Giving Back/Reaching Out/Sharing My Story, Part 4 – Helping Others Through Their Own Treatments: Trained Friends for Life – Peer Mentor/Navigator

Over the past couple of years, I have been in the process of finding a program through which I could “Give Back” with my new skills and talents of helping others through their own treatments.  In March of 2017, I found an official mentoring program for my then amateur efforts to help others going through chemo and other cancer related angst.  It was late that month that my nurse navigator, Julia, at Frankfort Regional Medical Center put me in contact with Friends For Life Cancer Support Network.  Life kept happening, over and over again, slowing the process.  That was the year of fingernail infections and C.diff, death of my grandfather, time really well spent with my grandmother, and sending my youngest off to Kindergarten.  It took me 7 months to complete a detailed but easy application.  Finally in mid-November I submitted my application, received a request for an in-person or over the phone interview, and then completed the in-person interview with Judy and Nicole (both amazing women).  I viewed the online training videos, then completed the in-person Volunteer Training in March of 2018.  In 2016, I was referred to Friends for Life.

I completed the application process in November of 2017, once I was more stable and felt I could take on a heavier more professional mentoring role. I was interviewed and screened, then invited to become a Peer Navigator/Peer Mentor. I completed training in Louisville with the March 2018 class.

I have also been able to be a reference for a couple of friends who felt they could help as well:

Your friend recently participated in online training to become a Friend for Life Cancer Support Network Peer Navigator. In that role, your friend will serve as an empathic, compassionate sounding board, encouraging others currently facing a cancer diagnosis similar to what your friend experienced.

The ideal Peer Navigator is someone who is self-motivated and responsible, an attentive listener who is considerate and respectful of others. We require prospective volunteers to complete a professionally directed training program before undertaking their role. Peer Navigators function largely on their own, with minimal direct supervision.

With these points in mind, would you please complete and return the enclosed “Personal Character Reference” at your earliest convenience? Your response is an essential part of our consideration.

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Fast forward a couple of years….sorry, I haven’t been visiting my blog much in the last year. Things with family became the priority, they always are, but now I am healed and physically healthy enough to get back to “normal”. The chaos of a mother of 5 has resumed.

I am now serving as a trained Friend For Life Cancer Support Network, Peer Navigator and Mentor. I have been assigned to several women over the past couple of years. Most of them within the last year and a half since my own DIEP flap reconstruction. It seems I am the authority within the Network on this as well as coping through reconstruction, failed reconstruction, and then moving forward after that. This reminds me of those statements some of us tell ourselves, “Never in my life did I think I would ever be THE go to person for…”. It has been extremely fulfilling to be able to Make CANCER help me GIVE to others. Even better, it has been emotionally and spiritually healing to be able to serve others in these ways. Using my God-given talents and my 2 years of college education, combined with the wonderful training provided by my FFL leaders, to guide and counsel with others coming up to this trial next.

I have also found joy in doing data entry in office for the FFL staff on occasion. I look forward to each of our training sessions and every opportunity I get to spread the word about FFL to those in my geographical area.

I have been privileged to speak to University of Kentucky 1st year medical students, present information at a table during the pre-party at Party in Pink at Paristown, set out brochures/flyers at several of my own physicians offices, and this coming week I will be representing FFL and LBBC at my own local library for an event I have planned there. Next week, I will be involved in an annual session with University of Louisville medical students. FFL Volunteers share the realities of coping with cancer diagnosis and treatment – physical, emotional and practical issues – with students and faculty mentors. The intent is to encourage empathy, explore effective patient-physician communication and ultimately, overall quality of care. Then in March, comes the yearly live training session for new and current FFL volunteers.

So, yeah, I am helping where and when and how I can! And loving every minute of it. If you have been a cancer patient or caregiver to a cancer patient and you feel like you could handle being a listening ear and support for another walking in those same shoes, please give me a shout or follow the link above to FFL’s website and sign up. We are always looking for more volunteers, the more we have the more closely matched each support seeker can be. All types/stages of Cancer, all localities, one-to-one mentoring by phone, text, email, or messenger. If you are in those shoes right now and want a peer navigator and mentor, same, reach out to me or the FFL staff through the link above.

