The Middle Way to Deal With Cancer
Long term readers will know I have metastatic prostate cancer. My PSA levels are steadily worsening, and unless something changes, and perhaps a new cure is found, this disease will shorten my life. I don’t like that reality, but pretending it isn’t there won’t change it.
Living with cancer has taught me something about the choices we make when confronted by circumstances we cannot control. At one extreme, it would be easy to give in. I could spend my days thinking about cancer, frightening myself about what might happen next, becoming angry at the unfairness of it all or gradually withdrawing from the things that make life worthwhile. I could throw in the towel, reach for alcohol or drugs to blur the anxiety and allow cancer to take over my life long before it takes my life. At the other extreme is the equally understandable temptation to become desperate to find a cure.
The internet provides an almost endless supply of supposed cures, supplements, special diets, herbs, fasting regimes and treatments that someone claims will cure cancer. When you’re dealing with a life-threatening condition, the words “this might save your life” are enormously tempting. There is always one more person who knows best what you should do and is quick to tell you, even though it is very unhelpful and can add to the stress. Desperation can send us floundering from one supposed answer to another, spending money, worrying constantly and measuring our lives by the latest blood test. I think there is a middle way.
For me, that means taking my cancer seriously without allowing it to become the central purpose of my life. I stay informed, I monitor my PSA and I talk with my doctors. I exercise, eat well and take an interest in credible research and new treatments. There are things I can do that improve my health and perhaps my prospects, so I choose to do them, but then I get on with living. I still work, write, exercise, ride my bike, run and kayak. I spend time with people I care about. I am involved in projects that excite me and hopefully contribute something useful to other people’s lives. Cancer comes along for the ride, but I don’t intend to let it drive the car.
None of this means I am endlessly positive. There are times when another worsening PSA result causes a sinking feeling in my stomach. Of course I have thoughts about what lies ahead and I would much rather not have cancer, but there is an important distinction between acknowledging those feelings and building my life around them. I cannot choose whether I have cancer today. I cannot control what my next PSA result will be, nor can I control what eventually happens to me. What I do have considerably more influence over is what I do with today.
That is the middle way: neither surrendering to cancer nor spending every waking hour desperately trying to defeat it. Life has always been uncertain for all of us, cancer simply makes that uncertainty much more immediate and impossible to ignore. While I will continue doing sensible things to stay alive, I don’t intend to become so preoccupied with staying alive that I forget to live, and today I still have a life worth living.