Survival Lessons by Alice Hoffman

Recently read these simple lessons which are uplifting. A good reminders for surviving the hard times:

1. Choose your heroes — someone who inspires in any way 

2. Choose to enjoy yourself — chocolate or anything you wishes 

3. Choose your friends — it's ok to lose contact with those who doesn't care or irritates you. But 'don't hold back' when it comes to people you love and care. 'Live right now!'

4. Choose whose advise you take — self explanatory :)

5. Choose your relatives — only answer the phone when you want to, and give yourself permission to say you can't talk 

6. Choose how you spend your time — another self-explanatory

7. Choose to plan for the future — like a yearly to-do-list 

8. Choose to love who you are — I'm beginning to talk to my own body and soul for this matter 

9. Choose to accept sorrow — "I could not run away from my circumstances, or control the path of my disease, but I could control what I did with my experience of that illness"

10. Choose to dream 

11. Choose something new — new hobby or maybe old interest which you'd like to revisit

12. Choose to give in to yourself — 'do something and don't feel guilty' attitude

13. Choose to make things beautiful — beautify and spice up what you enjoy most 

14. Choose to tell your story — inspire others

15. Choose to forgive — apologize to people you've wronged

16. Choose to claim your past — collect family photographs and stories 

17. Choose to be yourself 

18. Choose to share 

19. Choose love 

20. Choose the evidence — and blogging things down is my interpretation to this 

And we could all survive...

Indeed, Life is More Meaningful Now

Went through weeks of suffocated, lost and unhappy moments. And finally today I could bring myself to come back to the blog again. And I certainly hope this happy, positive vibes could stay longer and eventually take over the daily mood swings.

Turning 32 today, and I'm trying to declutter, re-organize and put into focus on what matters most.

I want to be able to live at least another 20 years, to grow old together with the husband, so we are able to witness the children's life achievements and hopefully  building their own sets of family too!

With the recent appointments with the oncologist and the new radio-oncologist, I've come to learn, or maybe, finally digested and accepted the fact that breast cancer is one of the cancers which is most likely to relapse.

That explains the long sets of treatments being carefully lined up for years to keep cancer at bay. In another word, to actually buy more time for the patients.

So I pledge to myself, to cut down the pointless negativities, to identify and solve the problems faced, rather than ignoring and running away from them. 

I am pulling myself together again to achieve this. I've just picked up some books on how to really take good care of myself from the library again after months of denial. I hope I could keep this up.

Dealing with the uncertainty of the future, I could only force myself to be more vigilant, counting every given day as a blessing of what I've put effort in. 

...

Keeping track of the treatments, I've completed my 12 weekly PAC + Herceptin chemotherapy last week.

It has left me with really numbed fingers and toes, tight leg muscles, menopausal, high sensitivity of taste towards saltiness, rather puffy especially seen in the face. 

I need to complete the one year dose of Herceptin, therefore I'm completing it in the form of 3-weekly infusion now until about November this year.

3-monthly heart scan MUGA needs to be performed to monitor any heart deficiency side effects due to Herceptin.

Adding on, I'll be starting my anti-hormonal pills, Tamoxifen, next month for at least 5 years if not 10 years. A low possibility of endometrial cancer but heck, the survival rate is outweighing the side effects, as my oncologist explained. 

Lastly, I'll soon be getting a daily radiation therapy for 3 weeks too. Seems like a complete package of treatments to me, but I'm doing whatever it takes to keep living on!

Here's to many good years ahead! Happy birthday to me!