Presentation – Feb. 6th at Anderson Public Library

I’ve been working on the next stage of life after Cancer again…Giving Back/Reaching Out/Sharing My Story, Part 5 – Helping Others Through Their Own Journey:

So, now that I’m mostly healed from my latest reconstruction venture, and my life at 3 years out from Cancer and Chemo has become more “normal”, I’ve had more time to focus on my desires to Give Back/Reach Out/Share My Story. Well, maybe not more time per say, but more drive to get back to it.I have attended a few classes and seminars provided by Living Beyond Breast Cancer, Kentucky Cancer Program, The Brown Cancer Center, Baptist Health Lexington, and Friends For Life Cancer Support Network. I have been doing more mentoring, mostly for women about to go through DIEP flap reconstruction, but also still helping others struggling through the whole process of Cancer itself. I have also been pondering and looking into more or better ways of sharing my story with the intent to help others through their very hard thing with a view from someone else who has been through a similar hard thing.In the process, I have used the training I received from my callings (positions in certain auxillaries at church), training for Mentors from Friends For Life Cancer Support Network, and knowledge I gleaned and apply to my daily life from my schooling in psychology/social work. But most importantly, I have used alot of prayer and listening, alot of being “…willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light…,” and being “…willing to mourn with those that mourn…”(Mosiah 18:8-9). Not so easy when you have your own “crap” to deal with, right? Well, I have been so amazingly blessed in my life. So many things of these health-wise things I haven’t had to experience until now. So blessed with amazing people in my life who have been right there for me, when and if, I needed them. Blessed to have been given a set of standards, personality traits, and talents that have helped me get through this thing called Cancer and been able to come out the other side rarin’ to go help others. How could I not be willing?!?!?During one of those classes in April, my classmates (all Breast Cancer survivors) and I were presented with the opportunity to apply to the Living Beyond Breast Cancer Young Advocate Program. What exactly is that? Well here it is from their own website Young Advocate Program. I applied, was chosen to be interviewed (like a job interview!), then came the word in the last week of May…I had been chosen as one of 30 out of the 100+ that applied to become a part of this year’s class of new LBBC Young Advocates!!! So, today I’m on a plane to Philadelphia PA, heading to my training weekend!

The Gift of Friends with experience and My run-in with C.Diff…

Was this really only 2 years ago! It seems a lifetime away. I still have a lowered immune system but it gets better and better each month. Today, I’m caring for my 7 year old with Strep throat, and I have the luxury of being more worried about him and his comfort than my own health.

Dalynn's Road to Recovery

Shew!!! This life is definitely a rollercoaster for sure.  So my last post was all good stuff, right?  Well, late that night I came down with the stomach virus my kiddos have been going through.  I really thought I had already had it the prior week, and in all reality I might have just gotten it a second time around.  I was so sick.  BUT, I remember thinking and even telling Shawn and Julia, “its not anywhere near as bad as that time I got it last year while on Chemo…yeah, that one was bad!!!”  All that being said, the south end portion of this virus was lasting too long for a normal stomach virus, and was acting a bit different as well.  I just figured it had something to do with my low White Blood Cell counts, making my body take longer to bounce back from it.  I wasn’t…

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Magnifying My Humble Offerings

A portion of the home-centered study material provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints touched my heart in a very poignant way today:

Matthew 14:16–21; Mark 6:33–44; John 6:5–14

The Savior can magnify my humble offerings to accomplish His purposes.

Have you ever felt inadequate to meet all the needs you see around you—in your home, in your relationships, or in society? Jesus’s disciples must have felt inadequate when He asked them to feed over five thousand hungry people (see Matthew 14:21) when there were only five loaves of bread and two fish available. As you read about the miracle that happened next, ponder how God might use your humble offerings of service to bless those around you. How might He magnify your efforts as you serve in the Church? Consider this statement from President James E. Faust: “Many nameless people with gifts equal only to five loaves and two small fishes magnify their callings and serve without attention or recognition, feeding literally thousands” (“Five Loaves and Two Fishes,” Ensign, May 1994, 5).

I was very overwhelmed, humbled, blessed, appreciative, and scared to receive not one but three new FFL matches this week.  I have grown to love this peer mentoring group I became an official part of last year.  I have participated in small ways and in a couple of significant ways with early year medical student interviews, but had not been paired with any actual support seekers through the main system.  I was confused by this…I have been free-lancing in my own community and my own circle of friends and family since 2016, where were all those people outside of that circle needing someone to walk along side them as “someone who has been there before”, the ones that need my specific experiences?

