We are living through some uncertain times…we are living through what we never thought we would have to experience….
In a world where we feel we are in control at a touch of our fingers…we are loosing control each day…we are waiting for the government to tell us what to do next, we are not sure how our financial situation will be affected, we are not sure if our local supermarket will have enough food for us to buy…we are lost and all we want is to feel safe again…like before the coronavirus.
But the coronavirus is not going to go away overnight…
This situation brings me back to when the rug got pulled from under my feet.
At 38 years, I was told, I had between 70-90% chance of survival.
As I write this, it pains my heart just thinking about these numbers…all of a sudden I had not only lost my sense of security…
But I was scared, fearful and powerless…
Then I had to face the world…and tell people I had Stage 3 Bowel cancer and that I was going to have 12 sessions of chemotherapy.
Most people’s faces gave me even less hope than the actual prognosis given to me.
My GP then told me that I needed to avoid crowds… I needed to stay at home and away from people as much as possible as my immune system was going to be down.
I had a slim hope my immune system was going to be stronger than most as I was young, righht?
Little I knew that as soon as I started chemotherapy, that became my new reality…my immune system became very weak.
I had many delays during treatment because my immune system wasn’t recovering…
Until one day I ended up in emergency with 0.01 neutrophils (these are the white cells that fight any infection/bacteria/virus you may have)…
Well I had none…
Two bags of blood and one bag of iron later, my body slowly started to recover and one week later I was able to go home.
I was then left by myself at home to pick up the pieces of what was left of me…
I knew I needed to focus on building up myself again…my physical and mental health if I wanted to survive.
I needed to accept my new reality, adapt and change to survive.
Slowly I switched my focus to changing my diet, doing exercise, meditation and listening to anything I could to feed my mind with positive things, with knowledge that was going to help me.
I stopped thinking about tomorrow because I had learned that I couldn’t predict my tomorrow…things could change quite quickly and all I could do was to focus on the NOW.
I feel the world is now at a similar place…we have all lost our sense of security and we are finding difficult to navigate through this new reality.
We are listening to some informative news but we are getting bombarded with a lot of negativity too.
It is challenging to move away from it…
I would like to invite you to think about the things you can control right now…focus on what you can control…tap into your inner strength (we all have one, trust me)…
You could focus on something as simple as reducing the time you spend watching the news…or increasing the time you meditate…or take up on reading again.
Little things can make a big difference in how we live, in who we are, in who we become through this…
I have also learned that nothing is permanent…I had some pretty shitty days but they too passed and the coronavirus shall pass too…
Stay safe and healthy,
One response to “What cancer taught me about uncertainty…”
This is beautifully written and so true we need to focus on the now and not the what if’s. The whole world is experiencing the unknown and it is hard for people to come to terms with the uncertainty of what will happen. China sadly have withheld vital information about the virus and delayed the rest of the world from acting earlier and preventing maybe the horrific death of so many people. We can only be thankful to the thousands of nurses, doctors, auxiliary workers, cooks and others all over the world who have put their lives on hold and more seriously put their lives at risk for all of us. Let us focus on being thankful to them and not criticising them and governments for not doing enough. Let us focus on being positive and thanking God for everyday that we do not have the virus or some other awful life threatening illness. Jx