Fear Factor!

I was called out recently about my blog description which says "I never asked "why me" or felt like a victim." My friend wrote: "... and while this is mostly true, I do recall your sharing with me one or two times that you had moments of why me and feeling like a victim. They were brief moments, maybe hours, maybe not even half a day. It is important to be accurate on this point because it is SO human to feel this way. What was incredibly inspiring about the way you handled the struggle was that you had those moments but were not about to give into it. If someone has just been diagnosed and they are reading your column, they are very likely freaking out and feeling sorry for themselves, so to hear that you felt that way too will resonate with them and they will want more of the determination that you had/have. They will see that it's not only possible to overcome those feelings, but absolutely necessary."

I find that I have a hard time talking about fear. I don't come from a very touchy feely family where people sit around talking about their fears and get a whole lot of nurturing support. In my family you suck it up and move on--and toughen up. I also spent more or less of the past decade in a state of extreme anxiety and fear. I feared the future, my dream of switching careers, my failing relationships and disintegrating friendships, among many other things--feelings that I believe put me in a position that exploited my weaknesses and made up the larger framework of my illness.

Yes, my friend is right. When I was first diagnosed, I was absolutely terrified. I've said before that I had a hard time sleeping or eating that first week. But increasingly I realized that fear is another way of hemorrhaging energy. Energy is critical to healing. Personal power is critical to healing. Self esteem is critical to healing. And somewhere from deep within, I was able to tap into all that power I didn't know I had.

Every once in a while the fear would come back, but I put in place several rules to help me stay strong: (1) I would not troll the internet looking for survival rates or any other scary details about my cancer or any cancer; (2) I would not spend time talking to cancer survivors or friends and family of cancer survivors who would recount for me the horrible details of what it was like to go through surgery/chemo/radiation or the possibly awful side effects of these treatments; and (3) I would not let people look at me with that pitying look and say: "Are you oookaaaay??" or "How are you feeeeeling?"

Something worth pondering about point number (2)--not letting people tell you about the awful side effects of cancer treatments: I found that if I knew about a side effect, I was almost certain to experience it. When I had no idea, I was more likely not to experience that particular symptom.

Another interesting point: You are more likely to breeze through chemo and radiation without side effects (and to recover from surgery faster) if you are taking alternative medicines. However with some notable and brave exceptions, most oncologists will tell you to stop taking any and all herbal, homeopathic, ayurvedic and Chinese medicines and supplements. They tell you that these will potentially interfere with chemo and radiation. The problem is that this is not necessarily true. What they should say is that they don't know for sure whether most of these alternative or complementary treatments interfere with chemo and radiation. You will find loads of literature on both sides of this issue, and there are studies that suggest that alternative treatments increase the tumor kill rate. Some medical centers are more avant garde than others with respect to this issue (San Francisco State for one).

My personal experience was that when I stopped taking the herbal medicines I started falling apart and ceasing to function. As I began to research and add the less controversial ones back into my diet, I began to miraculously function again--and even flourish. At one point, several weeks after I had begun adding my herbal supplements back into my diet, one of my daughter's preschool teachers said to me: "Aren't you supposed to look less healthy when you're going through chemo?" (Can I just tell you how happy this statement made me?) And this feeling of well-being is a virtuous cycle: the better you feel, the better you will feel and so on.

I asked some very well-informed, educated and intelligent cancer survivors, whom I knew to be using alternative methods, what they told their oncologists about the supplements they were taking. Without exception they said: "I lied." "I didn't say." "I didn't think it was necessary to tell." What is wrong with this picture?

I want to share with you the one quote that helped me conquer the fear for good:

"But the principal causes of disease are physical, for the human body is composed of numerous elements, but in the measure of an especial equilibrium. As long as this equilibrium is maintained, man is preserved from disease; but if this essential balance, which is the pivot of the constitution, is disturbed, the constitution is disordered, and disease will supervene ... When by remedies and treatments the equilibrium is reestablished, the disease is banished." The emphasis on the last sentence is mine.