Worry

Whenever you or a loved one gets cancer worry is a normal emotional reaction.  But worrying is unhealthy,  it causes stress, stress reduces your immune system and that opens the door to diseases like cancer.  It’s a hard cycle to be in; but for your own sake you need to break out of it otherwise it will makes things worse.   For the longest time I was a worrier.  The day I was born I said to my Mom, “I’m worried that President Kennedy is going to get sideways with the Russians in Cuba.”  I was right, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it;  I was only a newborn.  What adult listens to newborns on foreign policy?  A better example was the Spring of my Senior year in high school when it rained every day and flooded our field so bad we hadn’t played one game at home all season.  One day John Peterson and I were sitting around before practice bitching about the rain and worrying about whether it was going to rain on the next game.  Coach Jim Wells, whose temperament fell somewhere between Woody Hayes and General Patton,  heard us moaning about the rain, stormed out, and blasted us.  “What are you two doing sitting around here worrying about the weather?  There’s not a damn thing you can do about it.  For all I care, it can rain shit out of the sky tomorrow and there’s nothing you can do about it.  Now get out on that practice field and get ready to win tomorrow.”  I’ve never seen shit fall out of the sky before and haven’t since, but I sensed he was challenging us to focus on what we can control and prepare for what we can’t.  Easier said than done.  Cancer is not a high school baseball game; it’s a serious and unpredictable illness.  Worry,  however,  is your mind’s obsession with all the bad things you’ve heard about cancer both real and imagined.  Worry catches fire with information; both not enough and also too much.   When you doctor tells you that you might have cancer be sure to wait for all of the final results to come in before jumping to conclusions.  My rule of thumb is if you’re going to throw yourself out a window after getting bad news, then make sure its on the ground floor – the landing is softer.  The flip side is too much information drives worry, especially information from unreliable sources like broad cast news and the internet.  Both flood your head with negative news saturated with fear and worry.  Do yourself a favor and reduce your worry by talking to your doctor and turning off TV news and Dr. Google.  Finally, perspective is the best treatment for containing worry.  Talk with other patients who have the same cancer as you and you’ll discover just by talking you’re worries will seem a lot smaller.  Slainte.