University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, May 1, 1991
9B
Cancer group helps students cope
By Sarah Davis
Kansan staff writer
It was a Friday night in the middle of a Pennsylvania summer and Ann Southernland, Lancaster, Penn. Somewhere else were in their family room, waiting.
She was sitting on the floor, her mom on the couch and her dad in a chair. They were waiting for Southerland's 16-year old brother, Jay, to come home after an evening out with his friends.
Her family had just received news that the one-and-a-half inch lump that was discovered on the side of her brother's neck was not an infected lymph node as previous doctors had diagnosed.
It was cancer.
When Jay came through the door, instant silence fell over the room. And when he saw his family's somber faces, he knew He sat down to take his tennis shoes off, and his father said, "Jay, we have something to tell you. The tests came back malignant."
Jay's voice was monotone as he said "OK."
He picked up his sneakers and headed upstairs to his room.
Ann was stunned. She did not know what to say. She did not know what to do.
Her father went to Jay's room first. Southern her and her mother stayed downstairs and cried. About 10 of them joined they joined Am's father ustains.
Jay's room was dark. He was sitting motionless at his desk staring into space.
Ann looked at Jay. She had never felt so much pain. She walked over to her younger brother, put her arms around him and started to cry. Jay started to sob. Their mother and father also came over and hugged and comforted their son. They could not hold back their tears.
That was three years ago.
that was the beginning," Southerland said. "And after that, we all gained a lot of strength."
Southerland wanted to share her own strength with others who needed it, so she helped create a support group at the University of Kansas. The group is called FACTS. Forming Awareness of Cancer Through Students.
that cancer could be prevented, that your lifestyle has a lot to do with it," Southern said.
According to an annual report by the American Cancer Society, 80 percent of all cancers are lifestyle-related. For example, a poor diet, lack of exercise and excessive smoking can cause cancer.
"It's really hard whenever anyone has cancer because the biggest fear is the unknown," she said. "It's just like you've stepped into a door and don't know what to expect — it's so scary."
Southerland originally formed FACTS last fall as an educational group.
She wanted the group to provide community-service work, do fundraising for cancer research and, if call, to inform students about all cancer.
It is estimated that about 1.1 million new cancer cases will be identified this year, 10,400 of them in Kansas. That means that 8,320 Kan- kans may be expected chance of being spared with the proper education and information.
But more than education is needed. Southerland said a member of FACTS approached her last semester about starting the support group. Now, about seven people, either New Yorkers or families, family member who has cancer, are part of a group that laughs a lot, cries a little, but mostly is there to listen.
FACTS was designed for students to talk about their feelings, as well as to listen to other people's problems. Members often offer advice, not as psychologists, but as friends who have had similar experiences.
"It's a lot of listening and a lot of sharing — 'This helped me so this might help you.' " Southerland said.
In 1988, Southernland was attending George Washington University in Washington, D.C., but she took a year off to help her family learn to cope with her brother's disease, diagnosed as a type of lymphatic cancer.
Jay was still in high school, and he did not want to drop out. He wanted to keep his life as normal as possible.
But he had a long road ahead of him.
"I wanted other people to know
His sister remembers how devast ing the experience was for him.
"When he went through chemi-
therapy, he lost his hair," she said
sofully. "He used to be really athletic,
but he lost his health, and his stamina
was gone — he couldn't even go up
stairs."
Many of Jay's friends shunned him because they did not know how to deal with his cancer. Even though the world seemed to turn against him, he and his family were members of her family stood by her brother and told him not to give up.
fear of a loss of financial support are common. she said.
"Our family handled it very well," she said. "We all worked as a team. The real key to coping was communication, and everybody had to talk about their feelings and fears because you're dealing with death."
FACTS gives students who have a family member or friend with cancer the opportunity to do just that.
Candyece Waitley, health educator at Watkins Memorial Health Center,
said many students who had a parent with cancer ended up feeling too scared to talk about the problem Feelings of alienation, stress and
“It's always difficult to deal with cancer, but particularly hard for students because they're also dealing with a whole life change,” the said. “A support group can help alleviate some of the stress and motivation like that and when the students realize they're not alone, they can deal with it better.”
Bettie Landreth, service and rehabilitation chairperson in Douglas County, said students in the support team were very much encouraged to caseuse many had similar experiences.
"The word 'cancer' is so scary in the first place," she said. "When a family member has cancer, it's hard for students because they are faced with thinking. Should I give up my education and go home to be with my parent?"
"Any time you can talk with someone who is going through the same thing, it's like walking in their moocasins."
Lori Irving, Thousand Oaks, Calif.
graduate student, said joining the FACTS support group helped her
career with her mother's breast cancer.
"It gave me emotional support." she said. "It is like having an outlet for the emotions that are welling up inside you. And the support goes beyond the group — people can call each other up and talk as friends."
