Hey, everybody! Welcome to my page! My name is Ellen and I'm a 30 year old cancer survivor! I was diagnosed in 1997 with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. That was a very rough time in my life, to say the least! The only way that I was able to cope with my fear of death and sickness was through prayer and humor. Since I have overcome my illness, it's been my greatest desire to help other people smile through the pain! I know that laughter is not a readily accessible resource when you are struggling with a deadly disease but what I do know is.....laughter is indeed the best medicine!
I haven't always found it easy to laugh at myself and the bad situations that I sometimes find myself in! There was a time when it would ruin my whole day if I couldn't get my hair to do anything and my make-up didn't look just right. Thanks to cancer and chemotherapy, I lost all my hair and make-up never did look right! That's when I finally realized that life isn't about how "together" you look....it's how together you are inside that counts!
So, if you could use a good laugh and a good lesson in learning to laugh at yourself....then pull up a chair and get comfortable! If you aren't sure you can laugh at yourself just yet, that's okay! I've included some of my "bald" pics....feel free to laugh at me! But whatever you do, before you leave this page, laugh at least one really good time. If you don't, then my efforts have all been in vain!
Cancer!
Ouch! The word "cancer" alone used to send chills up my spine. I lost one of my favorite uncles to cancer when I was still very young. I had never known tragedy like I understood it at his funeral! I loved this man dearly and I was sure that I would never know pain like that again. Oh, how wrong I was!
At the tender age of 16, I found out what real tragedy was all about. My father was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, a form of lung cancer. He was only sick for six months when the cancer claimed his life! During that short time, I came to know what pain and grief were truly about! I watched my father, a normally strong and healthy man, deteriorate into a small, feeble little man. This devastating disease took the life of the one man that I thought was untouchable!!!
My daddy's death, March 3, 1986, was extremely hard on me. I suppose that I had been in some sort of denial during his illness. Yes, I knew the doctors had said there was no way for him to survive this...but still, in the back of my mind, I thought there was nothing my daddy couldn't do!
This man had taught me so much in my childhood! He taught me to play sports, taught me how to fish (or at least he tried), and he taught me how to drive! He was the kind of man who was always there for his kids! He was at every ballgame, every baton recital, he helped me with my homework...he was a great man! I had learned so much from him but never would I learn as much as the lesson he taught me during his illness!
Daddy was a very sick man but you never really would have known that by talking to him! For the sake of his children and his wife, Daddy played the same role he always had in all of our lives! He was funny...always had a joke or a sarcastic comment! He was brave.....he never gave into the pain he felt! He wanted to spare us as much pain as he possibly could! And, of course, as a typical man, when he was in severe pain.....he was downright whiny! In short, even through a severe terminal illness....he was still Daddy!
There was no way I could have known at the age of sixteen but the lessons Daddy taught me through his illness would carry me through my own. The ability to find humor in a terrible situation is something that our entire family has always had! It was all reinforced through Daddy's sickness and I think it's something that will stay with us forever...at least I hope it will!!!
My Own Diagnosis: Cancer!
By the time I was twenty-eight years old, I was married with three children! I had a thyroid disease that was diagnosed at the age of fourteen and until that year it had been only a minor inconvenience! I began to have trouble swallowing and breathing past the defective gland so I consulted a surgeon. I had the thyroid removed and was told that everything looked pretty good. There didn't appear to be any cancerous tissue so, as far as I knew when I left the hospital, it was with a clean bill of health! Sure I had a few staples and some pain...but I was rid of the bum thyroid and I was sure that my life was about to drastically improve! Oh, boy....wrong again!
Since I was recovering so well, my mom, sister and I decided to pack up our stuff and my kids and go for a two week vacation at my brother's in Arizona! What started out as a wonderful vacation soon turned into my worst nightmare! On the second day of our visit, my husband, who had stayed behind to work, called to tell us that my surgeon had called and wanted to speak with me. My sister, Lori, made a joke that the doctor had lost his watch and was wondering if he'd stapled it into my neck! We all had a good laugh over that but the seriousness of the situation took over. We all knew that the pathology report had come back and the news was not good! Surgeons are busy professionals....they don't personally call patients just to check insurance information.
It was too late to call so we all spent a sleepless night awaiting the dreadful call. Finally it was morning and time to get it over with. When the surgeon came on the line, he quickly informed me that pathology reports had shown the presence of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. I had no idea what that meant but what I did know was that it meant I had cancer! I could hear the surgeon spouting off a long list of medical terms, that even in my right mind I wouldn't have understood, he explained to me that he would set up an appointment for me with an oncologist. I hurriedly explained to him that he needed to give me a couple of days because I was in Arizona on vacation. He told me there was no hurry and to stay and enjoy my vacation! Yeah right!!! Can't think of a better way to spoil a vacation than by telling me that I have a disease that kills and debilitates people daily! Needless to say, I packed my stuff and we headed back to Georgia as soon as we could!
