I have touched on this topic in the past, but now is as good of a time as any to dive into it a little bit deeper. Life is filled with ups and downs. What we make of life is how we deal with that inconsistency and how we work to minimize the damage caused by those dips. There hasn’t been a successful person that didn’t have to deal with some type of adversity in life. They are successful because they were able to get past that.
When you are dealing with disease, you are often confronted with those ups and downs on almost a continual basis. It becomes very easy to become myopic and only see the latest information and become fixated on the potential outcome. Even inside of that vortex, there is the likelihood that bad news is greeted with certainty and good news with a significant level of skepticism. You really want the positive to be true, but it is very easy to keep your level of excitement at a minimum because of the potential for an even greater letdown with the next set of tests.
This is where your own beliefs and attitude need to become even more important. It is easy to get depressed when things aren’t going your way and it can be in anything in your life. It can be the new job that just doesn’t seem to be going as well as you had anticipated or the new boy friend that doesn’t seem to be paying as much attention or the fact that the stock market has taken another dip. Don’t even get me started on how the Reds are doing this year. If you let those things get in the way of the positives that are still there, there is the possibility of making things even worse than they really are. It is here where faith in God or your friends or even yourself is so important.
There are days where I just don’t feel quite right and some days just flat out poor. Part of that might be the cancer or the medication or the fact that I’m just plain old. Yet, when someone asks me how I am doing, I almost always tell them that I am doing great or wonderful or some other positive descriptor. I actually do this for a number of reasons but the most important of which is to remind myself that I have to stay positive. More than anything else, I do what I can to battle to downs with a little bit of my own pep talk which is something that I have learned to make part of my everyday life (away from cancer.)
I hate to admit this but in years gone by I have allowed some really idiotic things to make my mood less than positive. Probably the worst of these is my love for the University of Dayton Flyers. Over the years there have been many Saturday nights that I would drive back from Dayton completely disgusted with the outcome of a basketball game. I would then allow it to creep into my Sunday and even my Monday. In retrospect, I had to be nuts. It was a stupid basketball game! As stupid as I was, I’m sure that I wasn’t alone on those evenings and my guess is that there is something in your life that is just as trivial that depresses you far more than it should.
The thing that I have learned over the course of the last two and a half years is that the little things just should not do that to you. Use the little things to perk you up, not drive you in the other direction. Even if it is a bigger thing, one has to learn to move it from your normal thought process, because that depression or worry will never make you better or make you happy. All of this is certainly easier said than done, but unless you work at it, there is no chance for it to happen.
Since the beginning of January, my blood tests have continued to deteriorate month after month. It was easy to read the handwriting on the wall and see that chemo was on the horizon. It was hard dealing with that, at times, but I still did my best to stay “wonderful.” Now the chemo is here and I’m still saying “wonderful.” But now I have a better reason to say that because after my first round of chemo, the level of cancer in my blood dropped from 20.8 to 16.9 with normal being below 2.0.
Dr. Mikhael was very pleased with the result as is shows a nice slow controlled drop which is preferable to a quick drop that often signifies a stronger, faster growing cancer. In addition, the kidneys held their own and there was no significant drop in my red and white blood cells which often happens with Revlimid. So far, so good, with hope for another drop next month. Now when someone asks me how I am doing, saying “wonderful” comes just a little easier.
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