Cancer and Living

Good Morning Cancer Patients and Survivors;
The holiday season is here. Are you preparing for it? Are you getting ready to spend time with friends and family celebrating the time and being together? It may be hard for you to do when your worrying about your cancer, your treatment success, the next test results or your suffering through the side effects of chemo and radiation. However, you could be doing that anyway regardless of the season. Now is the time to put those thoughts and worries aside and start living in the season. It will take your mind off the agony of cancer and focus your attention on living again, even if for just the season.

Too many cancer patients stop living their lives when they are diagnosed with cancer. They take a very inward focus and decide to stop living and doing the things they did before cancer or even doing new things. Your journey with cancer will run its course whether you decide to keep living your life with cancer or you elect to stop living and suffer through it. Every cancer patient decides this on their own. We recently buried a friend who was diagnosed with bone cancer over 5 years ago. He was mad at the world and stopped living what was once an active life. He lived for 5 years before the end and lost 5 years of living, waiting to die. In fact, he wanted to know when he would die so he could stop waiting.

Don't let cancer and the treatment strip you of your will to live. You just have cancer. You'll know when you're dieing. So don't waist the time you have by not continuing to live your life as fully as possible. Enjoy the holiday season the best you can and cherrish the time you are able to spend with your family and friends. When your asked by others at gatherings, how you are doing, just respond, "I'm getting through it" and then change the subject by asking how they are doing. Even though others want to know how you are doing, you don't want to spend your time at gatherings talking about your cancer.

So cheer up, its the holidays, and a good reason to keep living. Enjoy the time, don't over do it and appreciate the small joys and the opportunity you have to keep living your life. Keep your sense of humor and never ever give up.