Treatment Plan and Prognosis!
Once back in Georgia, I called and made the first possible appointment with the oncologist! Of course, specialists can't just work you in so I had to wait 8 days! What fun those days were! First there were tears, followed by denial, followed by tears, followed by acceptance to some degree, followed by more tears, followed by determination to beat this disease, followed by more tears! Oh, did I mention there were tears??? I thought I would surely drown in a river of my own tears before cancer could ever kill me!
I received several offers from people willing to go with me to see the oncologist for the first time. I was accepting nobody's offer but my mom's! There was no way I was going to walk in there and let some man I've never met hand me what I considered to be the equivalent of a death sentence, without the woman who brought me into this world there for support! It's a good thing Mama was willing to go with me because I'm not sure I would have given her a choice! After all, I figured she owed it to me....if she hadn't given birth to me, I wouldn't have been in this mess!
Mama did go with me that day and we faced the grim news side by side! Dr. Simpson, my oncologist, told me that I had a very aggressive form of cancer. He told me that he had discussed it with a team of medical doctors and they all agreed that with aggressive treatment, I had a 90% chance of not only surviving it....but of beating it completely! He also said that given my young age and general health, I would only have to take 4 of the usual 8 chemotherapy treatments! I suppose that was meant to be uplifting but it creates the same enthusiasm as being told that you only have to have half of a labotomy!
At any rate, I trusted this doctor completely. Something in his demeanor settled my nerves and earned my trust and respect. If he was confident he could get rid of this, then I had faith in him. Of course, it wasn't like I had several other people offering to cure me!
He explained a little about the drugs that they would be using on me and he informed me that I would need a medi-port. The "port" was surgically implanted into my chest much like a pacemaker. It's purpose was to receive the injected chemotherapy and carry it to an artery large enough to handle all of the toxic medication! That's right....chemotherapy drugs are very toxic! He explained that if the drugs were injected into the veins in my arm that they were so toxic that they would destroy the small veins on contact! And this was supposed to make me well???
The Fun Begins!
I had the port implanted and the following day, I went for my first chemotherapy treatment. I'm not sure how it is in every facility but in this particular one, the chemo room is a large common area where everyone goes to take chemo together. Sort of a group meeting! What a way to meet people! We just opened up our blouses, rolled up our sleeves and chatted about our cancer, the weather, etc. while two of the sweetest nurses pumped toxins into our bodies! It really was a great experience! What human nature can't overcome, cancer does! When you are in the room for a chemo treatment, you don't really notice how old someone is, how much money and power they have, what kind of clothes they wear! What you do know is that you all may come from different walks of life but by one dangerous thread, you are all the same! You all have cancer.....and you're all scared!
I used this time, as much as possible,to laugh and joke with my fellow cancer patients. During the battle with cancer, I learned that it doesn't matter whether or not you have a year, a month, a day, or a lifetime left to live.....you always need love, kindness, affection, and even humor. Let me pause here to say that Rome Hematology/Oncology has the best staff to attend to all those needs! Donna and Paige, my chemo nurses, kept us all laughing and having a good time. To accomplish that while they are poisoning your system is not an easy task, I'm sure. But these two ladies are excellent at what they do and I am thrilled to have been given the chance to get to know them!
Living Through Chemotherapy!
No where is it written, or even spoken that chemotherapy is easy! I know, because believe me, I've looked! It is a terrible means to a hopefully wonderful end! Some forms of chemo, I've been told, are not quite so bad...you don't lose your hair, you aren't always nauseated, and you don't have constant bone pain. Never have I been one to take the easy road so, of course, I had to have the kind of cancer that requires the really powerful stuff! However, after my first chemo treatment, I felt fine. I was beginning to think that maybe they had mistakenly told me that I would need this nausea medication! Hey, I thought....chemo's really not so bad! Oh, boy....wrong again!!!
Four hours after my treatment, I realized that they were not mistaken at all! In fact, I was pretty sure they had left out a few things! Like for instance, the little known fact that, the way to get rid of cancer is to make you so sick to your stomach that you purge all of your much needed organs and miscellaneous other body parts from your body out through your mouth! This way, there is nothing left in there so where would the cancer hide??? See....these doctors do know what they are doing! I'm sure there is a more technical reason for injecting you with all these sickening drugs....but at the time,with my head hanging over the toilet, that one seemed the most likely!
