Fear

At the Harmony Hill workshop, Phil made a comment to our group that resonated for me. He said he thought the primary thing that you fight as a cancer patient is fear. I agree that that’s one of your chief challenges. The biggest fear is that your future could disappear. Other fears pile on: fear that your condition will be worse than you think it is; fear that your treatment will not turn things around; fear that you will not be able to face the inevitable bumps in the road as they come along; fear of losing your self-image, your ability to do the things you enjoy, your ability to eat, take care of yourself and to walk proudly….or even to walk at all. Fear that you will not be up to coping with the things that will come at you. Fear that your loved ones will have to change their life plans because of you. Fear that you won’t be there to see momentous occasions like your children finishing college, getting married, or having grandchildren. Fear of pain, of disfigurement, of having your confidence shaken more than you can recover from, of what you are doing to yourself and what is being done to you.

For me these fears are not constant—they’re episodic, driven by the circumstances I happen to be facing. My current fear is looming on Tuesday—the beginning of my chemotherapy treatment. It’s actually a collection of big and little fears. The big one is not knowing what damage I am about to do to my body, in the hope of buying some extra insurance that I might survive this cancer. The smaller fears have to do with not knowing how my body will react to the chemical, not being sure just how incapacitated I might be, or how much I am going to hurt in different ways. And a smaller fear that keeps nagging at me has to do with the minor surgery that will occur first thing Tuesday morning, to put in the port that will be used to give me the IV infusions—another invasion of my body, just when I have healed myself from the hysterectomy.

So how do you survive all this fear? I do it by getting information. I ask people who’ve been through the same procedure how it felt and how it is working. I check out the Internet to get information on the chemicals and procedures. I ask my health care professionals to tell me exactly what the bad things are that can happen as side effects of these chemicals, how much the body can recover, and how long that takes. In all I am seeking some reassurance that the course I am taking is a reasonable one. It is certainly the one my health care providers and most of my family think I should take. But in the end, it’s my body, and only I can make the decision. And I have to live with the results of that decision.

I also distract myself by having lots of activities to do, and making plans for good things I want to be doing. I work on the schedule for our summer cruising, watch movies, pick up a new book to read, chip away at tasks for my leadership group. I am looking forward to a long weekend at our rowing camp in Canada (next weekend), and to my daughter’s visit right after that. I am scheduling haircuts, trying on wigs and making lists like mad. In essence, I am making sure that I have a good life to enjoy even as I head into this dark tunnel where I’m not sure how it will look at the other end.

Those are my fears, big and little. Thank goodness they do not stay in the front of my mind all the time. In fact, they’re fairly hidden much of the time. They do tend to surface in my dreams, I notice. So I know they are there, and to keep my mental health, I try to acknowledge them and let them know I recognize what they are. And then move on.