Those were my thoughts until I had my surgery in December.  Since then, I’ve been a bit overwhelmed and busy with my own surgical recovery again, my husband’s transition into a new job, our transition to a new type of medical insurance and a new way of budgeting and saving and planning with a better income, having the worst year ever of illness in our three school age boys (at least one kiddo home for at least one day each week, since January, I think they have had everything going around this year at least once, except Strep Throat, but including both Flu A and B), my own severe weird upper respiratory infection which included a daily sinus-triggered migraine, and then all the regular daily things that are a life as a Mom and wife.  Things began to ease up a bit a couple weeks ago and I began to feel the pull again, the draw towards reaching out to my dear Breast Cancer sisters.  The yearning to take my trials and make them help someone else to have a less-traumatic experience, a more educated and team/peer assisted path, a path with friends and support to keep the majority of the lonesomeness and despair at bay.  So, I started answering questions that some of my DIEP sisters posted on the FB support groups I’ve been a part of.   I updated my own history profile with FFL to include my failed implant experience and my new DIEP reconstruction. I started actively championing Friends For Life Cancer Support Network, pushing it out to these ladies who were part of these awesome FB support groups. The ones who obviously yearned for more, a one on one Cancer Friend, for lack of a better phrase.  It was becoming increasingly more obvious to me just how many people had not been told of the existence of resources like this, mostly from the lack of knowledge from their healthcare team, but sometimes because of the lack of understanding of how important peers are even in the health care side of our lives.  Even through all those steps I took, the whispering discontent of not having a match yet came back.  Grrrrr.  I hate that discontented whisper, it is not a good thing or feeling by any means.  I pushed it down, telling myself to be patient; because, lets face it, I know and love the people who make those matches, and I KNOW they have faith in each of their vetted and trained volunteers, including me.  No sooner than I managed to wrangle those demons in myself, I received an email.  A BC sister who was about to go through her own Mastectomy with DIEP Reconstruction, had reached out to FFL.  I was the closest match.  I accepted the assignment excitedly, but nervously.  Three days later, I received two more matches within hours of each other.  Wow!!!!  The ladies at FFL advised me to not worry if I needed to say no to the next two, if it was too overwhelming they would find other matches as close as possible, but I had the most in common.  I was suddenly super nervous about my first matches since I joined the network, suddenly worried that I would say the wrong things, cause more stress in their journeys, etc.  After all, I went through my mastectomy and DIEP separately, not all at the same time as these ladies would.  I prayed about it before I sent my reply, confirmation came.  If I accepted the assignment that was prompted through this group of people I trusted to make the best matches (people who I felt have been inspired by God all along), I would be given the words and thoughts these women needed to hear.  Wow, just wow!  How humbling is that!!!!  And awesome at the same time.  A little person like me, could turn my thoughts and experiences into something that could have such a HUGE impact on someone else’s life, in such a desperate situation in their lives.   Humbling… Not me, only God could do that, only Our Heavenly Father could know, truly KNOW, what these ladies need and use me and my chemo-brain-addled mind to carry it out.  I accepted, and have been blessed to help these ladies.

Now, back to the study material I mentioned at the beginning of this post:

The Savior can magnify my humble offerings to accomplish His purposes.

Just as God did for Jesus and the disciples in Mark 6:33-44, He can multiply – magnify/make better and more meaningful our “bread and fishes” (offerings), our experiences and our desire to help others around us, into something that “feeds thousands” (touches the lives and hearts of those in need).

I know that Our Heavenly Father does NOT want us to go through hard things alone!  I feel that one of His purposes is to bring us together in love and support of each other.  To give us comfort in our times of need, sorrow, hurt, and despair.  He could do it on His own, but what better way to teach us to become better ourselves and to become more like Him than to let us serve each other.  Let us discover the small things that we have within us that can be magnified in and through our strivings to be as His Son, The Savior, Jesus Christ.

No matter what religion or school of thought you are, YOU can do good within your own sphere of influence.  Don’t be overwhelmed.  Trust that you and those around you CAN be a power for good.  Use your own personal experiences to help “lift where you are”.  You can’t tell people how to treat something medically if you aren’t a doctor, but you sure can lift and support friends and family and sometimes strangers through hard times.  You have something within you that someone NEEDS!  You can bless the lives of others!  Find your “offering” and let God and the Love of the Savior “magnify it”.

Why the trauma of cancer doesn’t end after treatment

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10156932666182170&id=58186132169&sfnsn=mo

Sisterhood of Traveling Mastectomy Products – STOMP

https://www.facebook.com/groups/387907192003519/?ref=share

Setting up the Christmas tree, reading more scriptures, cleaning carpets, and other odds and ends…one week from surgery day

I’ve had a full morning of odds and ends, preceeded by a fun night of getting geared up for Christmas with the kids. It’s been remarkably blissful and calming.  My mind is clear today and my heart joyful.  I have motivation and purpose on my side again :).  I fully attribute this to my loving Heavenly Father.  I was not so gently nudged by The Holy Spirit to ask for a Priesthood blessing yesterday at church, instead of waiting until sometime this weekend as I’d planned.  What a miracle and truly a blessing it is to have worthy priesthood holders in my life who jump to it whenever I ask! 
I’m also certain that my resolve to read more in the scriptures personally each day and more reading in them with my family as well has added to that calm.  I spent almost an hour this morning reading and studying about spiritual gifts from God.  Even the gift of knowledge and wisdom, which immediately brought me back around to the gratitude I have for my doctors and surgeons who have that special gift.  Calm and peace washed over me as I thought of the very capable hands I will be in this coming week. Hands of people who WANT to be in the profession they are in, who do this job with the best outcome for Breast Cancer survivors in mind. Serving others in their own way, with the gifts they’ve been given. They didn’t have to be in this field, and they didn’t have to stay, but they did and they do! 

