Ladies,
I wanted to share my top 10 reasons why Inspire, the online support group, has been such a blessing to me!
10. I can come here 24-7 and won’t have to wake anyone up or scare anyone because it’s the wee, small hours of the morning and I need some input. (Plus, I don’t have to wait until morning when chemo brain has hit and go, “Hey, what was that question I really needed help with?”)
9. I can get a wide variety of opinions on anything related to ovca (and some things that aren’t).
8. I can find out whether my experiences are entirely normal and how to cope with them or whether I’m “weirding out” and need to get a grip on things.
7. I can express my fears and concerns and know that y’all know I’m not going to wallow in them, just need to get them off my chest, so I can take that deep breath, put on my game face and keep going.
6. So far, I haven’t found a single aspect of surviving ovarian cancer that at least one other person hasn’t experienced.
5. I can learn the different ways people react to various treatments–so much easier to understand than statistics or than seeing something in a list of side effects.
4. You give me hints on coping with long-lasting side effects that I never got from my oncology staff. I took chemo during the summer and fall. I guess they were short-staffed or super-busy, because most of you received much more information or help with side effects than I did. I just wish I’d come here while I was going through chemo instead of a few months later!
3. You let me know when to tell my medical experts about something going on in my body, and when it’s just one of those things everybody goes through.
2. You welcome and comfort each other and me.
1. You get it, you really, really get what it’s like to have/have had ovarian cancer!
Many thanks to each of you. God bless us, every one!
(O.K. I’ve been teaching my sixth grade language art students about plagarism. Let me give credit for my last sentence above to Mr. Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol!)
- Verlinda
To join the Inspire online support community, visit http://www.inspire.com/groups/alliance-ovarian-cancer/
