Regaining Patient Confidence When Battling Cancer

Cancer patient confidence can be a fickle thing. Like the Chairman, Frank Sinatra, sang in “That’s Life,” you might be “riding high in April, shot down in May.”

For patients, a cancer diagnosis introduces a whole new wrinkle to life, and a casualty sometimes is one’s self-confidence.

Cancer takes a hit on confidence

I recently connected with a long-time friend and former colleague, Michael, a relatively young man who recently began cancer treatment. When I asked him how he was getting along, Michael replied he was struggling a bit, both with side effects from treatment and, surprisingly to me, his confidence.

I was surprised because Michael’s confidence had never outwardly waned over the years. He was a Marine, and he followed up his service with a successful, multi-faceted career and the building of a loving family. He had always exuded confidence in all his interactions, so his comment made me want to understand more.

Side effects of treatment lower patient confidence

My friend’s struggle with confidence had roots in his treatment, not his diagnosis. Although, when he was first diagnosed, he did admit to battling through depression.

Michael’s treatment is the source of his lack of confidence. He’s battling incontinence, and as such, he wears a diaper. A blow to the confidence is certainly understanding.

As we continued to talk through the scenario, we identified multiple treatment side effects that can affect a patient’s confidence and self-esteem, like hair loss, lymphedema and other swelling, and other physical effects. Moreover, there’s also heightened anxiety, depression, and other non-physical impacts.

Cancer patients truly run the gamut of treatments that leave their impact on the body, and managing those side effects from treatments pose a very real struggle.

Patient confidence starts with the whole person

As Michael and I talked, I shared my experiences with the start of my fight against cancer, in my case, my multiple myeloma diagnosis in March of 2019. After having been frequently probed and poked, including a very unpleasant bone marrow biopsy, I was eager to get diagnosed and begin treatment, throwing some punches, so to speak, of my own.

I dove into treatment, and I did everything I could to build my physical conditioning, exercising and eating nutritiously. Then, about two weeks later, it struck me as I was sitting at dinner with my family: I was completely exhausted; physically and mentally exhausted.

It dawned on me then that fighting a chronic disease—multiple myeloma is an incurable, but treatable, cancer—was a process, not an event. Every day was game day, every night was fight night. To succeed, the process had to be sustainable.

Mine had proved not to be. I was quickly forced to recognize that my whole being consisted of more than just my physical being. My whole being was a combination of my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual self.

Each of those components of my whole being needed care and nurturing. Deficits in any one area could drag down other components with it. Importantly, though, strengths in one or more components could lift up others in need!

Reframing the cancer journey to address self-confidence

As our conversation continued, I told Michael I thought he was a courageous person, not only for what he has done in the past, but for what he is doing now, in the present.

He asked, “What do you mean?” So, I told him what I saw.

I saw, and continue to see, a man who wakes up every day and stares down an opponent that, quite frankly, frightens the vast majority of people down to their very core. Cancer can be a daunting, scary adversary. Each and every day, Michael sets off in his fight, all the while devoted to his family and his strong personal and professional networks.

I told Michael I admired him, and that I drew inspiration from him. His fight against cancer not only lifts himself, but it lifts others around him, including me. If that isn’t a foundation for some degree of self-confidence, I don’t know what could be.

I could feel Michael’s confidence grow over the phone. It wasn’t that long thereafter that he made plans to return to work.

Building patient confidence during cancer treatment

A cancer diagnosis is scary, and it plants a great unknown into the lives of patients, their caregivers, and their allies. The scary and unknown nature of the disease, combined with the common side-effects of treatment, can have wide-ranging impacts, including, of course, damaging a patient’s self-confidence.

It’s important for patients to identify all the pillars on which their whole being is built. Those foundational pillars are different for each patient, and they certainly encompass a patient’s values.

The identification of those pillars is just a start, however. Once identified, a patient needs to assess the relative strength of each pillar. That honest assessment, an articulation in conscious thought, is essential. It’s in that assessment where a patient can begin to realize the need to leverage one or more strengths to lift a pillar that might be lagging.

Through my conversation with Michael, I became aware, really for the first time, how cancer treatments can adversely affect patient confidence. Now, deep down, I believe I always felt that. But, hearing it from Michael, I began to articulate it in my thoughts. Truth be told, thinking back, I realize that I face my own bouts of lowered self-confidence during my cancer journey.

Just as patient confidence can be weakened in the fight, patient confidence can also be strengthened in fight. As cancer patients, we are stronger than we know. Every single day we stare down the beast. Some days we get the upper hand; some days we don’t. But we continue where others might not, and there should honor, grace, and subsequent confidence, in that.