Dealing With the Inevitable Unpredictability Of Cancer

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what comes next. It’s a pretty big subject when you live with a blood cancer or any of the chronic cancers, really. What’s next? It’s a big question because it impacts so many different parts of living with cancer. You could be forgiven for having it consume a large part of your mental fuel, almost always.

What will be next with blood cancer?

Think about it really, when you wonder what comes next, what part of living with cancer doesn’t that apply to? What happens in the next hour? Check. What happens in the next few hours? Check. What happens tomorrow? Next month? Next year? In ten years? I mean... it applies to all those things!

No wonder that it takes up so much real estate in our brains. It’s like some sort of screwed-up game show where the stakes are literally life and death. Welcome to “Guess what’s next!” The game show where you have no idea what’s coming or when it’s coming, but you know it’s going to be bad!! Yeah, like that.

Stress worrying about fatigue and other side effects

The unpredictability of the fatigue that inevitably comes with cancer can alone take up an inordinate amount of time, and that’s just one of the side effects of living with cancer. It’s not any wonder that many of us suffer from anxiety and just general mental stress overall.

There is a veritable mountain of studies that show how much a toll that unpredictability can take on a person’s psyche and mental wellbeing. PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) is partially caused by the stress of always having to worry about what’s coming next and the damage that causes to a brain. Well, it’s what people with blood cancer live with every single day.

Minimizing the damage

So, what’s next in this article? Well, that is something that I can definitely answer and help to put your mind at ease.

We will talk about ways to mitigate the damage it can cause and the stress it puts on an already very stressful situation. I have been at this for almost forty years with my rheumatoid arthritis first and then my lymphoma next, and while I’m not an expert by any means, I certainly have developed a few methods that seem to work and dealing with the unpredictability is at the top of that list.

Remember, difficulties come to everyone

First of all, you should start telling yourself that no one is immune to the unpredictable effects of the world. People who don't live with a life-threatening disease inside them also have to deal with life’s foibles and whatever the world throws at them. That’s pretty much 99% of what it means to be a human – eating, pooping, and dealing with the chaos and whatever stresses come along.

Everyone is scared, it’s pretty much the human condition! Now, yes, admittedly those of us who are diagnosed with cancer have “chaos” in our lives that skews a bit more towards the “life threatening” side of things, but the basic problem at the heart of it is the same, more or less... maybe a little less, but still. Always keep that in mind – no one has a perfect life no matter what Instagram says.

What's happening now will one day be in the past

Second, and this is going to sound more harsh than I mean it, but things will eventually pass. How do I know this? Well, because whatever comes along will either get better, or it won’t.

If it gets better, then, well, it’s all good, back to Lucky Charms and playing Chutes and Ladders for poker chips.

On other hand, if it doesn’t get better than you’ll either incorporate it into your daily life – your baseline - or it will kill you, to put it bluntly. If the latter, then, well, you’ll be dead and you won’t care anymore. Sorry, but it’s true.

Something always happens

Third, and lastly, while you can’t get used to the things that happen unpredictably you can get used to the fact that things will inevitably happen. I know, it sounds like it’s the same thing, but it is a little bit different. Yes, when you have blood cancer there are going to be additional side effects and secondary conditions that come along but instead of worrying about what those things will be, exactly, you just accept that they will happen.

You can be OK with knowing that things are coming and once you are then you can rob the phenomenon of half its power. If you can get used to the fact that something will happen in an unpredictably and utterly annoying fashion, then you can take the stress, which is about a 10 on the stress-of-meter, and turn it down to a more bearable 5 out of 10. I can tell you with 100% assuredness that there will be bumps in the road at the most inopportune time when you live with blood-cancer. Learning to deal with it will help.

There it is, the stress of living with the unpredictability of blood cancer laid out on paper. Hopefully it’s not as scary as it was a few minutes ago. As I’ve said before, sometimes just by putting a name to a fear and laying it out you can rob it of a ton of its power. Look, it is still going to be bad when stuff happens, that’s a no-brainer, but at least you know that it will happen and when it does – you will deal with it or, well, you won’t care anymore, morbid as that is. It’s how I deal with it after decades and I can say – it works for me. Talk soon.