For the past four months, Debbie Frame has been busy making lemonade.

Life gave her a big load of lemons in August, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy the first week of September. She'll take her last chemotherapy treatment on her 53rd birthday, Jan. 25.

Chemotherapy has suppressed her immune system so severely that she can't shake hands with or even hug others, an excrutiating restriction for one who plainly thrives on the company of and contact with others. Frame does not try to hide her chagrin at the fact that she has to do her grocery shopping late at night to avoid the crowds and the germs they carry.

But in what one quickly understands is typical Debbie Frame style, she sees the bright side.

"Nobody gets in your way," she said of late-night shopping. "You can get through the aisles."

At 9'clock on the last Thursday before Christmas, Frame is not only dressed for company, but neatly and fashionably so. She's even wearing jewelry - a gold chain around her neck, gold bracelets on both arms and a slim gold-and-sapphire band on the ring finger of her right hand.

The most striking piece of all though, is the sunshine-yellow rubber band bearing the inscription "LIVESTRONG" that encirles her right wrist.

The slogan made famous by Tour de France champion and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong neatly sums up Frame's philosophy of life, as well.

"I don't have a choice about having the disease, but I do have a choice about how I go forward from here," she said. "Attitude has so much to do with the quality of your life , no matter how long that life is."

Just an hour in Frame's company can transform a person's outlook. The things one counted as worrisome the hour before - the gravid gray clouds overhead, the many gifts left to buy - are blessings the hour after.

LEARN MORE

• For more information about life coaching, visit The Coaching Group online at www.TheCoachingGroup.com
• For more information about the life coaching program Debbie Frame is developing for people with cancer and their caregivers, visit www.lifetoolsforcancer.com

That is Frame's talent - helping others see the beauty, the hope and the possibilities in life.

A life coach by profession, she's better equipped than most to deal with a setback like cancer, and she's spent the past four months turning her own experience with the disease into an experience that will help others.

"There's nothing to even compare when you hear the words, "You have cancer," she said. "When you get a diagnosis of cancer it changes your life forever."

Since her own diagnosis, Frame has focused her efforts on helping others see that even a catastrophic illness or poor health is a life event still filled with possibilities.

"With any type of illness, if you take the reins you feel less helpless," Frame said.

Even as she's continuing treatment, Frame is adding cancer tools to the list of services offered by The Coaching Group, the business she runs from her home on St. Simons Island. Already, hospitals in Kansas, Missouri and Texas are lining up sessions with health care providers in their employ who can benefit from the insights of a life coach with cancer.

Health care providers deal with injury, disease and treatment every day. With a room full of people still needing to be seen, it's easy for them to toss off a diagnosis and options and ask for a decision, practically all in the same breath.

"You have to make life and death decisions in what feels like a nonsecond," Frame said.

By adapting her life coachig skills to the cancer experience - or to any major health crisis - Frame is hoping to give health care providers and caregivers the skills to give patients hope even after the most dire diagnosis, and to give patients the tools to move forward in a positive frame of mind.

Something as simple as positive phrasing rather than negative can make the difference in a patient's outlook. Or in an employee's, a child's or a spouse's, for that matter.

Frame was introduced to the concept of life coaching about 10 years ago, while still a procurement officer for aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut.

It was there that Frame was trained to "coach" fellow employees - to lead them to recognize and maximize their strengths rather than point out and try to fix their weaknesses.

The concept was pioneered by Thomas Leonard in the 1980's.

"What he said was that there ought to be a set of tools for people to use to create and sustain the life that they want," Frame explained.

Unlike a therapist who urges people to look back at past mistakes, a life coach urges them to look  at the present and the future, to see what is good, what works and what the'd like to focus more time and energy on, and to pursue those things.

The same principles apply no matter what the life event, even something as devastating as a diagnosis of cancer.

"I've always said that there is a reason that I have cancer and that there is a reason I'm doing so well with the treatment," Frame said.

"I've been given a second chance and a wake-up call, and I want to continue to do good work, to help people, but in a bigger and better way."

Amy Horton of The Brunswick News