I am in charge of my cancer.  My cancer is not in charge of me.

Hope and hopelessness are both a choice, why not choose hope?

You may not be given long to live, but live as long as you are given.

With hope, there is significant power.

Even though I have cancer, I am not cancer.

Cancer is not a disease of which you are a victim. It is a process in which you can master.

I believe I am “cancering”.  It is a process I can master.

We can choose to be victors instead of victims.

Recurrence does not mean imminent death.

Choose to live life fully as long as we live.

We are living-not dying-of cancer.

I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle; I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.”
Mother Teresa

I have often thought of cancer as a schoolyard bully. He’s a bully with such a bad reputation that he no longer has to fight: just the mere thought of him could send people running. But all it takes is for a couple of people to stand up to the bully to diminish his reputation. That’s what a cancer success story does-it stares down the cancer bully. It shows that he can be beaten-and, believe me, he can!

Diagnosis is like going to sleep in your own bed and waking up in a foreign country where you don’t know the language or the customs and you have no maps telling you how to get home.

Hope must be there in the beginning for us to start.  It is a well from which we must continuously drink to refresh and sustain ourselves.

Hope costs nothing to give and is priceless to have.

Hope and positivity are two different things. You can have hope and not be positive every single day, but you can’t have a single moment of positivity without hope.

I learned very early to look at what surgery, chemo and radiation was going to do FOR me instead of TO me.  That made all the difference.

Try to take on one worry at a time and not obsess about the magnitude of your entire treatment.  Yesterday is gone and tomorrow is yet to be.  Today is more than enough for most of us to handle.

While fighting cancer, we often feel like pole-vaulters. We jump every day: it’s just that life keeps raising the height of the bar.

Some days you fight totally for others’ sake.

When I lost my hair, my eyelashes, my eyebrows, I felt like I was being erased.

There is more to us than what is written on a chart or read in a test result.

Paper gowns should be outlawed!

Humor is the best medicine. I explained to a friend what a TRAM flap procedure was; cutting a portion of my abdominal tissue and muscle and using it to reconstruct a new breast. Her reply? “So, when you get hungry, does your breast growl?”

Each and every day is a gift.  Some presents are just better than others.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Sometimes we do want to talk about it.

When cancer patients voice a concern, we don’t expect you to fix us. Sometimes we just want to voice our frustrations at the viciousness of this disease.

Often the best gifts we receive aren’t wrapped in pretty paper with bright and shiny bows. They come in the form of meals cooked or casseroles delivered. Or someone doing the laundry, dishes or vacuum. These are gifts of love and mean more than a store-bought sweater.

It has been said that the greatest gift that can be given is to lay down one’s life for another. Well, many of our loved ones’ lives have been laid down, put on hold, and set aside as we fight ours.  It is truly a gift beyond measure.

We don’t always get to choose which obstacles we face in life, but from the moment we were given free will it has always been our choice in how we deal with them.

Think positive whenever you can; when you can’t, call someone and have him or her do it for you.

The only thing that cancer ever claims is a tired, worn body and even that is a hollow victory, for it can never claim our soul.

I look at re-diagnosis as two fighters in the ring. At the sound of the first bell, neither can knock the other out.  But with each treatment (round), the cancer recuperates less and less, giving you a better chance to finally knock it senseless. A re-diagnosis just means that the cancer got up off the mat for one more round. Remember, it was the cancer that wore out the first time-not you.

Whether your cancer is blessedly in remission or whether your battle rages on, each and every day we are all survivors.

When survivors meet, a momentary flicker passes between the eyes, as if to say, “I know, I’ve been there, and I too have come out the other side.”