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Getting cancer is psychologically horrifying. To learn of a cancer diagnosis is to learn that there is a specific, urgent and deadly threat to life growing inside you.
What must be done in this hypothetical?
The first part of a resilient response is pretty straight forward – you try to kill the cancer. The two basic treatment responses are to “zap” (radiation and chemotherapy) or “cut out” (surgery) the cancer cells.
But psychological obstacles remain even after the treatment attempts.
After all, cancer cells can come back, and the medical process can never definitively declare that cancer is gone, forever.
Thus, what begins is a brutal waiting game. Some of the more serious types of cancers bounce back from the treatments - a relapse is suffered. After enough relapses, or a re-emergence of cancer cells in the “right” body part - death is suffered.
This happened to my best friend, Maureen Brinkworth (she passed away in October of 2014 after a 1.5 year battle with breast cancer).
Maureen was maximally resilient in how she coped with her cancer threat, a particular piece of which was her “quick trigger finger.”
Keeping an eye for the possibility of cancer relapse is critical to cancer-related self-care, and it might even make a significant difference in the outcome of a subsequent treatment process.
I can recall Maureen’s (final) cancer relapse. It started as back pain. Within the first 24 hours of this pain, Maureen talked with me about the development.
Was it a strained muscle, or some other trivial ache?
A side effect of a medication?
An inadvertent by-product of being laid up in surgery?
Or was it the return of a cancer process that was going to ensure her demise?
All were possibilities, and she calmly (even politely) contacted her medical treatment team to report on the symptoms.
Maureen did not hesitate to pull the trigger, even though hesitation would have made a lot sense, psychologically speaking. Had I been in her shoes, and I started to experience a random and negative symptom, I could easily imagine hesitation. Who wants to go ask a doctor if what they have started to feel is, in fact, confirming evidence of the thing that is going to kill them in the near future?
Not me.
And yet it is important to truck through this natural psychological hesitancy and avoidance because when it comes to killing cancer cells, the earlier the assessment, the more effective the treatment.
A recent episode of MTV’s “Battle of the Exes 2” unintentionally chronicled Diem’s cancer relapse. A well-known and beloved cast member, Diem, had a publicized history of cancer and suffered a cancer relapse during the filming of last week’s episode.
Maureen’s relapse started with back pain. Diem’s was a constellation of fatigue, stomach pain and vomiting. The third “Battle of the Exes 2” episode showed Diem, in bed, silently suffering her new symptoms for what might have been hours, if not days (the show only provides bits and pieces of the event). It is unclear how quick her “trigger finger” was as she avoided direct questions on the matter, and was abruptly hospitalized and removed from the show by the end of the episode.
Sadly, Diem passed away this past November mere months after this show’s airing.
As a psychologist, I have worked with the terminally sick and those that are not terminally sick (but worry that one day soon they will be). In the latter case, I build up skills in distraction (get off your worry, and get into the “present moment” of your precious life!) and reality-testing (the re-emergence of negative physical symptoms or sensations is non-significant until proven otherwise, and the odds of a fatal disease process are low). With the former, I tend to focus on comfort, an acceptance of what cannot be changed, and an appreciation for the “present moment.”
Cancer victims/survivors are in a unique third group. To be resilient they have to be vigilant of negative bodily changes, quick to report (in other words, assume it is cancer until proven otherwise), and somehow maintain an appreciation and pleasure with the “present moment.”
Tough.
But Maureen did it. Perhaps Diem did too.
Amazing what the human condition can adapt to and endure.
