How to Own Cancer and not let it Own You
So you have had your diagnosis and suddenly the world you thought you knew looks totally different. You now know that cancer has taken up residence in your body and nothing looks or feels the same.
Most likely your consultant wants you to make instant decisions about the treatment they want you to have, or sometimes they may just assume that you will go along with whatever they say. It’s a whirlwind and you are in the middle of it, barely able to breathe, let alone process what you are being told.
Eventually you get yourself out of the consulting room and manage to get home. What do you do now? How do you start to get a grip on what is happening and make sense of it all?
Here are 6 things that I started with:
Take a moment. Breathe.
Your consultant may have given you the impression that treatment decisions must be made NOW. Most often that is not the case. For some rare, very aggressive cancers that may be true, but the majority of cancers have taken years to develop in your body so taking a week or so now to make important treatment decisions is going to make no difference at all. Breathe. Getting a handle on things starts now.
Have a think about your treatment approach.
By this I mean do you want to do go straight down the conventional route (chemo, surgery, radiation, hormone therapy)? Or do you want to take a more integrative approach? You won’t hear much about this in the mainstream NHS but there are lots of exciting treatments being developed in the “integrative” cancer treatment world.
Integrative oncology is a new and growing field of cancer care that takes the best of the conventional treatments and the best of the “complementary” treatments to bring together a much more holistic approach to cancer care. This is the path that I chose to follow and I am so glad that I did. It made the conventional treatments that I chose much easier to manage and I recovered so much better from surgery.
To find out more about this approach, book a free call with me
3. Think carefully about who you want to support you.
When I was first diagnosed, I wanted to tell some members of my family and my closest friends because I needed their support. But outside that small circle, I took a tough line on who I told and who I didn’t. And although it felt really hard not to tell somebody when they asked how I was, from a “mindset” point of view, it was a line worth drawing.
Aside from my partner who was with me when I got the news, I told maybe half a dozen people, that’s all. Because those were the people whose response I could be sure of. What I wanted to hear, and what I got from that small group, was “I am so sorry to hear that. What can I do to support you?” What I didn’t want to hear was “How terrible, poor you, I know someone who died from breast cancer”.
So I asked those half dozen people for the support I wanted, and they gave it, lovingly and unstintingly, in just the way I needed it. And I also asked them not to tell anyone else until I was ready. Because I needed to be in the headspace of “I’ve got this. I can do this. I am going to get through this, alive and thriving” and I didn’t want anybody putting me off my game.
And in that vein comes the next point on my list.
4. Avoid looking at stats on the internet
I know it’s tempting, but trust me, I learned the hard way and absolutely no good will come from doing it.
Statistics are bleak and lifeless things, and tell you nothing useful. And here’s the big news, you are not a statistic. You are a living, breathing being with the ability to make your own decisions based on your own research and intuition about what your Wise Body tells you it needs.
And statistics tell you nothing about all the people who go on to thrive, having made their own choices with wisdom and courage.
In my case, I was offered chemo as the first line of treatment, because statistically that gave me my best chance of cure. But I knew with every fibre of my body that it wasn’t right for me so I declined it, and I have never regretted that decision.
Which leads us nicely into….
5. Do your research
But do it wisely, and be clear about where your information is coming from. There is lots of really good information out there, but also some very dodgy sources too. I did tons of reading and research, and it got quite overwhelming at times, but always I listened to my intuition and what my “gut” was telling me, and that served me really well.
If you find it all too much, or research is just not your thing, book a free call with me.
And finally, but perhaps most importantly…
6. Be clear about how you frame your cancer journey.
Now we are getting into mindset and attitude, and your beliefs about how this is going to go. Are you going to let the fear take over and do only what you are told to do, regardless of your “felt sense” about what is right for you? Or are you going to see this as a challenge that you take, step by step, towards becoming more of the authentic person that you were born to be?
Don’t get me wrong, neither option is easy and neither option guarantees “cure”. Dealing with cancer is hard and the unknown is always scary. But I remember that very early on I made the conscious decision that I would look on my cancer journey as an “adventure” and I am absolutely convinced that played a major part in my healing.
In a future blog I will explain how I got my feisty attitude because but I have previous experience of being “non-conforming” when it comes to medical outcomes. But in the meantime, if any of what I have said chimes with you, give me a call and we can discuss how we can work together to help you get back in touch with your own Wise Body wisdom.
“You may not control all the events that happen to you , but you can decide not to be reduced by them”