A Conversation With My Mother – For World Cancer Day

Yesterday afternoon, I had the urge to phone my mother and talk to her.

Unfortunately, that couldn’t happen physically because my mom died on July 9, 2011, three months after being diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic and liver cancer.

Her death cut me to the core. I thought she’d live for another 10 years, like her mom, who died at age 94.

I didn’t realize how much I would miss my mom until after she died. I suppose that’s normal, but I don't like it. Her death has not stopped me from talking to her, however. I have conversations with her all the time – in my mind, on some higher level than I ever experienced prior to her death. She is a deep part of who I am, so it makes sense that she will always be with me in one way or another.

Today is World Cancer Day.

In honour of all those who are fighting this terrible disease, and those who have lost their fight or lost others to cancer, I am taking a giant step outside my comfort zone and sharing with you my most recent conversation with my mom.

This is what we talked about yesterday:

Hi, Mom. How are you doing?

Great. Really great.

I miss you.

I know you do, but it’s okay. Things are beautiful here and you are doing fine. You’re a good writer and a good person. Live your life and help others. That’s what it’s all about.

Thanks, Mom. What do you want me to do?

Tell them there is life after death. Tell them there is hope. Tell them Dionne’s story – over and over again. She helped me. She helped you cope with my death. Tell them all. Hope is important.

I’m trying, Mom. The journalist in me doesn’t often let the marketing/public relations person take over.

That’s okay. Be you. You are perfect.

Thanks, Mom. You always did know how to keep me grounded. Hey, wait a minute. That ‘you are perfect’ part doesn’t sound like the real you. You’re the one who told Auntie Janet not to read one of the books I published because she wouldn’t like it. While I was standing right there!

(A smile.) Well, it’s true. She wouldn’t have liked it. So there.

Ah, I can see your one eyebrow lifting right now. And your smile. I love that smile. More of a smirk, I guess. Thanks for that, by the way. It keeps people around me smiling a lot. Okay, Mom, I’ve cried enough tears for now. I’ll talk to you later. Have a good day.

I will. I always do.

I love you.

I love you, too. Be strong.

            So now I guess I have to follow my mom’s advice and tell you about Dionne Warner. She’s amazing. She’s battling her eighth cancer diagnosis right now, with grace and courage and tons of humour. She was fighting her fifth, sixth, and seventh cancer diagnoses when I met her in 2010 and began writing a book about her and her husband Graham.

The book’s called Never Leave Your Wingman: Dionne and Graham Warner’s Story of Hope, and it’s as much a love story as anything. It’s helped a lot of people, including me (we’ve sold more than 6,000 copies so far). It’s about living life to the fullest, every day, whether you’re sick or not.

 In April 2011, I had two chapters left to write of the book when we got the phone call that Mom had inoperable cancer. I worked on my laptop as we drove to Edmonton, Alberta to visit Mom that Easter weekend, and I looked at photos of Dionne and Graham Warner, dressed in costume and dancing into her chemo treatments in Regina, Saskatchewan. I shared those photos with my mom and my siblings and other family members in that hospital room. The photos made us laugh, gave us some information about cancer treatments, and took a lot of the fear out of cancer for us. We had never faced the disease that up-close-and-personal before.

A few weeks later, Mom phoned me from her home and asked, “Did that Dionne girl ever try

anything green?”

It took me a few minutes to figure out what Mom was asking, but I realized she meant alternative, complementary therapies aside from chemotherapy or radiation. “Yes, Mom. Dionne sees a doctor of natural medicine, which is different from a naturopath or a homeopath, and she takes supplements to help her fight the toxicity of her cancer treatments. She’s also been to Mexico twice for complementary therapies.”

A few weeks later, I found out that Mom was trying some homeopathic therapies. One of my aunts said the possibility of alternative treatments gave my mom some hope and put a smile back on her face and a new spring in her step. Mom started to bounce back mentally and be the same strong woman I’d grown up with.