A week after the first treatment, I was beginning to feel a little more human. I thought life was returning to some sense of normalcy.....here we go...say it with me....wrong again! On the seventh day after the first treatment, I brushed my hair only to find that it didn't want to be styled...it wanted to let go! And let go, it did! I was so amazed at the amount of hair that falls out at one time that I had to call my sister. I knew that if anyone would appreciate the chance to pull all my hair out, it would be Lori! She'd been threatening to do it for years anyway, so I thought, here's her chance. As I figured, within a matter of minutes, Lori was ringing my doorbell to offer her hair pulling services! What a gal, huh?
Lori and I have always enjoyed the same sick sense of humor. We find humor in any number of morbid things. This, of course, had to be the ultimate. We tugged and tugged and kept bringing back hands completely full of hair that had just decided to let go! We stuffed all of my hair into a grocery bag and saved it! My mom said she would sew it all onto a cap and make a wig for me! We never got around to doing the wig....but the bag of hair is still in my closet! I'm a sentimental gal...what can I say?
Even as much fun as we had that night, I learned a valuable lesson...I think we all did! We all came to the decision that whatever happened from that moment on, we'd make the best of it! We made up our minds to have as much fun with this as possible and keep our spirits up. Everyone knows, or at least should, that a positive attitude and a strong spirit are the best defense against any disease! We vowed to have fun...and that's exactly what we did!
As a mother of three small children, I didn't have much time to lie around and wallow in self-pity and despair. I had ballgames to keep me busy and practices to attend! The active lives of my children are what dragged me out of bed on days that I just didn't think I had the strength to stand. I am proud to say that I was fortunate enough to never be too sick to be at every game...all the practices too! I did my best to follow my dad's example and allow my children to carry on with their lives just as they had before I was sick! What I didn't know was, what I thought was the best thing for them, also happened to be the best thing for me! Even now, I'm still learning!
Smile....It's My Last Chemo!
Finally.....chemo was almost over! After three months of being dreadfully sick, I had one more treatment to go! As a family, we all decided that this chemo treatment had to go out with a bang! I agreed to let my sister decorate my bald head with an eyeliner pencil! She drew a large smiley face right on top of my head! Around the smiley face was written....Smile, It's my last chemo! She then drew arrows pointing to where my hairline would have been and wrote the word "hairline" above it! She also drew an arrow pointing to each ear with the word "ear" written above it! As a final thought, she carefully lettered the words "Bald is Beautiful" on the very back of my head!
My Aunt Mary was the one who would be taking me for my final treatment! Bless her heart! She has always been a supportive part of my life. In fact, when she first found out that I would be having chemotherapy and losing my hair, she gave me the money to purchase a beautiful wig! I did buy the wig but I found it very hot, itchy, and totally uncomfortable. I wore the wig only once! It was a very close match to the style, length, and color of my own hair and it really looked great on me. But as beautiful as it was, it wasn't my own hair and I couldn't help but feel that I was only playing dress up. I put the wig in my closet beside my real hair....and it remains there to this day.
At any rate, Aunt Mary had volunteered to take me for my last chemo treatment, and I was afraid that my decorative head would be embarassing to her. To the contrary! She loved it! We had so much fun watching people in passing cars staring at my head! When we arrived at the clinic, the elderly patients that I so often shared the chemo room with broke out into hysterical laughter! These poor souls, who were so riddled with disease that they sometimes couldn't get themselves dressed in the morning, broke out in full belly laughs! I had finally done what I'd set out to do....I'd made someone's day brighter by making the best out of a bad situation!
Aunt Mary and I had so much fun that day. It's amazing what a smile can do to transform the tired, drawn faces of people who are terminally ill...and a good laugh can, at least temporarily, repair the damage done to a soul that's been suffering for a very long time! The lesson I learned that day is that we should never pass up the chance to make people feel better. Whatever you have to share, give it freely!
Even if it's only the ability to laugh at yourself and allow others to share in that!
My Life Today and Who's to Thank for It!
Since I was able to create this page, I guess it's obvious that I'm still around! For whatever reason, the good Lord has seen fit to spare me for a while longer! Maybe His reason is so that I may share my story with you! Whatever the reason, I believe that this story is a testament to what love, humor, and belief in the Almighty can do for us all!
I'm doing very well, in fact, I'm doing even better than before now! My health is very good! My hair grew back but the cancer didn't! YEA! I am currently 5 months pregnant and on top of the world! Check back in January 2000 for pics of the new baby!!!
