A diagnosis : Cancer in the first days of discovery

Feelings about illness and potential death, especially if the name of a condition like cancer has been spoken out loud to you by a health professional, will ……unless you are quite an extraordinary individual…..set your heart racing and thoughts frantically grasping. Suddenly you might be thinking of the surgery, chemotherapy, everything terrible you have heard, the side effects, your family, your job, your life up-ended.
Based in fear, it becomes necessary if you are to cope, to find a strategy other than the path labelled fear and anxiety. We all know someone who has had cancer or died from cancer, but we also know someone who has survived cancer.

Fear of the unknown

Nothing relieves anxiety more than gathering information, which immediately eliminates ‘fear of the unknown’. Discovering the truth of a thing, what is myth, what is imagined, is far more empowering than dwelling anxiously on assumptions.
In the previous blog we talked about having boundaries and how helpful they can be. This is a purposeful way of placing boundaries on your fears and anxiety instead of letting go of the reigns and flying head-first into a fence which looks way too high to jump over.

Safe-guard against fear

Safe-guarding yourself and your family against false or exaggerated information is achieved during the information gathering time. Adding positive lines of thought allows for the healing effects of optimism to occur, like considering just how far the world has come with a myriad of medical advances and treatments. Realising that there are choices to be made which can support any treatment modality. Diet, meditation and alternative therapies which support the body and spirit during recovery are now well-known and encouraged by all members of the health care team.

What about warnings against alternative therapies?

Involving your Specialist from the outset in any alternative therapies you are using or planning to use, allows for a team approach. It is not that the medical community are against many options available, but rather that they wish to advise you on which ones are safe in your situation. Don’t feel like they will frown on you and therefore keep it to yourself.
Herbs are medications if used in concentrated amounts to treat a condition. Medications are known to interact, creating potentially unsafe outcomes if not taken with professional guidance. For example, even simple things like drinking large amounts of coconut water can elevate your potassium levels to the point of causing cardiac arrythmias. By working together, with awareness of what is being taken or done, this kind of risk is greatly minimised.

Fear robs you of your valuable healing energy

Protecting yourself from doubts, stories, and negative thoughts allows for all your available energy to be poured into an optimistic and purposeful path to healing. There is so much to be learned during this time, and some wonderful people will come into your life to help. You will see that healing is not purely physical, because we are much more than physical beings.

Yes, that first diagnosis of cancer is intimidating and scary. Take control, plan your steps, enlist your helpers / Specialists. This pragmatic and focussed approach along with a positive attitude has been shown to promote far better outcomes than those who fold under the fear blanket.

Feeling alone with your illness

Despite all your best efforts you may still find yourself lying awake at night feeling terrified. Prepare for this event in your plan. Have the first aid kit for the onset of fear and forboding right next to your bed. Turn on a recording of someone you love and admire, who comforts you and reassures you. It could be Deepak Chopra or Oprah Winfrey, or you might have recorded a reading of the writings from your religious faith. Put your ear-phones on and listen to those comforting words. Have specially written words compiled in a little book: words about life, living, feeling safe and cared for. The most profound cause of fear is the core fear of being alone. Death can feel like the impending ultimate alone-ness. When wise words of life and love are listened to, this particular fear dragon is able to shrink down to a more managable size.

Fear of Treatment Options

Treatment options for cancer have changed greatly over recent years. Surgery is less invasive, key-hole surgery far more common, side effects are still present but better than they used to be.
Hospital stays are much shorter, with many procedures now relegated to day surgery. These changes have improved healing times and reduced analgesic requirements.
Chemotherapy has also changed, with many patients reporting minimal side effects. Not everyone with cancer loses their hair.
Pain management is a specialty in it’s own right now. The general perception about a cancer diagnosis may continue, but the actual reality of the healing path is different. Far more people are recovering from cancer. More time is available due to current treatments and some cancers have excellent prognosis for a complete recovery.

Erica Fotineas
February 2017