Establishing a New Normal: Humor and Hope Amid Cancer

Hey there, Lifter Uppers. I'm Deb Krier, the co-host of Cancer and Comedy, where our mission is to heal cancer impacted people through hope and humor, something we like to call turning the grim into a grin. Well today on Cancer and Comedy, we're going to talk about how to maintain a sense of normalcy and routine when coping with cancer. Now here's the host of the cancer and comedy podcast, Dr. Brad Miller.

Hey Deb, wonderful to be with you and our Lifter Uppers here in the Cancer and Comedy Podcast, where we look to offer a sense of hope and humor to people impacted by cancer, and we just invite folks to go to our website, cancerandcomedy.com/follow, and to be a part of the community because that's really what we looked at like to do, to develop a sense of community, helping people to indeed cope with hope. We'd like to call it turning the grim of cancer into the grin of a fulfilled life and get people connected that way. Hey Deb, it's the first of the year. How about a couple of kind of new year's resolution-style, dad jokes? Are you ready for it?

Oh, that sounds good.

I think I'm going to start on the all-almond diet. But I don't know. I said I don't know. It's just nuts. It's just nuts. But I tell you what, I am terrified of elevators, and I think I'm going to start taking steps to avoid them.

Cute, cute. I love it. I love it. Well folks, as you know, you'll get another one of these wonderful jokes after our discussion. But then, of course, we have the very important Faith It or Break It segment. Well, we would love for you to be a part of our cancer and comedy community, where together, we crush cancer with a message of how to cope with hope and humor. Please follow Cancer and Comedy at cancerandcomedy.com/follow.

Well, indeed, it's good to be with us in a we're recording this towards the start of a new year, and people begin to think about, okay, what can I do to you know, change my life to the better. But also sometimes people think about, okay, how what has happened in terms of what has happened to me that I need to adjust. And sometimes things happen to us that we don't expect. And certainly, cancer is one of those. Cancer is one of those unexpected things which throws us off our game. And today I thought we talk, Deb and I about establishing normalcy when your normal plan has been disrupted, and then how can you find a new normal or find some way to navigate all that kind of thing?

And I thought about this just really yesterday when I had lunch with a couple of folks from my church after church, and it was an interesting a couple of people that had found myself having lunch with. One was a woman and who was talking about how her life was disrupted when her mother had breast cancer, and she had to kind of change her routine and end up leaving her job and taking care of her mother more and going to, she left the church she attended, which is the church she and I attend now, to go to her mother's church. Its to help her mother feel comfortable, and then she ended up coming back to the church that we attend, but she adjusted her life because of that, to help her mom feel more normal and comfortable.

But interestingly enough, we set the same table with an 18-year-old young man who just was back from his first semester of college where he had gone off to college, and ostensibly to be, among other things, a pretty, you know, he was going to be a soccer player. He was a really an accomplished soccer player, and he went off to play soccer at this college and he found out this first semester that he's finally assigned to his, he's having to grow up a little bit. And there's world not just soccer anymore. It's got about academic studies, and he's interested in other things, the arts and so on. And he's not quite as enamored with soccer as he once was. He still plays it, and he likes it, but he's finding himself adjusting to a different college life, more of an adult life. And so what made me think about how things do change, and so how do we adjust to them? So I kind of also begs the question, what is normal? So I'm going to throw that back in you, Deb. What do you think normal is and put in the context of dealing with coping with cancer.

You know, is there really normal? But I think we really do have normal. We've got our routines, you know, we get up, we go to work, we fix dinner, we do laundry on Thursday., We we go to our friend's house every Saturday to play cards, whatever it is. And maybe it's more that we have routines as opposed to things that are normal, you know, but we like that, right? Because we don't like change, and when something falls out of that, it's not normal. It tends to upset us, and for some people, they obviously deal with it much better than others. But yeah, we don't like it when our little apple carts get messed up.

You make a good point, because what is normal? I think normal is really change. It is normal in the sense of that life does change, even when we don't expect it. And I love what you said about routines. However, we can kind of keep some sort of routine going. You know about, I'm living the world where a lot of my contemporaries have retired in the last few years. I'm just talking to a person, my wife's getting ready to retire in a couple of months. And talk to a couple friends of mine who just retired or getting ready to retire, and the people who seem to do well are the ones who still maintain some sort of routine. They don't, if they used to get up at 6 am, they don't sleep till noon. Still get up at 6 am and do something that they are engaged with, something that is purposeful in life.

