If life were a moving automobile, cancer would be the emergency brake. When that brake is applied in our lives, it not only stops us in our tracks, it also shakes us to our core. Getting the diagnosis is tough. Treatment is tough. And then living your life with the fear of recurrence is tough. Beneath all of the trials and triumphs of having cancer, I see one fundamental question - "what is cancer and what do I do about it?" For the majority of us diagnosed with cancer, the one thing that we understand is that we do not understand. Our world is spinning, and everything we thought we knew has been turned upside down. When you are free-falling, it is very difficult to know where you are, and where you need to go.
So let's start at the beginning and take a look at the big picture. What is cancer? Cancer is a disease process. Please note that I did not say that cancer is a disease. The difference between 'disease' and 'disease process' is immense and profound. Seeing cancer solely as a disease, we treat only the local manifestation, namely, the tumor. In reality, just removing the disease is often very difficult to do. The entire dynamic of the cancer experience changes when cancer is seen not as just a local abnormality, but as a constitutional disease process. If cancer involves a person's entire constitution, then we need to do much more than remove the tumor. If our basic assumptions about cancer are broadened, then our therapeutic response to cancer must also be also broadened.
Think of it this way - if the ingredients of our life (what we ate/drank/thought/felt, how we acted/worked/related to others and ourselves) resulted in us getting cancer, then to change the outcome (cancer), we would have to change the ingredients of our life. What this means will be different for every individual because every individual has taken a different path to get to their cancer. But for most of us, the way we walked in is often the way we need to walk out. What does that mean in a nutshell? For most of us that means change, often radical change.
Cancer can be a life and death crossroads, and our power to pass through that crossroads demands our full attention and commitment. When I had cancer, I attempted to give it zero attention and was committed to zero change. It was a survival response and continuity was my greatest weapon. In the short term it proved valuable, but in the long run, I needed to accept and appreciate cancer as life-altering. And so I began to change. To start with I had to change what I ate and drank. Then I had to change what work I did and where I did it. I didn't realize that those would be the easiest changes to make.
Much to my amazement, the most difficult thing I had to change was the way I thought and felt. I had to change me. I had to give up my most cherished deep assumptions about life. As strange as it sounds, I had to give up my hopelessness. What I got in return is difficult to put into words, but I will tell you this - it is very, very precious.
Expanding my understanding of cancer from a disease that victimized me, to a process that I could take command of, changed my life. By opening my mind and my heart to a new way of looking at cancer, I found hope. And when everything was said and done, that turned out to be the most important part. When the emergency brake was pulled in my vehicle of life, that headlight of hope was the very thing that guided me to from sickness to health, and from fear to peace of mind.
