Wendy Harpham on Healthy Survivorship

The Struggle to Choose Life

A girlfriend of mine is struggling today, the anniversary of the loss of a love. I'm reminded of an ancient prayer: Please don't let me die before I die. For me, the greatest way to honor the memory of a loved one is to embrace life despite the loss.

Whether or not the significance of this date as an anniversary comes to my friend's mind is beyond her control. Hope lies in how she responds.

Stepping up to Healthy Survivorship

Three steps lead to Healthy Survivorship: knowledge, hope and action.

Step One: Knowledge. Unlike learning how to tie one's shoes, learning how to be a Healthy Survivor is a never-ending study session. Why? Because knowledge about preventing, diagnosing and treating medical problems is evolving. Because bodies are aging. Because one's understanding of how to deal with stress, change and loss - as well as with relaxation, sameness and gain - grows with each experience.

Plugging into SuperSibs!

What happens if you have a lovely lamp and a working electrical outlet, but the lamp is not plugged in? Nothing. But put the lamp's plug in the outlet and - voila! - you have beautiful light that helps you see. That's the image that comes to mind whenever I learn about excellent survivorship resources.

Sea Legs of Survivorship

"I know this sounds strange, but all I want is a normal life." My favorite refrigerator magnet captured my longing to use adjectives such as "uneventful" or "boring" when describing my day.

Doctors: Giving or Taking Orders?

What should intelligent, well-motivated patients do when their physicians refuse to prescribe what these patients believe is the best treatment? When I hear patients complaining, I urge them to find out why.

Hope Begins in the Dark

I expected to blog about Jamie Reno's new book, Hope Begins in the Dark, but only after I'd finished reading it. I am enjoying the short pieces by a wide variety of lymphoma survivors too much to wait. Reno, an acclaimed Newsweek journalist, singer-songwriter and lymphoma survivor believed a book that shared stories of survivors would be inspiring and informative to people just starting out or struggling with their cancer journey.

The Tragedy of False Hope

Jerry Adler's piece, No Way to Treat the Dying, in Newsweek touches on a sensitive topic: false hope. Adler shares the heartbreak of a widower whose wife died of metastatic cancer. After her oncologists told her they couldn't cure her disease, she underwent treatment by an alternative practitioner who offered her the hope of cure.

Randy Pausch, A Model Healthy Survivor

If you haven't seen the video, "The Last Lecture" by Professor Randy Pausch, try to carve out 75 minutes from your schedule to hear what this model Healthy Survivor has to say about life.