The prospect of dealing with your cancer and treatment can feel like an insurmountable burden, so that you just don’t know how to begin ‘coping’ with this new experience. You might be very withdrawn and wrapped up in your thoughts at the beginning, feeling very isolated and believing that nobody can understand what you are going through. This is a natural reaction, and true of any catastrophe – it is difficult to accept that anyone has ever experienced similar feelings and that you are not completely alone in this situation. It can be made more painful by the fact that up to a point, life around you has to continue as normal. Children need attention, dogs need walking, you still have to (try to) eat and sleep, the world goes on functioning around you. You may have deep fears about the future, yet find it hard to accept that your life has been threatened.
Your mental attitude can help you as you progress through your treatment. Although there is no medical evidence that a positive attitude will make any difference to the success of your treatment, it can help you to feel stronger about coping with your treatment and its side-effects and to take pleasure in those aspects of your everyday life which are still ‘normal’.
For some people, positive thinking comes naturally and they attack their cancer with the same vigour and determination they demonstrate in all areas of their life. For many others though, it is not a natural state of mind – perhaps you feel resigned to your cancer and take a stoical attitude, dealing with each day as it comes without actually making up your mind to fight the disease. For some men, trying not to be negative takes a huge effort, and there may be a danger of slipping into depression. This is a serious condition and it can affect your entire life, but it can be treated successfully with anti-depressant drugs. It is not uncommon among cancer patients, and is certainly not a condition which you should suffer in silence, even if you do feel awkward about approaching the subject.
Even if you have a basically positive attitude towards fighting your cancer, there will be times when you feel very low, and wonder whether there is any point in going through unpleasant treatments or putting up any fight at all. Everyone has periods when they feel overwhelmed by their cancer and wonder if they have the energy and will to battle against it any longer. Of course, it is impossible to feel positive all the time and it is very important not to feel guilty when you feel miserable and low. There will be days when you feel that you just don’t care any more, that you can’t be bothered to make any more effort. If your treatment is not progressing as well as you had hoped, you might think, There’s nothing I can do, so what have I got to feel positive about?’ At the same time, you might feel that you should put on a brave face for the benefit of family or friends. While this is bound to occur from time to time, it won’t help you to suppress your real feelings constantly – you do need someone to share your emotions with, to talk to, shout at and cry with.
In fact, as your treatment gets underway, you may feel a sense of relief that something is happening, and that you are no longer in limbo. Unexpectedly for many people, cancer wards and out-patient clinics are not the grim and gloomy places one might expect, so if you have been dreading your visits, especially as an in-patient, you may find this less gruelling than you had anticipated. In spite of that, you are bound to experience fears about how effectively your treatment is working, and look forward with trepidation to each X-ray or blood test which provides information about your progress. Some days you may feel physically good and mentally positive, and other days weak and unwell and miserable. During your journey through treatment, you will experience many emotions, some of which may be new to you or have been suppressed for years. They are all perfectly valid even if you feel foolish for being unusually ‘emotional’.
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