You Are Not Alone

How a community helps people face cancer.

When facing cancer, or anything else difficult in life, it is critical that we believe we are not alone.

There is something scary and disheartening about facing life’s struggles and triumphs by ourselves. But walking through life with others can give us immense strength and help.

The above video, shares the perspective about walking through cancer with others from three cancer survivors and also a medical doctor. They all, through different perspectives and experiences, want you to know the same encouraging truth: you are not alone!

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Video Transcript:

Jill:

You are not alone and I think that’s probably the… I don’t know, a pretty big takeaway from this for me is I can’t even tell you the number of people that have helped me through this journey. Not even just the medical people I couldn’t even name all of their names but friends, family, people that I haven’t even known. People that have supported research, all of those people that are behind the scenes. There are people there that will lift you through and carry you through this journey, and you’re not alone.

Shelly:

There are people I go to church with that are suffering cancer diagnosis, you don’t have to really look far to find somebody who’s dealt with cancer, and there they are and they’re living their lives.

I think one of my epiphany moments was with one of my doctors when I was getting the down low on everything that was happening, and I started to… all these thoughts raced through my head like 100 miles an hour anywhere from dying to how am I going to make my car payment, or how am I going to make my house payment? All the stuff, you think everything’s going to come crashing down, and my doctor really helped and she said, “No, no, none of that will happen. You will live your life and we will treat you, and if you go to work, if you feel good, and you stay home if you don’t.”

She just had me put it in just taking a day at a time, don’t go a year, don’t go six months down the road, just you’re fine where you are. Just know we got you and you’re strong and you can do this.

Dr. Williams:

I think every day, we in the cancer community, and I don’t care if you’re a patient, if you’re an advocate, you’re a treatment provider, you’re a family member, we’re all battling this every day.

You’re not in this alone, there are so many people out there that care about how you do, that pray for you, that are working diligently night and day to make sure that the outcomes that we have for you or your loved one or your family member or someone that you know, it’s as good as it possibly can be.

Don’t lose faith, even the bleakest of times, they may seem bleak, but they may have a good outcome. If they don’t, understand very clearly that we did our best, that you did your best, and that we’ll have to continue to go back and do it again tomorrow.

Casey:

I just want to say that you’re not alone, you’re not alone, there’s so many of us that you feel why me and why did God choose this path for me? What did I do? You look back at your life and think, “Could I have made that choice? Could I have done this differently?”

But it affects so, so many of us. Don’t give up, don’t get discouraged with what doctors tell you, get a second, third, fourth, fifth opinion if you need to because we were told by one oncologist that is a friend of ours that sometimes you just have to try this and then try this and try this and try this until you stumble upon that one thing that works for you. And what works for you may not work for the next person and vice versa, so sometimes it takes trying several things. Don’t give up if the first course of treatment doesn’t pan out or the second course of treatment doesn’t work, keep trying different things and searching for different options.

Reach out to others

Really reach out to people, it’s easy to close yourself off and wallow, and a good friend of mine said that, “It’s okay to be in that place but don’t let yourself stay there.” I really remind myself of that too when I’m having a pity party once in a while, I’ll say, “Okay, that’s done, now I’m good. Now I’m going to rock out to some Christian music and dance around with my daughter and go on with my day,” and just keep doing the stuff that you love to do. If it’s music or exercising or traveling or whatever, still do as much as you can that makes you happy and makes you feel like yourself.