Elephants and Tea - September 2022 - 5

YOUR FEELINGS ARE VALID Learning to Cope
place to shed some undetectable tears. As
the weeks and months went by, I got weaker,
more tired, less focused, and lost my sense of
self. But I barely let on that I was struggling.
SO MANY QUESTIONS
Close to the end of treatment, I was sitting on
a stationary bike at the gym, bald and staring
blankly into space and trying desperately to
make the pedals move when a guy sat down
on the bike beside me and, uninvited, started
telling me his cancer story. I guess it was obvious
what I was going through, but his story
wasn't. He told me he had melanoma 15 years
earlier, and as he shared his experience, he
talked about his fear, his assumption that he
was going to die, his anxiety, his sense of isolation,
his depression and tears, and his loss of
control over his life. We shared a moment of
surprise that such diverse people with such
different cancers could share so much of the
same emotional turmoil.
That got me asking questions. The more I
asked, the more I saw patterns in the whole
cancer experience. First, I asked friends
and acquaintances, and then, as I regained
health and strength, cancer patients from
around the world and experts of all sorts to
try to understand what we feel and why-
and what to do about it.
What I learned from all those questions
is that cancer emotions are expected, even
if no one is talking about them. The reason
they are so predictable is that having cancer
and undergoing the treatments we do
creates changes at the cellular level to body
chemistry, and ultimately brain chemistry.
Add to that the things going on outside
the body, like the scariness of treatment
and the uncertainty of it all, the media's
reinforcement that cancer equals death,
or the idea that we can't possibly be high
functioning individuals if we feel and express
emotions, and it's no wonder we get
FIG. 1: THE BIG ORDEAL: THE EMOTIONAL TURMOIL OF CANCER
a little weepy. When everyone around us
tells us to stay strong rather than giving us
strength it adds to the burden, providing
further damning evidence: " I must be the
only one who is so weak and pathetic that
I can't smile through cancer. "
COPING WITH A BUMPY RIDE
In fact, a typical ride through cancer is pretty
bumpy, with anxiety and the fear of death
as constant companions. Stress is probably
at its highest when we need to make care
decisions. We may feel a sense of relief when
treatment starts-someone is finally dealing
with this cancer-but that fades as the chaos
and loss of control, fatigue, and self-identity
issues emerge with ongoing treatment. A bad
outcome sets us back. Progression brings
anger along with renewed fear, end of treatment
often leaves us bewildered and alone,
and emotional recovery only happens after
physical recovery is complete. (See fig. 1.)
ELEPHANTSANDTEA.COM
SEPTEMBER 2022
5
http://www.ELEPHANTSANDTEA.COM
Elephants and Tea - September 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Elephants and Tea - September 2022