So I think those routines are good, and yet these other things come in, like cancer or profound health-related thing, which kind of dominates and oversees everything like that, and helps us to kind of upsets the routine, even that sort of thing. So I think it's important that we establish ways in order to achieve some sense of normalcy or routine in our life. And there's a couple things I think that we can do that and that is to not dwell on the past too much but to continue to plan for the future, even if the future is going to change, right? What do you think about that? Do you think that's kind of a good thing to do?

I think we crave that normalcy, you know, and so planning for the future is part of that, we always plan for the future, whether and so we want to continue doing that. I think what upsets us the most is when we feel that loss of control and not having our schedules the way they want. It's funny. I looked at my schedule for the week, and this is a very weird week. I have no appointments out of my house. I work from home. I have no appointments out of my house the entire week, no doctor's appointments, no blood draws, no anything. And that's very unusual and it was weird because it kind of threw me off. I was like, what am I missing? And so it's kind of, we get used to having to deal with it, and then when we don't, it throws us off. But I think we do, as they say, creatures of habit, right? And you know, we want to know every Tuesday at 2, we do this. My husband retired in August, and he's developed a routine that he does every day. He gets up, he walks the dogs, he works out, he does all sorts of things. That is his new normal is to be able to do that. And then, you know, everything else comes around that. But I think we just like having at least a little bit of control. And when we have something like cancer, we feel very much out of control.

Yeah, I think there's certain things that we can do, and I believe that to take control of what we can control. For instance, one of those things that we can do is to nurture, maintain, or build new community with other people or some sort of entities. It's what we're trying to do here on the Cancer and Comedy podcast, developing the community, people who have a like-mindedness that they are going to cope with hope and humor. And so that's what we hope to people can do, but I think it's important that we're intentional about that. Do you not feel that same way, that we don't let that slide. If we are far north from normalcy, we’ll be upset. Let's be intentional about maintaining relationships and building community. How's that impacted you in terms of building or getting new community?

I think building a new community has been extremely helpful for me. You know, our support system, our friends, whatever we want to call it, I think we do need that, and especially when we're going through cancer, whether it's that we haven't or we're a caregiver. We need those people in our lives that are going to help us out. And you know, maybe it's just that they're going to give us a laugh for the day. Yeah, that's perfectly fine. Or maybe they're going to drive us to an appointment, or take the dog to the vet, or do whatever we need. Our community is now more than ever to provide that support. And it's funny, I tell people I have a normal, my new normal.

And you mean your own term, have it, yeah.

I have my own term and that happens with everything you know, like we said, you retire, well, you develop a new normal. You have your kids grow up and go off to college, you have a new normal. You change jobs, you have a new normal. But again, I think it is something that people crave to do and when they don't, that's where we see them. I think you have issues with mental health, with getting sick, all of those things. I mean, just look at COVID, when everybody's routines were thrown off. There were a lot of major health issues during that time.

I think you make a good a very good point there about that. And I think one of the things that we can do is it's this whole area of self-care being much more intentional. If your health has been threatened by cancer or your life has been up in upheaval, like I mentioned the woman earlier who's her life was up in upheaval because she had to go take care of her mom had breast cancer and but you need to take care yourself. That means your mental health life. It means your physical health life. It means sleeping and eating and staying engaged with the world. Because I think that has to do with a happy, you know, choosing to be happy in life when things may be disrupted and give yourself permission to do what makes you happy. It might be watching Netflix or going shopping or hiking or whatever it is for you.

Yeah, and it's also interesting that people around us want us to get our lives back to normal, also because they don't want to think about that. I had a friend who I hadn't seen him in a while, but he knew obviously what was going on, and I saw him again for the first time after a couple of years, and he said, so you still dealing with that cancer thing, or are you over it? Almost like you would say a cold, right? And I looked at him, and I said, No, I'll have the cancer thing the rest of my life. And then he didn't know what to do, right? Oh, what do you say to that? But it was just, you know, are you still dealing with that cancer thing?

Well, I think you know what that tells me though, Deb, I think this is, I'll just give this, throw this back as affirmation of you and what you're about in as much as apparently, to this person, it was his relationship with you was no longer focused on that. It was focused on who you are as a person and other interactions you had socially or business or wise or whatever. And I think that's what I think is about embracing the positivity over the negativity.

