercy!
Catherine:
So I was healing from that when my sister was diagnosed with leukemia, and
when she started the wounded animal treatment where she started pushing us
away, it was the most painful thing you could ever imagine. It hurt. It
hurts today, because I still feel a deep wound because she pushed me away
when she was really, really sick and she didn't want anybody around her.
She couldn't understand why we didn't stay around, because she was very
hard to deal with, and then she would get angry and I couldn't--it was a
very hard time because, you know, in retrospect I know I should have just
spent more time with her and just have ignored some of the moods that she
was going through, because as a teenager your hormones are always a little
whacked, and just staying there and making sure you're there with them so
that she didn't feel alienated. She feels a little alienated now.
Glenda Durham:
What would you tell others that are facing this kind of situation?
Catherine:
Just stay in the same--stay in the room with them. Just ignore their--if
they're saying abusive things to you, just ignore it because it's not them
talking. It's the chemotherapy, and you got to understand that
chemotherapy does do things to your emotional well-being as well as your
physical well-being. So just ignore who they are as they're going through
these treatments, because they don't realize that they are that way, I
don't think.
Glenda Durham:
Is there anybody wants to add anything to that.
Robert:
I think everything she said is absolutely true. You just got to--no
matter what anybody says. I was lucky because I was not "ran off" so to
speak, but I understand how a lot of people are. My mother died of
cancer, and she wouldn't even tell anybody she had it, and she died the
night we took her to the hospital.
Catherine:
Wow.
Glenda Durham:
Oh.
Robert:
Yeah, and it was a heartbreaker.
Catherine:
Yeah, no kidding.
Robert:
And so, you're right. Hang in there and don't let them push you away.
Glenda Durham:
Donna Rae, other than just before he died, did your brother have occasion
to try and push you away?
Donna Rae:
Not at all. Never.
Glenda Durham:
So it was only at the end?
Donna Rae:
Yes, exactly.
Catherine:
I think mine was a little different, because my sister was a teenager.
My mom never did that.
Glenda Durham:
Mmm. Teenagers can be challenging.
Catherine:
It's very, very challenging.
Getting Back to Normal After Being a Caregiver
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Glenda Durham:
Donna Rae, how do you create a new normal life for yourself after your
experience as a caregiver?
Donna Rae:
That's a good question. My kids helped a lot, obviously, and my husband
was right there with me, and my parents and my older brother were very
supportive, so I guess we all kind of created this world where we looked
to my children for a little entertainment and lightness in the day. Then
taking David's writings and putting them in a positive format for more
people to see basically gave me a purpose and gave me a goal, and that's
how I moved on, and in a positive manner instead of dwelling on it and
wishing things could have been different. It was more of a "How can we
spread the word and make other people feel better that are going through
the same thing?" So that's how I did it.
Glenda Durham:
Catherine?
Catherine:
Yes?
Glenda Durham:
How did you create a new life for yourself after you had your lengthy
childhood experience as a caregiver?
Catherine:
My mom was really insistent that we got our college education, and the
year that she died was the year I was supposed to graduate, which was
really, really hard, because here I'd spent all this time trying to--I
double majored in Russian and photography, and I was really proud of
myself because it was really, really hard and challenging, and I think
that's one of the things you have to do is definitely push yourself
towards challenges and set goals, set unrealistic goals. An unrealistic
goal for me was to speak Russian, and if you just push yourself towards
that goal and you feel a sense of accomplishment, then that's one of the
building blocks of learning how to heal yourself, I think. Remembering,
writing things down, and remembering how you felt at certain junctures in
your life have also been of great benefit for me.
Glenda Durham:
So, what would be some steps that a person might consider as they begin to
plan their transition from caregiving to normal, if there is such a thing
after such an event--
Catherine:
[laughing] There is no such thing.
Glenda Durham:
Is there normal after being a caregiver?
Catherine:
[laughing] No! Not at my age. I don't think so. It's very--the steps
you have to take to just enjoy what other people your age or whatever are
doing with their lives, and set goals so that you can try and understand
how they feel about life, because they haven't experienced such things.
It's really--it's very hard to understand other people who haven't been
through this. I still have a time with it.
Robert:
I think you've got also two completely separate routes that you take.
Number one, if the person that you've been the caregiver for does pass
away, then you've got a certain way that you have to deal with things.
However, if the person is a survivor, then of course, what you do is you
grab each day and try to spend as much time and as much effort with them,
making each other smile as you take each day at a time for the rest of
your life. And of course, if you've lost the loved one, and we all have
to cancer, or a lot of us have to cancer, then what you try to do is treat
other people in a certain way that you've learned through your experience
of losing that loved one.
Catherine:
I agree with that.
Glenda Durham:
Donna Rae, do you have something to add to that?
Donna Rae:
Well, no. I agree with him as well.
Robert:
See, if you've had a loved one with cancer and you've been there, and then
you turn around and you have it also and go through the radiation and
chemo or surgery or whatever, it's just an amazing trip through life. We
all have trips through life that are amazing, and it's horrible to lose a
loved one, and it's also just wonderful when they're a survivor of this
horrible disease, and I guess--
Catherine:
Amen to that!
Robert:
--we're all just looking forward to saving the next one, you know?
Catherine:
Mm-hmm.
Glenda Durham:
Well, on that note, I think we need to wrap up. I hope that this
discussion has helped you with some of the issues that may be part of your
life. I want to thank our guests, Catherine, Donna Rae and Robert, for
their willingness to share their stories, their thoughts, feelings, and a
part of their lives with us today. I hope that some of their experiences
will help you think about and talk about your own concerns in healing
ways. I encourage you to listen to other discussions we have available on
the Web site and on the telephone by calling 1-877-333-HOPE. That's
1-877-333-HOPE. For the American Cancer Society's Cancer Survivors
Network, I'm Glenda Durham, wishing each of you a great day, today and
every day. Thanks.
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