No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
- - Voltaire
Yesterday was a very big day. It was 19 days since I had been for my scan and each and every hour of those days passed painfully slowly. Even whilst sleeping the pain of waiting for the news was felt in every muscle of my body. I said before that the mind is a powerful thing. It can be amazingly powerful in a positive, healing way. Equally it can be deceptive and cruel and lead to all sorts of damage. My mind has caused mayhem these last couple of weeks. As time went on I became paralysed with fear. My mind took me to terrible places and my body suffered massively. Chemo does a lot of harm to your body and all of my pains are no doubt caused by it. However the last weeks I have been unable to rationalise this and instead every pain feeds a new worry. My pains are also, I'm sure, caused by my stress. I have never doubted the ability of stress to wreak havoc on the physical well being. I have always known this, the year long backache which always eases up a few weeks into the 7 week summer holiday for example, but never known how to stop it, to act upon it. This is something that I am determined to find out more about. My meditation class last week was really good and I intend to go further with this. Anyway, I did what any person who is consumed with fear does and I set all kinds of stumbling blocks in the way of my news. If I don't get a phone call by 4pm I am not answering the phone after that, I don't want to know bad news at that time. If they don't leave a message I will just leave it as it can only be bad news etc etc . The hospital did call (eventually) on Friday morning. Both phones. I didn't make it to the phone (or did I tell myself that?) and no message was left. I waited all day for the phone to ring again. It didn't. By half past 3 I decided that I couldn't take bad news over the weekend with no doctor to speak to. I left it. I then got to sunday night and my mind had completely done a job on me. I had all sorts of scenarios going on in my head, and pain, I had a lot of pain. The mental anguish becomes the physical malady. This is living with cancer and it's not good. Monday morning came and I was fully intending to make the dreaded phone call first thing. Of course I found a million reasons not to. By the afternoon a very good friend finally said, to paraphrase, "just fucking do it Lesley", and I did. 19 days of fear and anguish were blown out. My scan result was showing that the tumours were reacting to the chemo. My largest tumour had reduced by more than 50 per cent. WOW. This was the first time in over 2 years that I had been the recipient of uncompromised good news. I could have known this last Thursday. The thing to be mindful of is that you are one of many cancer patients and the people on the other end of the phone are not worrying like you are. They are BUSY. Therefore it is really up to you to push for the information. Fear is sometimes all that stands between you and an answer that can change everything from black to wonderful white. This is living with cancer. Conversely fear can also be realised with one short phone call, lets be honest, but again bad news is still better than no news. Bad news gives you something to work with. I am delighted to say that this is not my situation today, but it no doubt will be sometime in the future. This is why I have to seriously work on my mind. I will keep you posted
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