Irving's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 34. She eventually had to have both breast removed. But she is a survivor, Irving said. Not only is her mother still alive, but the way she coped with her disease is an inspiration to Irving.
"The way your family deals with an illness has an impact on how you will," she said, explaining that her mother was open and honest with the family about her cancer. She also used humor as a way of coping.
"I remember this one time when my mom said that when she went swimming and would float on her back, that her prostheses would float away," I said, Irving, laughing out loud. "Humor seems to be a really common way of coping with cancer. It helps to relieve the tension."
Irving is doing her dissertation on cancer support groups, and she does more listening then she does speaking.
"People of this age group aren't used to be sick, and they perceive themselves as being invulnerable to negative events," she said. "And here a group of people where they have a role-reversal because they are used to being supported, and now they have to do the supporting."
She said she had noticed that many college-age people had difficulty coping with parents' cancer.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, Labthermics Technologies, Inc
Knight-Ridder Tribune News/STEPHEN RAVENSCRAFT
only two years old when her mother contracted cancer, she could not provide much support for her family. Now she has begun to look out for herself.
She carefully performs a breast examination every month and sees a doctor for mammograms annually. Because her mother had cancer in both arms, Irving knows that she is at an even higher risk of developing it herself.
Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer — one in every nine women will develop breast cancer this year, according to the American Cancer Society.
"I'm scared," Ivring said in a quiet voice. "It's a really scary thing to think of losing a part of my body. I love or losing emotionally and physically."
She said that being involved in FACTS had helped her keep sight of the important things in life and that the little things — like the time she met a friend — needed to shrink in perspective when dealing with matters of life and death.
"The experience of having cancer or knowing someone who has or had cancer can lead you to a new-found sense of what life has to offer." Irving said.
Ann Southerland could not agree more.
Now, when she talks about her brother, who is finished with chemotherapy treatment and is a freshman at Pennsylvania State University, she's going to become an engineer, a glimmer of hope can be heard in her voice.
"It was really rough seeing his reaction," Soulander said, remembering that summer day three years ago when her family's world was turned upside down. "I knew it would change his life."
What she did not realize was how much it would change hers.
The promising jobs blend science, business
The Associated Press
Colo.
WASHINGTON — The highest job candidates in coming years will be those with a head for business in combination with high-tech skills, such as engineering or biochemistry or computer expertise, consultants
To really get an edge, the movers and shakers of the future also will have studied Japanese or Russian or another foreign language, employ
"It's going to be Singapore to Sydney and Paris, not Los Angeles, Berlin, or Dublin," Benton, who owns a management resources company in Collins,
An appreciation of world cultures even for an entry-level executive just graduating with a master's degree in business administration will help speed the climb on corporate ladders, analyses say.
"Even though Mr. Big is running around out there internationally, he needs the grunts who can do the follow-up. The MBA who studies being to go a jump ahead of the MBA who is just very sharp," Benton said.
puter or science backgrounds, consultants say.
The best, solid job opportunities in the years ahead lie in the "hard" disciplines, or fields that require engineering, math, chemistry, com-
"The engineering disciplines, virtually without exception, will come into new vogue in the '90s," says Alan Schonberg, president of Management Recruiters International, a firm based headhunting company.
"Our society continues to evolve more and more into a high-tech society." Schonberg says.
"The ideal person continues to be an electrical engineer with an MBA
— somebody who also got a technical background but also truly has a head for business," says Nancy Albertini, president of Taylor Winfield Inc., a
Dallas headhunting company.
As competition grows fiercer, companies will need more people who know both how a product works and how to sell it, analysts say.
Choosing a field in which the opportunities might be bountiful in the years ahead is as easy as looking at areas in which technological advances are being made, such as the environment, communications, computers and biology, Albertini said.
"New technology always drives opportunity,"she said.
On the other hand, future job hunters should stay out of fields that are in trouble today, she said.
"The automobile industry is shrinking, the airline industry is in turmoil," Albertin said. "I would not want a banking industry or, really, real banks."
Health care, which has been about the only industry to add jobs during the recession, will continue to boom in the years ahead. Consultants say.
"Medical technology progresses so rapidly, it's keeping us healthier and alive longer. All of the attendant diseases are catching up with us, and we need more health care," Schonberg says. "It's a demanding cycle of new doctors, more nurses, more orderlies and more administration."
The current economic downturn is slowing down prospects in all fields, consultants said, but they expect the slowdown to end soon.
Most analysis said the people who did not have a yen for math or science should not fret, because they must exist to exist in a wide range of fields.
"There's going to be a place for lawyers and for accountants and department store buyers." Schonberg said. "There's going to be a place for teachers and for real estate developers. The most important thing is to go where you're going to be happy."
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