Lately i’ve been inundated with people telling me things I can do to help me through all this. I’ve heard everything from buddhism and meditation, diets and supplements, exercises and yoga, through to medicines and medical trials. All of them have their evidence that they “may” work, but all of them come with the caveat that in reality, it’s all just various theories, and while there may have been some good results in some circumstances, there is no proof or guarantee that it will work. In reality, it’s more of the “We just don’t know”.

Waiting, wondering, worrying.

While I appreciate all the suggestions, and am looking into as many of them as possible (and have already started on a few alternative therapies I never would’ve considered worth my time before this), it’s all a bit overwhelming. All the input from everyone is done with good intentions, but similar to back-seat driving, even good intentions can be difficult to process when you’ve already got a lot on your mind.

I find the hardest part of all of this though, is the mental aspects, and how to handle each day of waiting, wondering, and worrying.

The physical side is pretty much covered by the doctors, surgeons, specialists, etc. Sure, you have to listen to all they have to say, consider the various options, and make a few decisions… but you get a lot of guidance and support throughout it, and a lot of help in making those decisions.

With the mental side though, it’s pretty much up to you to handle it how you think best suits your own mind, and that’s a bloody hard thing to do with cancer, as there’s no real guidance or procedures on how to mentally handle the fact that you’ve got a deadly disease with no real cure.

This leads to one of the most common phrases I hear from nearly everyone who has spoken to me recently:

“There’s no right or wrong way to deal with this.”

That’s exactly the problem. With just about anything in life you need to go through, others have gone through it before and figured out how best to approach it. It might not work for every single person, but it works for a large majority… and in general, is considered the “right” way to approach it.

Want to have a good relationship? Pay attention to your partner, provide what they need, make sure you communicate, spend lots of time with them, and generally just don’t be a dick.

Got the flu? Stay warm, rug up, eat lots of fruit especially stuff with vitamin C, stay hydrated and get lots of rest.

Stressed out at work? Take some time out for yourself, make sure you get enough sleep, break up your day with a walk or get out in the sun, turn off your phone and don’t check emails outside of work hours, and spend some time with your friends.

Got cancer? Well you could TRY eating/drinking lots of foods with ‘x’ and ‘y’ in it… but ‘x’ and ‘y’ change depending who you talk to, what day it is, what trials are running, what country you’re in, or how the planets are currently lined up. You could TRY meditation and acupuncture, calming yourself, thinking positive, or exercise. You could TRY chemo, or interferon, or this trial, or that trial. You could TRY getting more sun, or less sun, or Vitamin D tablets instead of sun, or … well, that’s just it, we don’t know, sorry. We know some of these things have helped some of these people, some of the time, but we also know that some of most of these things have NOT helped most of these people, most of the time.

Daily supplements. Not shown: pain killers, sleeping tablets, anxiety tablets, etc.

There’s no proof that accepting it and thinking positively will help. There’s no proof that denial and escapism will work. There’s no proof of, well, anything. You just lay there, thinking about the fact that you’re effectively rotting away, from the inside out… and not knowing what you should think, how you should approach it, or what you should do. You take stabs in the dark, and try and be super-positive and ignore it all, in the hope that it will somehow sort itself out. You go through meditation and breathing techniques, in the hope that the anxiety attacks will go away. You take 20 pills a day, covering every known supplement that has shown “some” sign of helping, as well as pain killers and sleeping tablets and anxiety tablets and more. You experience mood swings like you’ve never felt in your life, and there’s no-one, and no-thing, that can tell you what you should do, and how you should do it, with any real certainty.

It’s also not a relationship or a flu that we’re trying to deal with here. Every decision, every experiment and every option, are potentially a life/death decision.

It’s all just a huge numbers game… and the percentages suck. 10% chance of chemo helping, with a 90% chance chemo will put you through hell. 70% chance that it’ll come back in 3 years even AFTER we aggressively operate and go through all the associated risks. 36% chance of survival over 2 years, and a whopping 19% chance survival over 5 years. Yes, all these stats are just averages, and are never accurate for “the individual”, but it gives you an idea.

While throughout all this, I still remain quite positive, there are just a LOT of thoughts that go tearing through your mind that you wouldn’t normally need to deal with. Even when they might cross your mind, they’re very detached. “IF I had cancer, what would I do?” is a whole different world to “Holy crap, i’ve got cancer, what do I do?”

Ah well. Throughout all these, my opinion hasn’t changed. There’s not much I can do now, but hold on, and go for the ride… it’s just one really shitty ride, and I can’t wait to get off.

Cancer seriously DOES suck.

PS: A little side-note, since no post here can be without at least a touch of humour. Every single post on this site so far, has been written spur-of-the-moment, usually on my phone (HTC Desire), usually while on the loo or waiting in a doctor’s office. This is the first post that I actually planned, thought about, edited, revised, etc… and I hate it. It took me 2 days to write this, and I think it’s crap compared to my others.

I’ve been getting a LOT of comments about how well I write, and it’s just really really surprising, as i’ve never really written properly in my life. Everything I write is usually just blurted out in a constant stream, similar to talking without thinking, and I don’t even proof-read or edit it before hitting ‘Submit’. So: Thanks for the compliments. It has made me feel really good throughout all this, and has motivated me to write more, and experiment with my writing styles (eg: this post)… for now, i’ll go back to my non-planned rants though