Being Diagnosed With Cancer
It was 4 months ago now that I was given the diagnosis of cancer (squamous cell carcinoma) for the tumour that had been growing on my shoulder. It is SHIT getting a cancer diagnosis. More shitter than being diagnosed insulin dependent diabetic. Shit in a different way to being diagnosed bipolar. Just shit. Mega shit.
Today I came across this piece of writing that I wrote within the first few weeks of having received the diagnosis.
I was feeling shit.
I’m still feeling shit in some ways, but I’ve got more of a handle on it, but, you know, it’s up and down, but I’ve been doing a lot of work mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, all of it.
Anyway, I thought I’d share my version of the 10 shittest things that I was finding it hardest to deal with. I hope that my sharing can perhaps help you feel not so lost and alone if you are experiencing anything similar.
I will be writing soon ‘The 10 Best Things That Happen To You After Being Told You Have Cancer – According to ME’ when I’m ready. I’m not quite ready yet.
For now, here’s the shit bit (there’s still goodness in the shit you’ll notice)
10 (Shittish) Things That Happen to You When You Receive a Cancer Diagnosis – According to ME
- confusion and isolation – you come out of the hospital feeling a weird mixture of numbness and aliveness. The word ‘Cancer‘ burrows into your mind like a hungry chomping worm. Your mind spontaneously over-scans itself for every time in the past that you’ve ever heard people talk negatively and fearfully of ‘Cancer‘ and, even though you don’t want to, at some level that collective fear hits you like a truck and starts annihilating you from the inside out. In those same moments your hopeful mind scans for anything good that you’ve ever heard be spoken about cancer survival. And again in the same moment you explode with hundreds of ideas of how to help yourself and others. For me ‘support groups’ and ‘laughter yoga’ were crying at me. You really want a hug, you realise no ones with you and you don’t know who to reach out to. You feel confused and very, very isolated.
- catastrophic thinking – That worm has got busy chewing on every bit of fear in your psyche and the fear is multiplying and rising up all through out every nook and cranny of your mind. That word, cancer, loaded as it is, sucks you into pondering every worse case scenario, like a strong giant magnet. And, it gets you wondering about EVERY possible thing that you’ve ever possibly done wrong, and, how you’ve created this yourself, and how on earth do you put it right? Your body goes ape shit with intense feelings and your mind gets instantly toxic with negativity. You fear the negativity, so it gets worse.
- healing – you think about all the healing protocols you know about. You want to do all of them, full on, in one hit. All the people you’ve ever come across who know their stuff on healing, you start looking for them. You get on the Internet and start researching about how to get yourself well. You exhaust yourself trying to find something new that heals all levels of your being. You don’t want to read too much into cancer books as you get full up too quickly with the science of it. You are more wanting a solution to it. You are already trying to find the way out. You are avoiding getting ‘in’ it, married to it, familiar with it. You don’t quite want to wear it.
- insecurity and vulnerability – you feel excruciatingly vulnerable. You’re not sure what you’re dealing with. You’re not sure who you want to share with. You feel afraid of people’s reactions. You feel very selective about who you tell. You pluck up the courage to tell your parent. You sincerely request that they keep the information between the both of you. They promise, only to inform you 24 hours later that they couldn’t keep the promise. You deeply feel the sense of having no control and you feel sorely betrayed. And at the same time you know you can’t give your energy to that, you can’t afford to crust resentment around that. You have to express and let it go. You have just taken a hefty soul punch and your not allowed to hold it begrudgingly. You recognise holding on won’t be good for your body. You let go. You have to.
- affirmations – you remember Louise Hays healing affirmations. You find the right one for cancer and you start saying and thinking it as much as you humanly possibly can. Each time you think something that isn’t your affirmation you freak out. You realise cancer is all about resentment and needing to forgive. You feel desperately lost as you recognise you’ve no idea what forgiveness means, but you affirm your arse off that you’re willing to do it.