Mom took that therapy until the day before she died. My youngest sister cared for her in that final week and when we arrived for our final visit with Mom, my tired, frail mom insisted on pulling herself out of bed and walking out to the living room to sit in her recliner. We knew it was draining every ounce of strength she had, but she was determined to make this final visit seem as normal as possible. It was heartbreaking and beautifully strong.

That’s my mom ... tough to the end. And that’s the spirit she wants all of us to live with.

Be strong. Fight to the end. Be good to each other. Help others. It’s what my mom did for all of her 84 years. It’s what Dionne Warner does in her ongoing cancer battles.

Cancer Sucks. But we don’t have to take it lying down.

Let’s Fight!

P.S.  You will be seeing a lot more about the inspiring Dionne Warner in the coming weeks. She is the face of the new national Beauty Gives Back campaign of the Look Good ... Feel Better program to help patients cope with cancer. She has been interviewed extensively by media across Canada and more is yet to come. You can read Dionne and Graham’s love story in our Never Leave Your Wingman book. (We’re selling signed copies on our website for $19.95 CAD, plus shipping, within Canada). $1 from every book sold is donated to the Cancer Research Unit at the University of Saskatchewan via the Saskatchewan Cancer Agency.

Here are some links that will tell you more about Dionne and Graham Warner and the Never Leave Your Wingman book:

Never Leave Your Wingman book webpage

CityTV Toronto interview – Beauty Gives Back launch at  Mirror Ball fundraiser

CBC National News - tow truck 'best gift ever'
Global National The Morning Show interview with Dionne Warner on World Cancer Day
CTV Regina Morning Live interview with Dionne Warner about Beauty Gives Back

CTV Edmonton News interview with author Deana Driver talking about the book

Never Leave Your Wingman book Facebook page

Keep Hope Alive!

Eight-Time Cancer Survivor’s Beauty Gives Back

Inspiring eight-time cancer survivor Dionne Warner of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada is the face of a new campaign of Look Good ... Feel Better Canada called ‘Beauty Gives Back’. And we could not be more pleased or proud to call her our friend.

Dionne’s story is one of overcoming the odds, beating cancers of the breast, then brain, and then two bouts of liver cancer before spending seven years volunteering at the Allan Blair Cancer Clinic in Regina. During that time, she helped hundreds of patients through their treatments by sharing her positive, never-give-up attitude, and encouraging them to continue to fight this disease.

In December 2009, Dionne was diagnosed with Stage IV cancers in her liver, lungs and bones. She began dressing up in costume each week for her chemotherapy treatments and before long, she and her husband – her wingman – Graham, began to both dress in costume and dance into chemo as music played to accompany their themes.

Dionne Warner’s first costume/theme, Dec. 2009

I met Dionne and Graham in June 2010 and knew instantly that both of them were worthy of a book. It would be an inspiring book about this amazing couple and their never-ending, positive attitudes that showed their commitment to doing all they could to beat this disease and bring hope and laughter to others in the process.

  

  

Buy the Book

I promised Dionne and Graham at our first meeting that I would write their story and publish a book about them and their journey by the following June – which I did. The result is Never Leave Your Wingman: Dionne and Graham Warner’s Story of Hope.

The book has become a national best-seller in Canada, with copies also being purchased by readers in numerous countries around the world. It’s also in an e-book format, available from your favourite e-book retailer. Never Leave Your Wingman won an Honorable Mention in the Biography category of the 2013 Great Midwest Book Festival in Chicago, and continues to sell well and spread the Warners’ story of hope with all who read it. We repeatedly hear stories of how the book has helped cancer patients and their families, and many readers who have no connection to cancer, live happier, healthier lives by focusing on the positive and taking control of their own health.

