Have any of you gone through cancer (either patient or support) and have helpful hints to others battling? Please send me your suggestions?

.. I am a thirty year cancer survivor. And I can tell you that hearing those words spoken to you "I'm sorry you have cancer" , there is nothing that compares. When I heard those words spoken to me... the only way I can describe it was that my brain went into lock up.It was like everyone else who was in the room with me ceased to exist.

It is important to educate yourself about what ever cancer you are dealing with. If you haven't already get a second opinion. Understand that even the people who love you the most will not understand how you are feeling.

Even though I had family all around me... I had never felt so alone in my life. If you have the opportunity have your loved ones talk with someone who has had cancer... as they can explain to them better how you are feeling then you can some times. I was behind a women in the grocery store one day who was talking to the cashier about her husbands cancer and how she couldn't figure out why he was acting the way he was... I excused myself for over hearing her conversation and told her there was no way to NOT hear what she was talking about... and I explained to her based on my cancer experience how I thought her husband was feeling.

She had never thought of things from his perspective and thanked me for the insight and that she felt she could help him better now. A friend of mine who had had cancer herself called me when she heard about my diagnosis and told me what she did... that had someway helped her... she said it wouldn't make sense but she knew it had impacted her recovery. One of the things that I am sure you have realized is the overwhelming feeling that your life is out of your control... doing what my friend suggested gave me back some sense of control and that is important.

What she had me do was every afternoon I was to lay down on the couch close my eyes and I was to fight this mental battle in my mind where my white blood cells were fighting the cancer cells. A couple of things happened one was that I felt like I was doing something... the other is that your tired when you are going through this and it gives you the opportunity to keep yourself rested... visualize this battle as clearly as you can. Another thing that I would do is as best you can get all sugar out of your diet... cancer cells feed off of sugar.

I wish you the very best with the journey that you are on now and pray for your complete recovery.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.