- support – you feel desperate and lonely and you wonder who you would you like to tell and ask for support. You realise you feel desperately uncomfortable asking for support. You realise you don’t trust people that much. You feel terrible and closed off. Isolated and deeply full of fear. You are suffocating in not-knowing-ness. You make a feeble attempt at getting your needs heard. You feel disempowered and cringeworthy as it seems no one can ‘hear’ your plea. You go to your local cancer support group hoping to get some reassurance and empowerment only to find that you feel small and patronised by being told ‘how difficult you must be being for the people around you’. You start getting really fucking angry.
- visualisation – you remember you have a crazy arse imagination. You imagine every possible way of your cells being loved, freed, transformed, cleansed. You go to this realm to find joy and hope and comedy and playfulness. You visualise to heal your body, to free your mind, to lighten your heart. You decide to invite an internal support group to show up. You think of all the people in your life that you’ve really felt acknowledged and loved by. You sit them around you in your mind and whenever you need support you close your eyes and tune in. They say to you whatever you want them to say, it’s your imagination. You start intensely wondering about HOW other people want to experience support, and, WHAT makes other people feel supported. You wonder where the fuck this support is. You wonder if you might totally have to be the creator of what you need.
- information overload – you start looking around for other people or places where support or sharing around ‘healing cancer naturally’ is occurring. And if your blessed, like me, you meet some and you get given bundles of information that you can’t quite absorb or process, yet you take it all in at some level. You come away with so much information you feel overwhelmed and clueless. You start learning about vitamin B17, alkalising, ph levels and how important they are, why minerals can’t work in an acid body, the Kelmun protocol, turmeric, how cells respond to baking soda, how to get baking soda into your cells, that candida may be a culprit too, how to heal candida, how to do liver flushes, how temporal tapping can get you to wipe out limiting beliefs, AND SO MANY OTHER THINGS. You pray that it will all filter in and that eventually you’ll know what to do. You pray and pray.
- deciding what to do – you get booked in for appointments to have surgery. You have to go through all the mental and emotional ups and downs around this issue. You go and get muscle tested to work through some blocks. You share with selected people. You’re desperate for clarity and trust.
- attempting to remain strong (um) – you realise that you can’t allow yourself anxiety and depression, even though it’s powerfully pushing in on you and your mind is bursting and leaking with fear, grief, sadness, madness. You are flexing all your mental tools, doing all your practices, clearing, healing, tapping, meditating, affirming, visualising, praying, eating right, breathing, cord cutting, writing, drawing, dancing, rebounding,crying, feeling, sobbing, stretching, loving yourself and getting outside, acupuncture, massage, urine therapy and homeopathy and still you feel like you’re not doing anything, not getting anywhere and you feel like absolute shit
- (oops. 11 things. Ah well) you dance your way into surgery, you visualise and imagine and sing your way through it. You treat
yourself as best as you can. Your call out for support has finally been answered and some loving friends come with you to provide offer love and support (but I’m lucky. Not everyone has that) You have been told, have discovered, have researched, have heard about many many things that might help your body out. You start to take some more on board and you start playing with protocols. You find out your body is totally out of whack, despite your raw food diet and healthy regimes, and you start really really wondering what is happening in your inner environment. You feel overwhelmed because you don’t know where to start. You feel frightened because you’re wondering how you’re going to manage. You feel lost because other than a tumour being on your skin, which has been removed, you don’t know where else the cancer might be. You feel double lost because no doctor is willing to help you find out.
- oops, 12 things, ah well, I don’t give a shit! – you try your absolute best, moment to moment, to be with what is occurring. You do your best to witness and see and feel all the stuff thats exploding forth from deep inside your breaking apart soul. You do your best to affirm well being whilst you’re drowning in fear. You do your best to love and hug yourself whilst fear is having a field day in the all encompassing background of your darkly patterned mind. You do your best to continuously, over and over, drag yourself out from the jowls of black wonderings. You save yourself over and over from all the resentment that’s so lively as its surfacing right now. You recognise so deeply and painfully and awkwardly how identified you are with your inner lies and stories. You pray that you get through and that at least you discover some fabulous stuff that you can share with others.
Watch out for when I write about the ’10 best things that happen to you after receiving a cancer diagnosis’