I know one of the things I'll just be quite honest about this in my 43 years of being a minister, there were certain things I really loved about it, and certain things I kind of dreaded about it. And one of the things I dread about it was visiting certain people at home in the hospital who could only complain about their health or their ailment or their doctor's appointments, or their medications, or everything was always about that, you know, that was the only real topic. Oh, it was the only real topic of discussion. And I would sometimes, and I really that would drain my energy. And so, yeah, it's important, and I wanted to be a part of the conversation, but not everything, and not but because I would sometimes try to change the topic. You know, I would see a picture of a family member in the room, and I would say, let's say, is that your grandson over there? What's he up to, and that kind of stuff. And try to change the topic, but certain people always would go back to, all right. You know my-

I'm never going to see my grandson again.

So I think this goes to the point of we choose how we deal with this. And I think the story you told about your friend means that, hey, you still deal with that cancer thing, meaning, you know, their perspective on it was not that total focus. So I think this has to do with an attitude that removes negativity about it and or at least dimensions the negativity and accentuates the positive things in your life. I think that's a choice that we make.

It is definitely a choice and we're going to have the negatives, and we've talked about this before. It's very important to acknowledge those and feel those. When we push those off, they tend to blow up on us later, right? And so it's okay to, you know, I'm having a bad day, or I'm not going to make it to see so and so's wedding or graduation or whatever, but then it's okay. What can I do between now and then. I'm always very moved when I see the things where like someone knew they were not going to make it. You know, one that I saw was a woman. She knew she was going to pass away when her children were still very small, and she recorded a video for each child that they would be shown on each birthday. And it was, you know, I am so glad that you're 16. You now get to drive. Please pay attention to your father and and things like that. It was bittersweet because I'm sure, you know, but they said, those kids, so looked forward to those videos even though it was very hard to see them because she wasn't there in person. But you know, what can we do to do all those things? And you always have several homework things for me to do, and one of them was somebody dealing with cancer in a child. And I love this. They talked about the fact that normal to a child equates to being safe and I thought that was so interesting. And I think it's also important maybe the the parent has cancer, so you try and make things as normal as possible, so your kids feel safe, you know, and normal does mean safe. And I really like that idea.

I love that as well. And notice that in some of the materials we were looking at regarding this episode that I think it has to do with doing what we can to create an environment that is nurturing rather than diminishing. And that to me, so the normal may or may not be what you're used to or what you even expected, but it can be how we frame it, how we kind of look at things. And so you mentioned about when a child has cancer, or when a parent of a or children deal with a parent having cancer and that type of thing, I think if whatever people can do to help there to be some sense of growth in the midst of things that are very painful are helpful to be the framework that is a normal how you deal with things. Because actually the cycle of of life and even disease and death are part of our world here, right? And that's gonna happen. No matter what, they're gonna happen. So the point of what you mentioned earlier, it doesn't do anybody good to be in denial or to really be focused on the negativity. And so I just want to encourage our Lifter Uppers to find your new normal by your attitude and by embracing something that's really good.

You know, and you are not, we've talked about this before. You are not your diagnosis. It is just a very small part or big part of what's going on, and so trying to do the normal things help minimize it, right? You still have date night. You still do laundry on Thursday, right? Whatever it is, cancer is just a part of what's going on in your life. It shouldn't consume you.

Well, it shouldn't shut down your function ability. If it shuts down your functions, I told your mental and your capacity, if you have the capacity to do laundry, then you should do it, otherwise, you have not just the diseases claimed you, but the diseases claimed your mental health and your emotional well being and certainly we believe in an approach here, what they sometimes call humorous therapy, or therapy humor and hope, which has to do with it's all about an attitude that helps you to regain a sense of vitality and health that you can be vital to the end, right? You can be vital to the end. So good. Well, you're awesome Deb. I think your great example of someone who has exhibited taking bad circumstances and making new normals out of those, and then that's why people that you mentioned earlier have seen you and said, Hey, you're, you know, we're just having a normal relationship, and that cancer thing can't be any part of it. That's kind of the rear view mirror, but good.

I love it. And same with you. You know, it's just a part of your life and you know it's there, but everything else goes on.

We like to say a cheerful heart is good medicine. We say that because we made in the sense of how we approach things matters, how we budget matters. And so when we think of new normal, I would like to help people to think of not what was in the past, like what we used to do, but what is or what we've lost, or the pain, or whatever, but developing a new normal of what is possible and what can be.

I love it. I love it. Well, please tell me that you have another one of your bad jokes of the day.