Dionne has been a fan and supporter of the Look Good ... Feel Better campaign since shortly after she beat her second cancer. Here’s an excerpt from the Never Leave Your Wingman book:

In October 1997, a little more than a month after her second brain cancer surgery, Dionne attended a half-day workshop with the Look Good … Feel Better program, an initiative of the cosmetic, toiletry and fragrance association to help cancer patients feel better about themselves. She was also interviewed and photographed for a story in the Summer 1998 issue of Images Magazine, which was available through the Shoppers Drug Mart stores. In the photos, the beautiful bald-headed Dionne showed how to wear hats and scarves to feel more comfortable as a woman undergoing cancer therapy. Her husband was beside her in one of the photos and the headline read: ‘The Power of love – Dionne faced cancer twice in two years and beat it both times’. 

Dionne spoke about her struggle to feel attractive after her initial hair loss with the breast cancer chemotherapy and how she gave up all attempts to try to improve her appearance. “I felt so unattractive. I thought, ‘Why bother with makeup?’ So, if I had to go out, I’d just put on a hat and that was about it.’ The support and love from her husband, family and friends helped her to overcome her own insecurities as she healed from her surgeries, she said in the article. “Dionne decided to attend a Look Good…Feel Better workshop because she knew she needed something to make herself feel better. And, in October 1997, actually on the day before she was photographed for the Look Good…Feel Better magazine, she went,” said the magazine article.

“At the workshop, I put on one of my hats because my head was cold, and everyone commented on it! It’s a real thrill that I was asked to be the hat model for the magazine, because I’m a hat collector – I have about 30 different types of hats,” she says. “I feel so much better about myself; the workshop really made a difference to me.” 

Dionne had learned about the Look Good … Feel Better program through the cancer clinic. In the article, she encouraged all other cancer patients to attend a workshop, use the products in the gift box provided for participants, and start feeling better about themselves. “Thanks to Look Good … Feel Better, my skin is incredible, I feel great and everyone tells me I look good, too. It’s a wonderful program, and I know that anyone who participates will feel the same way!”

Dionne has supported the program since then and credits it for helping her to maintain a positive attitude while she goes through her cancer treatments.

In November 2014, Dionne was called upon again by her friends in the Look Good ... Feel Better program to share her story in a huge, inspiring way – through their new Beauty Gives Back campaign.

Once you’ve recovered from watching the inspiring video above, we invite you to view the City TV Toronto news clip of the launch of the campaign at the 2014 Mirror Ball charity fundraiser in Toronto, Ontario. 

We’re sure you will agree that Dionne Warner is an amazing, inspiring, walking miracle.

Never Leave Your Wingman's Excellent European Adventure - Part 4 - Italy

You're back! Great! Thank you for following along with me, the Never Leave Your Wingman book, as I share my photos from my wonderful summer adventure in Europe!
(If you didn't read Part 1 , Part 2, or Part 3, these are the links for those posts.)

This kind of feels like you and I are in the Sisterhood of the Travelling Book club together. Pretty neat, huh? And speaking of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants movie - the parts of it that were filmed in Greece, anyway - well... hang on for a few minutes. I'll come back to that.

So the last time I blogged, my publishers and I were in Pisa, Italy and I was holding up the Leaning Tower, remember? Well, there was one other interesting place that we discovered in Pisa. And you'll probably be surprised to see what it was.

That's right - a McDonalds restaurant!  'And Here's The Party!' says the sign.

The folks at this restaurant had a hilarious sense of humour, and we had quite a few chuckles while eating our nutritious fast-food lunch. (Oh come on, somebody had a salad there some day.) 

Anyway, here are some of the signs we saw inside this McDonalds restaurant:

In case you can't quite make out this sign leading to the washrooms, here it is close up:

Hilarious, right? I wanted to cut that part of the door out and bring it home to share with my friends... but it wouldn't have fit in my travel bag and the airline would have charged me for extra baggage, so this photo will have to do.

While we were driving from Pisa to our next stop on our trip, we saw some really pretty fields. While Saskatchewan and Canada's other Prairie provinces often have bright yellow fields of canola in the late summer, here in Italy and other parts of Europe, we enjoyed this scene of bright yellow sunflowers.

My author Deana snapped a whole pile of photos of these fields. This is one of my favourites.