What a blessing to know this as I go about my odds and ends to finish preparing for this big event in my life!

August Face of Hope – Hope Scarves

Look what happened this past week!

Faces of Hope – Dalynn Coffman

How do you NOT write?

So, a couple years ago, when I was going through all the major Cancer stuff, I was writing a lot. I NEEDED to write a lot. I also read a lot of other BC Survivor’s blogs, it helped me feel more “normal” about my writing and helped me have the confidence to share as much as I do and confidence to withhold some as well. One particular day, I stumbled onto an amazing blog site written by a fellow Breast Cancer survivor. She was about 3 years out from the Cancer diagnosis, 2 years out from final treatment date, and about 1 year out from her final reconstructive procedure. I loved her writings, I identified with many of the thoughts and feelings she shared, and I yearned to read more and more of her experiences. As I read through chronologically, I had the urge to jump forward, to see how she was doing “today”. I scanned through the titles of posts and pages to find the latest and greatest. There it was, the most recent post…but, it was from several months ago… I pulled it up on my screen and read the very simple and short post. I don’t remember the exact wording now, but she was basically “signing off”. What?!?! Wait!!! I need to know how she is doing with life after Cancer! She did briefly mention the traveling she had been doing, the time she was spending with kids and grandkids, and that she had picked up the desire to try new things. Her life had gotten too busy to keep up a blog about her Cancer life. She wouldn’t be writing anymore. I was devastated and a bit agitated and bewildered. How do you NOT write?!?!

In my all-Cancer-consumed life, writing was my release. Informing people in writing was the way I could “talk” about it without being completely overwhelmed by face-to-face interactions. Putting it to “paper” was the way I kept medical conversations/information/instructions straight in my head. How do you NOT write?
And then, of course, there’s the part of writing being a talent or favorite pastime. When you CAN write and you are helping so many people, how do just one day stop writing?

I obviously moved on with my life, I didn’t get stuck on that one person permanently. But that question, “How do you NOT write?”, has been lingering in the back of my mind this whole time.  I have been so driven, so passionate about my writing. I have loved and hated it all at the same time, but have always felt the NEED to write. Mostly I write for myself, but also for those it might be helping as this woman’s blog had helped me. The blog setting gives me an “audience”, which gives me a focus to help organize my thoughts. It has been helping me sort it all out.

In the past couple of months, I’ve felt something change. My yearning to write has slipped away somehow. Maybe from a lack of personal Cancer-related topics, maybe from stress in other areas, or maybe shear lack of time. When did that happen?!?!

Now, before you worry that I’m dropping my blog, I’m not…yet.  I am still not “done” with my Cancer Journey.  I have more reconstruction to deal with, and keep my support persons apprised of.  I am also still learning how this new life with side effects and risks affects my daily diet, level of activity, and healing.  I still have things that need to be written, just with a slightly different audience, I think.  Though, I am beginning to understand how one gets to the point of NOT writing about Cancer.  I am beginning to see “the light at the end of tunnel” again.  The days when Cancer will be almost only a memory.  Wow, can that really happen?  I am also beginning to see how the book ends.  Another little thought that’s been rolling around in my head, as several people have suggested that I turn my blog posts into a book someday.  Before, I couldn’t fathom how I could do that if I was perpetually adding to the book.  Well, now I can see it coming.

But, for now, I will continue to write occasional blog posts.  Some days the posts will be “re-blogs” from years past, so watch out for those, read carefully before you panic 😉  Other days, I will write a tidbit about life now.  And then, on days not too far in the future, I will write more updates on my reconstructive journey.  So, if you haven’t heard from me in a bit, don’t worry, I’m probably busy living life after Cancer.  I promise I will let you know when I write the last chapter of THIS book.  And never fear, the blogs on the world-wide-web live on and on, past the years of their writers.  So, all this wisdom I’ve gleaned and shared will always be available to those who need it.  And hey, maybe someday I’ll even get around to making it more user-friendly and fancified, lol.