Honor Supporting Cast: Part 2. Want to Help? Just Do It.

More of the Tomoff 20-year odyssey with 5 rounds of cancer. Open your heart to community. Bottle empathy. Embrace post-traumatic growth. Succession planning.

Proem (Preface)

Welcome back to the Tomoff Family, Olivia, Bill, Terri, and Ryan. Terri Tomoff wrote a book, The Focused Fight, a story about hope and survival of one ordinary family and their community of support to bring a two-year-old through five cancers over twenty years (three times leukemia and twice adult tongue cancer). In episode 1, Honor Supporting Cast, the Stars of Disabling Conditions, we met the Tomoff’s and talked about ‘We’re different, That’s normal’; spiritual health; pillow, pills, poop, and piss; and freaking out. All inward-looking. Inward into the family.

Today we’ll shift our gaze out to the community and into the future. As care partner to several family members’ end-of-life-journeys, I felt the awkwardness of the loving, the concerned, and the generous. How can we help? What’s acceptable language? Am I intruding? We’ll hear thoughts from the Tomoffs about living through difficulties and bursting to share what worked and didn’t work. How do these experiences change us? Do we see our same selves in the mirror year to year? We’ll learn more about post-traumatic growth.