Did you know that in Europe, the semi trucks don't have solid side panels like our trucks do here in Canada? We found it strange to watch the canvas sides of the big trucks flapping with the wind. That can't be too aerodynamic, can it?

Here's Publisher Al driving us (himself, me and my author Deana, of course) to our next destination. 

Psst... that's the Mediterranean Sea in the background.

OH MY GOSH! I am SOOOO excited that we can see it!!

But wait. Before we could get into our next accommodation that afternoon, we had to park our rental vehicle... at the top of the huge hill leading into that town that you saw in the above photo. So this was the home for our VW vehicle - in a tiny (by Canadian standards) parking stall with its own pull-down door in a parking garage. Let's just say we've had more fun parking in other places.

Then we began the walk downhill....

...and further downhill....

...and still further downhilll....

...for about 20 minutes - not including the rests to catch our breath .... 

...to get to our room (up on the right-hand middle level of those buildings), at the seaside edge of the village of Riomaggiore. This is a working fishing village and is one of five towns close together in the Cinque Terre region of Italy which are popular with young tourists - "because young tourists still have good, strong legs that can handle the 45-degree hills," my publishers said. (Can you tell that my publishers are old and were a little cranky after going up and down this main-street hill that goes from one end of town to the other a couple times? Plus, it was only the day after they had climbed the 395,000 steps (or something like that) up to the top of the Duomo in Florence, too - so maybe they had a tiny reason to be a little tired and unhappy about more climbing.

 Anyway, my publishers and I took it fairly easy in Riomaggiore for the rest of the day. We just relaxed and enjoyed the views. 

Here are some photos of what we saw...

The view from our front walkway.

This village really reminded me of the rocky Greek village in the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants movie - except we didn't have a donkey to take us up the hills. Oh, wait. I hear my author calling out to me. "A donkey! That would have been perfect!" (As if she just thought of this herself. 

Silly author. Where would they have parked the donkeys?) 

These pretty flowers were blooming from a vine growing on the rock wall in front of our room.

Cool, huh?

In front and below our room, a bunch of Italian men noisily worked together to build this.... this... I don't even know what it was. A pier perhaps? Anyway, they had a little trouble deciding who would give the orders and who would follow them, and we thoroughly enjoyed watching this process. We also giggled a little when the group took a break to share some bubbly. Only in Europe. 

This very secure (not) closure on the gas cupboard was a little unsettling for us. Our room was just behind this wall. Yeah, a little unsettling.

Now this photo... this is a different story. What? Were you actually looking at the big red boaty thing. Pshaw. The legs. Check out the legs under the red thing! Well worth watching as they rounded the corner and wandered up the stairs. Wooeeee! I LIKE ITALY!!! (And don't get me started on his teeny tiny swimsuit...)

This cracked me up. When you gotta go, the Mediterranean Sea is as good a place as any, I guess.

The sea offers many pretty sights... In daylight...

...And the early evening.

So goodnight for now ... from the northwest corner of Italy. 

I'll see you soon for my next update. It's going to be awesome... just you wait!

Never Leave Your Wingman's Excellent European Adventure - Part 3 - Florence & Pisa

Hello there! Are you ready for another adventure? I sure was this summer when my publishers took me to Europe with them. After visiting Austria (read my blog - Part 1), then Venice and Rome (here's my blog - Part 2), I couldn't imagine what my publishers had in store for me next.

Well, it was pretty neat. Come along... you'll see.

Florence, Italy was the next destination during our European adventure of a lifetime. 

This was some of the furniture in our room in Florence. Talk about old-school. Actually, it was probably 100 years old or more. (Oh, not the TV. That is definitely newer than 100 years, silly.) 

Florence is where we first started seeing a lot of bicycles during our European adventure. I am having a little rest here on a window ledge as we walked toward the main downtown area. See that light-coloured dome way back there in the centre of photo? I'll tell you about that in a minute.

So I looked to my left and this is what I saw... a Canadian flag. In Florence, Italy! Cool. The building is a Four Seasons Hotel. Who would have guessed that? Certainly not me.

