Cancer and Coping with Stress

Before my life-changing cancer diagnosis, I thought that working full time in a demanding job, raising a family, being a spouse, running a household, eldercare, and volunteering in the community created a stressful life.

When I was diagnosed, intuitively I knew that living with a serious health condition would be stressful. I thought it wouldn’t be as stressful as trying to keep up with a career, family, household, eldercare, and volunteering. I was wrong.

Living with cancer and coping with the stress that comes with it is very real. There are days when it’s overwhelming.

Learning to live with a cancer diagnosis is a life-altering experience. It is just as stressful, if not more stressful than working full time in a demanding position and juggling the other demands of life.

I’ve learned, while being on sick leave to treat my cancer, that I have simply traded one kind of stress in working full time for another kind of stress in focusing full time on getting better and ridding my body of cancer.

Although I don’t have to entertain an array of meetings at work, the meetings have been replaced with an array of medical appointments. The difference is that with work meetings I had control over what the meetings were about, how long they would be, and with whom I would be meeting. With medical appointments, I have no control over what they are about, how long they will be (many of them run late), and occasionally I know with whom I am meeting.

Some of the appointments are new to me (muga [heart scan], bone scan, CT scan, chemo central line inserted in my jugular vein) so there has been anxiety in what to expect and how I’ll feel after the procedures. Then there is an array of ongoing blood work associated with treatment requirements. I have been jabbed with more needles and IV lines in three months than I had been in my entire life prior to starting treatments.

What has now evolved is a daily agenda that is no longer a work related one; instead it’s a medical one. Keeping up with medical appointments, having a healthy diet to help prepare for treatments and minimizing cancer food triggers (e.g. sugar grows cancer), and trying to fit in a daily walk and stretches to regain strength and use of my arm have become a full time job.

There’s been the additional stress of planning a wedding shower, wedding, and helping a daughter move away from home. Daily household tasks I once took for granted now have to sit and wait until they can get done by me on a good day, or someone else in the family when I can’t do them.

As well, some people around you want you to be “normal” in your behavior and outlook as you once were before you got sick. They can’t cope with you being sick and stay away, so you feel somewhat forced to “keep up appearances” when you do see them. When they stay away, it’s stressful because you miss seeing them.

Then there are the unexpected expenses of treating cancer in the temporary changes required with clothing, expensive hospital parking for numerous lengthy appointments, meals on the go, as you aren’t always at home when your medical appointments are scheduled, organic/chemical-free body care products, and organic/pesticide-free produce. Eventually, when my sick leave and vacation time are used up, I will be required to go on long-term disability for the remaining parts of my treatment and will see my income reduced by 30% until I am able to return to work.

So, it seems that there is a lot of stress in my life.

In my mind, I think I am dealing well with this dramatic change in life, its associated activities, and the stress that comes with it.

My physiotherapist and massage therapist would likely dispute my claim. The physiotherapist who is treating me says that my neck and shoulders are among the tightest muscles she has ever seen. Physio and acupuncture are helping and the muscle tension and headaches are abating. The massage therapist says my neck and shoulder muscles are like concrete. I’m busted—my body doesn’t lie. These caregivers know better.

I’m trying to learn to relax and let go. It is the most difficult life lesson I have yet to learn. I’ve been off work for over three months now and I am getting better in learning to relax and let go, but I have yet to master it. Type A personalities (I’m a raging Type A) are not easily able to gear down and relax, it’s not in our makeup.

Perhaps this anxiety and restlessness exists because when you live with a cancer diagnosis, you never really let go of thinking about it as it lurks in the back of your mind. The change in your lifestyle from working to attending medical appointments and treatments is a constant reminder that you aren’t well, and that life will never be as it was before your diagnosis.

I am fortunate in that an array of people are surrounding me and checking in with me daily to allay my fears and support me on this cancer journey. Family members have become closer, and good friends have become great friends. All of them are gifts in my life that keep me grounded so that I can keep walking on the road to recovery. The next steps in this journey are leading me to my chemo treatments starting in one week.

I continue to travel on the road to wellness with Strength, Courage, and Determination.