Cheerful things

A cancer diagnosis is, obviously, overwhelming. Life literally seems to stop as you struggle to cope with your new reality. But you need to move forward, do the work, and live your life. For me, striving to maintain a sense of normal, within my new reality, was key. Because facing death is normal. We will all do it.

It is kind of funny, but looking back there were some key ways I carved out my new normal. It helped me to have something happy in my day - something that cheered me when I looked at it. I had lovely friends give me some wonderfully, cheery things. A robin's egg blue scarf,  a classic Bill Cosby CD, happy books, beautiful flowers, cookies, hats and more hats (thank you to my lovely people)... they all gave me a moment of relief during my stressful days and that helped. My mom gave me a perky pink, yellow and white striped cosmetics bag to store all my drugs. Her rationale was that it would make it hard to lose. In reality, it was just nice to associate cheerful colours with my cancer treatment.

So along that line, if you are facing a cancer diagnosis or love someone who is, I highly recommend bringing cheerful things into your daily routine. It doesn't need to be big or expensive. My Bunny gave me "baby" rocks and Boomer brought me "just because" cuddles.

Along that line, in an effort to encourage my friends to drink more green tea, I'm thinking about this for Christmas. It is made by a company called Monkey Business and available to purchase from Giftlab in the UK. Because it isn't just us cancer kids that need cheering up now and then. :-)