So here it is... the biggest deal in the historic centre of Florence.

The Duomo of Florence (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore) is the main church of Florence. This impressive Gothic-style church with the red brick dome was built starting in the 13th century and the dome was added in the 15th century. The Duomo offers a stunning view of the entire city... if you're brave enough to climb the 463 steps up to the top of the dome.

Yes, I said 463 steps. Uphill. All the way.

Well, my publishers are not exactly what I'd call 'brave' all the time, and they weren't planning on climbing the 463 steps up to the top of the dome. They tell me they aren't particularly fond of closed-in stairwells that have very little air flow and even less head room (my publisher Al is tall) ... But my publishers aren't very bright sometimes. 

On this particular day in Florence, they went ahead and bought a ticket for the 'cupola' of the Duomo without realizing that the word 'cupola' actually means 'dome'. Duh. I repeat - Not very bright.

So you should have seen their faces when they rounded the corner going into the church and were told to keep on moving... and they found themselves having to immediately climb stairs instead of just walking around to look at the interior of the church from the ground floor. Yikes!

They climbed and climbed... and stopped for a few seconds about a third of the way up to catch their breath at a small landing. Then they climbed some more. At what felt like 3,000 steps already (it was only about halfway up, but no one was actually counting) they arrived at a walkway along the interior of the dome and saw this...

...the incredible artwork inside the dome, painted in 1572-1579.

Absolutely beautiful.

Then some more climbing, and they finally arrived at what's called the 'lantern' that wraps around on the outside of the top of the dome.

This was the view when they reached the top outside of the dome. Worth the climb. In every way. 

Going down the stairs was way easier than climbing up... 

...but still creepy in tight quarters, and Al still had to watch his head. He's much taller than this guy who was ahead of my publishers as they went down the steps - all 463 of them - or did I say that already?

So that was an adventure that made us laugh and laugh....

Oh, I almost forgot... 

LOOK AT THIS BUG!

Outside the Duomo, this young man picked up a ginormous bug. A locust, we're guessing, 'cause that's what hangs around those parts of the world. And we thought our Saskatchewan grasshoppers were big. Ha! Not even close.

This little angel was just too cute to ignore. We love angels because... well, we do. 

And they remind us of all the Earth Angels who pray for, love and support our special eight-time cancer survivor Dionne Warner. We love those wings.

This was the first and best gelato we had in Europe. Homemade and super tasty. The servings were awesomely huge, too.

Europe isn't all fun and tourism, you know. These were some of the sights we enjoyed on our walk back to our room one evening. Interesting statues in a garden and beautiful flowers.

So how do you like this statue of Michelangelo's David? We were pretty excited to see it. We couldn't show you all of David ... because I'm a family book, you know. Gotta keep it PG.

This isn't the real statue of David. It's a beautiful replica, in the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence. The real statue is in a museum in Florence, but this one is sitting where the real statue originally sat, and we were impressed. 

This isn't the real Mona Lisa painting either, but it's also pretty cool. Created by this artist right in front of our eyes... with chalk... on the sidewalk. I wonder how long his artwork lasts before it gets wiped away. I'm glad I'm made of something more long-lasting than chalk. So people can read me for years and years to come.

  

Now here's a sight we don't see every day (or any day) in Saskatchewan. A wild boar's head hanging on a hook in a downtown restaurant. We kind of had to cover our eyes while we ate this European-style pizza...

This public telephone was not only a sight we haven't seen for years in Saskatchewan but the design was cool, too. We had to take a photo and show you.

We really liked Florence, but it was time to move on, so we travelled west to this place...

...Pisa, Italy!

Oh my gosh! It was so cool to hold up this Leaning Tower.

I am just a little book, so it was hard work to do all that holding - with a little help from Publisher Al, of course.

Oh, there you go. That's more like it. And if you look way into the background at the base of the tower, you'll see how tall this eight-storey leaning tower really is. It's quite the engineering marvel.

So that's it for this part of our journey. Stay tuned for our next stop...

Hint: It involves some beautiful blue water.