Just to update you all, my husband and I are no longer together....he has his own demons to fight and I pray daily that he'll be successful in that battle! Even though we are no longer together, Kevin, I truly thank you for helping through the most difficult time of my life! I wish I could have helped you through yours! Best of luck to you in your battle...I'm always praying for you!
God has sent me the most incredibly sweet and loving man to share my life with! Luis wasn't with me through my cancer survival but he's here with me now to help me through whatever comes my way. If not for him, I would never have been able to share my story with you. He has shown me complete love and support and my heart will be with him always! There is a link to our homepage at the bottom and I hope that you will visit that page too! It's an online love story...and it tells all about how we met! Baby, thank you for all that you do and for being patient while teaching me how to make this page! LOL I love you with all my heart and soul! I can't wait until our baby is born so that our family will be complete!
My kids are still the reason I get up every morning! They never have let me sleep! LOL Seriously, without those three children, my life would be pointless! Kids, I love you all and you'll always be my babies! Stay sweet.....I love you too much!
My sister, Lori and my brother, Tim, are in Arizona with my two precious nephews, Jay and T.J.! I love you all so much and I could never have made it without you! Miss you bunches!
My mother and my two favorite aunts, Mary and Patty....thank you all for everything! There is no way I could have gotten through the hard times without you all there to give me your love and support! I love you all!
I also have to give many thanks to my ex-husband, the father of my children, and his wife! Without the helping hands and support of these two, I would never have been able to rest as much as I needed. Often times in a divorce and subsequent re-marriages, there is a rift between both parties. Though we have had our ups and downs in the beginning, we have all pulled together to make life easier on our children! Sometimes we just faked it till we made it, but through the years, we have all become very close and we get along wonderfully now. I can honestly say that I have a great love and respect for both of them. They made life so much easier for my kids and myself through this difficult time and they still are a great source of help and comfort to me to this day. I have the best ex-husband in the world! His child support is always on time and he never misses a chance to spend time with his kids! His wife has embraced the role of step-mother in such a way that I never have to worry when my kids are there for the weekend! She has two beautiful and loving boys of her own and they are very precious to me as well. We are one big happy family and for that I am forever grateful! Bubba, Rhonda, Austin, and Houston....you all mean so very much to me and I'm glad that you are a part of my life! I love you all!
I would like to say a BIG thank you to everyone at Rome Hematology/Oncology! You are the most precious and capable staff I have ever had the good fortune to come across! If not for you, I sure wouldn't have been here to make this page! Thanks for all the laughs and most of all....for getting rid of the cancer! Keep up the good work....you don't know how appreciated you all are! Dr. Simpson, Maria, Donna, Paige, Debbie, and Kathy.....you are without a doubt the most special people and are all perfectly suited for your profession!!! I love you all!
And last, but certainly not least, I thank God for all that He has done for me! Without His blessings, I never would have learned all that I have! He has made me all the good things that I am today...and He forgives me for all the things I do wrong! He is my Savior, my Peace, and my Light! He deserves all the praise, honor, and glory that we can give Him!
Dedications!
I dedicate this page to all those who suffer through this horrible disease! For all of you who may be going through this, my prayers are with you! Stay strong-willed and positive! When you get tired, nail your disease to the foot of the cross.....only Jesus can ease your suffering! My prayers are with you all! If you need or want to talk, just e-mail me!
This page is in honor of my father and two uncles who passed on before me. They all three suffered through this terrible disease, but each with a smile on their faces! These incredibly brave men were truly an inspiration to me and to all who knew them! I know you are all looking down as I'm doing this and I know in some way you're proud of me! I love and miss you all! Until we meet again....
Back to the Laughs!
Since all of you have taken the time to read this page, I think it's only fair to give you a chance to share in the experience of laughter! Below you will find a lot of small pictures called thumbnails! If you click on these thumbnails, you will see an enlarged version of that pic. Hit the back button on your browser to return to this page so that you may view all of the pics! I hope you enjoy viewing these pics and may it help someone out there overcome the awkwardness of being bald! After all, it's not like you're naked....you just don't happen to have any hair! Smile...with any luck, the hair will grow back....but the cancer won't! Have fun and take care! After viewing the pics, please take a moment to sign my guestbook or send me an e-mail! I'd love to hear from you!
Thanks for bearing with me through my story! If you'd like to share yours with me, e-mail me and we'll chat! And as Jerry Springer would say, "Until next time....take care of yourselves....and each other!"
On with the pics!!!
