The process of recovering from cancer involves changing, at least for a time, what the ill individual accomplishes. When you are physically challenged, you don't have the same ability to do what you usually do. It's as simple as that. Achieving your goals has a great deal to do with prioritizing activities and with pacing yourself so that you can do the things you decide are most important.
Of course everyone coming out of a serious illness would like her or his life to immediately revert to what was normal in the past, but recovery doesn't usually work that way. Some cancer survivors will eventually heal completely, and over time they will resume all of their former activities. For others, there may always be remnants of the cancer itself or side effects of the treatment that create some limitations-essentially some level of disability. These individuals have to get used to a "new normal," as the cancer literature puts it.
Living with physical limitations is not unique to cancer survivors, though. People with arthritis in their knees or hips can't walk as far as they used to. Those with asthma or other respiratory problems are physically constrained by the amount of oxygen they are able to breathe. A person with chronic back pain may have difficulty sitting or standing for long periods of time. Hence, there is a saying in my specialty that being able-bodied is a temporary condition. We all face varying degrees of disability, either temporarily or permanently, as the years pass. But just as facing illness is a part of life, fortunately, so is healing.
As a society we value productivity and accomplishments. We sleep fewer hours, work more, and spend less time with our families and on ourselves than past generations did. A busy life, even if it is chaotic and unhealthy, is something of a badge of honor. The more we do, the better we are. Or are we?
Receiving a cancer diagnosis is an opportunity to make some changes for the better in your life. We would never say cancer is a positive thing in anyone's life. However, taking the time to evaluate how you can lead a healthier life from now on is a smart move-especially during the recovery period. Like most people with cancer, you may have wondered what you did in the past that contributed to developing cancer. Whether or not you can pinpoint a reason for your illness, all you can do at this point is to move forward and take charge of the matters that you can control.
Four times Terry Bradshaw has been a member of teams that won Super Bowl games; he is in the Football Hall of Fame as one of the alltime best quarterbacks in the game.
I do not mean for you to start doubting yourself or everything you've done for your health in the past. Chances are that you have done some things very well. It's just that now is a good time to consider what you can do that will be helpful in the healing process. Quoting the Greek dramatist Euripides, "There is in the worst of fortunes the best of chances for a happy change." Take a moment and think about what your life was like before cancer. Did you worry more than you wanted to about things? Should you have exercised more often? Did you suffer from pain? Perhaps most important, did you use your energy wisely, spending most of your time on the things that are most meaningful to you? When my husband was a teenager, his mother, Betty, suffered a stroke. Although she was only in her early forties, a blood clot from a damaged heart valve traveled to her brain and cut off the blood supply to part of her body. She became weak on one side and disoriented, and her speech was slurred. In the span of a few moments, she was transformed from a healthy mother of eight children to a woman with a life-threatening condition. Her youngest child, Danny, was 7 years old at the time. As the paramedics rushed Betty to the hospital, Danny became a sentry on the front steps leading to his house, and he stayed there, waiting for his mother to come home. "Danny, you need to go to school," his older brothers and sisters told him. Danny wouldn't budge.
No amount of cajoling would move this soldier from his post. Betty did come home eventually, and Danny went back to school. But this experience had changed Betty. There was no going back to her former life. She dedicated herself to the three most important healing parameters (probably without consciously recognizing them as such): diet, exercise, and sleep. During her recovery and thereafter, she walked almost every single day. Even in the bitter cold in Massachusetts, Betty could be found walking. My husband remembers the months after her stroke when Betty would exercise before the children awakened. If he happened to rise early and she wasn't in the house, he would check the toilet bowl for the telltale tissue with the blotted pink lipstick, the signal that his mother was out for her walk-impeccably attired. She also ate a healthy diet, got enough sleep, and focused on the things that were the most important to her-primarily her family.
When I was diagnosed with cancer, my husband reminded me of this story. He believes that the stroke, which was unquestionably devastating, changed his mother's life in some good ways and perhaps significantly prolonged her life. Today, she is an exceedingly healthy woman in her seventies who appears much younger. Her commitment over the past three decades to recovering her health has paid off. One only has to look at her family tree to know that genetics is not responsible, but rather hard work and persistence. When my husband brought up this story, he told me that he was expecting history to repeat itself: a relatively young woman in his life faces a life-threatening illness and responds by dedicating herself to making a priority of those things that will lead to a lifetime of better health.
No matter what type or stage of cancer you are dealing with, you can make improving your health a priority. You are already doing that by taking the time to read this article. Priorities are what we choose to make important in our lives. Of course it is frustrating not to be able to do all the things you used to do. But what if you made a list of just the things that are very meaningful to you? Could you do most or all of them? Let me give you a couple of examples I often use when talking to my patients. Let's say that someone gets fatigued when walking or standing for a prolonged period of time-a common problem with people recovering from serious illness or injury. I'll offer a number of suggestions, and one is to sit, rather than stand, in the shower. I have heard this statement uttered in response literally hundreds of times: "I could never sit in the shower!" If you are having this thought right now, I'd like you to ask yourself whether standing in the shower is incredibly meaningful to you. Would you place it on your list of priorities? If not, then sit down and conserve your energy. There is absolutely no health benefit to standing in the shower. You don't build strength or endurance this way.
Moreover, you risk falling (especially if you are ill) and use up energy that could be better used to do something on your list of priorities. If you still aren't convinced, consider that many people routinely sit in the shower, even though they are not ill. Newer homes and remodeled bathrooms often come with a built-in shower seat. My children all sit in the shower, and they think it is humorous when I tell them some folks don't want to sit. Standing in the shower is simply a habit that can be easily changed (with the right mind-set). It is one of the many things you can do to make sure that you heal quickly and well. (You might conserve energy further by changing from a daily shower to an everyother- day shower.) Another suggestion I make to patients is to do their grocery shopping online.
This is a little trickier because for some people who are fine cooks, shopping at the grocery store is a priority. I am not a terrific cook, so I love quickly ordering groceries and having them delivered to my kitchen counter. I don't always get exactly what I want, but I don't really care. It is not on my priority list. Frankly, if the delivery person brings a piece of fruit that has seen better days, I just toss it out-which doesn't mean I don't consider food important. I do. My family eats a lot of fresh vegetables and fruits, most of them organic, that are cheerfully delivered within twenty-four hours of my pushing the "send" button. I have never had a patient tell me that standing in the shower is a priority, but plenty of patients have said that choosing their own groceries is a priority. That is just fine. As long as you know what your priorities are, you can heal quickly and well while still doing the things that are meaningful to you. It's the things that are not meaningful to you that I am suggesting you curtail-at least for the time being.
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