“You’ve Got Cancer!”
Sep 21st 2007PostmasterDiagnosis
The day, the hour, the minute you are diagnosed with cancer is the beginning of a long, arduous and often painful journey for you and those who are close to you. Regardless of the physical type of cancer you have been afflicted with, you now have to deal with an emotional disease, unlike anything you’ve had to face before. You’re body is trying to kill you! How’s that for a trip? What does that do to your sense of immortality? What’s really important now? These are all huge issues that will affect you in profound ways, but we all seem to be poorly prepared to deal with them. And not just us, but also the doctors whose job it is to diagnose us and then drop the bomb. What do we do when we are blindsided like this?
For me (and I suspect for most), the initial diagnosis was a blur. I certainly wasn’t expecting it (I was told that the lump on my prostate was “probably nothing”), but I definitely wasn’t in my normal analytical mode. My appointment was first thing in the morning after a long weekend and, while I know I ruined the doctor’s day, it sure started mine off with a bang. I was in a suit on my way to a meeting with clients. I was expecting to be told that it was nothing, so this hit me like a lightening bolt. The doctor read me off a bunch of facts and laid out several options to consider and then sent me on my way. I stopped by the house to tell my wife and then left her to go to my meeting. I had a bomb dropped on me and then I dropped one on her and left! I didn’t realize the significance of that until much later. Bless her for not reaming me out, because I deserved it. She had just been diagnosed with the same emotional disease as I, and I went off worrying about myself! Does that make me a selfish boor or is that “normal”?
For the rest of the week, we both dealt with the diagnosis in different ways. I told no one else and I completely avoided focusing on it. It was there, but it was like a dark cloud hanging over me that I refused to really acknowledge. Denial? Shock? Normally, I would be all over the Internet and in the bookstore researching everything I could find, but I didn’t even hit a website until the weekend. Meanwhile, my dear wife was buying books, phoning support groups, contacting doctors, all on my behalf. She was looking for help for me, not even thinking that she may need help too.
So I ask you – how could I have handled this better? Do you think you need some denial time to allow yourself to adjust to this new reality? Should I be chastised for treating my wife badly? Do I really need to feel guilty about this?
Let’s leave the doctors out of this for now (we’ll deal with that more specifically in a future blog). Let us know your thoughts. Tell us about your immediate post-diagnosis experience. Was it the same? Was it worse? What are your thoughts on how to handle the impact on our loved ones? If you are the spouse, child, lover, parent or friend of a cancer victim, what are your thoughts? What were your experiences?
Let’s talk.
Posted by Doug
4 Comments »
Russ McGowan on 08 Sep 2007 at 8:40 pm #
First of all let me say this . . . God bless you all for taking the time to create this site! Once your treatment is complete (or as complete as it can be) I think the tendancy may be for a cancer survivor to turn his/her back on the whole incident under the guise of “looking forward”. While “looking forward” is an essential element to putting ones life back in order, some “looking back” can surely help someone who has just learned they must follow that path – despite the fact that they may not have much of an idea of what that path might have in store for them.
So thank you for “looking back” in order that others can move forward through their cancer challenge with a valuable support resource, http://www.talkingaboutcancer.com, at their disposal.
Well done!
Russ McGowan
roxiane on 14 Sep 2007 at 10:46 pm #
I was working abroad and actually had some symptoms that kept getting worse and worse. After consulting 8 doctors I was admitted to emergency where I was misdiagnosed again. Finally I landed up at a cancer centre but was told I was going to a “special chest infections hospital” It was dreadful if not comical. I was 3/4 dead anyway, so the fact that I was on my way somewhere was looking good to me. After hooking me up to some “emergency chemo” he explained that I had a huge tumour on my chest, that was crushing my throat, heart and lungs. He introduced himself as an ‘oncologist’ so that’s when I got a clue and asked him if I had cancer. He told me that chemo is used for over 200 diseases and that not all tumours are malignant.
I was to worry about nothing because that was his job he said which I found rather comforting given the situation. Well, long story short I was beyond the worrying stage anyway. I ended up chasing him around, IV in tow, 2 days later begging him to give me more chemo to help me breathe better– a scenario I’d never in my wildest dreams imagined.
And yet there was still room for denial. Even though a massive tumour crushed my superior vena cava, turned my head into a pumpkin (the stuff poetry is made of), so that I couldn’t see out of my eyes because my fat head had squeezed them shut, and left my arms blue and bruised…would you believe I decided that I didn’t have cancer???? Where there’s a will–maybe there’s no cancer?
Denial…gets you through the inital moments of life’s worst crises but I think that denial can get very dangerous when it lingers on preventing patients from seeking the best care possible. My message today is that there is a time limited place for denial–and then you have to move on to acceptance and confrontation pretty swiftly after that.
Fighting for Mike on 26 Sep 2007 at 9:45 pm #
This is a great site you have here. Best of luck to you!
Postmaster on 05 Oct 2007 at 10:42 pm #
I think there are probably several levels of denial. The kind of denial that prevents or delays getting treatment for the physical cancer when you are diagnosed is pretty dangerous if it lasts too long. But I’ve talked to several guys diagnosed with prostate cancer like me who just want to “get it over with” and get on with their life. I guess there is nothing wrong with that but I wonder whether they are in some kind of denial about the emotional impact of having cancer, or the impact of the potential side effects of treatment (which, for men, can be pretty bad).
Can you really just brush it all aside and get on with life without having some emotional issues to deal with? What about fear of recurrence? Maybe there are people who can really do this, but they have to be careful that they are not just burying something that will some day come back and bite them in the ass.
Get on with your life, but don’t ignore what’s going on in your head. For your sake and for the sake of those who love you.
Doug