My mother, in her wisdom, remarked on the day of my cancer diagnosis that, “you were never one to back down from a challenge. This is just a new one for you.” She’s right.

I have tackled life’s challenges by immersing myself into the problem, learning about it, and then organizing the information in ways that are helpful to me to resolve it.

With cancer, there are certainly no shortages of information sources in which one can immerse themselves into. Websites abound. So do books. It’s dizzying to see how much cancer information is out there.

In the first few days, the cancer experience was like a hunger that needed to be fed. I wanted to devour everything about the disease that I could find. It didn’t take long to experience information overload, confusion, and a healthy dose of fear.

I learned that I had to read about cancer in small doses and only from credible sources. My health care team helped me to filter out the credible sources and ones that were not. I now only read information from the sources that they have recommended.

I still need to digest the information in small doses. The technical information is good for knowledge about the steps that will be taken to treat this disease. The books on living through the cancer experience and surviving are inspiring and helpful. They validate that the range of emotions that I am feeling about this disease many others have also experienced.

Both types of information are valuable and make me feel like I have some input and control over what is happening to me in each phase of this cancer journey.