Girding Your Loins for Battle

“Girding your Loins for Battle…”

The title for this page is a phrase used as far back as old testament biblical times, and most likely had origins that went further back into history. Technically, I found one reference that said it meant tucking the ends of your tunic into your belt to prepare for battle. Figuratively, it described the process used to prepare yourself, as well as possible, to do serious battle.

This would include preparing yourself mentally for battle, learning about and securing all the weapons at your disposal and then learning how to use them all efficiently.

In the battle against your cancer or other serious illness, this is a very apt description of how you prepare yourself. We’ve discussed on other pages how you start this process by seeing doctors, choosing an Oncologist and forming a health care team, and then by choosing the form of treatment you decide is best for you and your situation; by forming your personal support team with a caregiver, if you can, and a wider support team of faith, family and friends to help you with this and provide the additional help you’ll need.

Now, with all this in place you have to decide how to identify and prepare yourself mentally for the battle, and learn when and how to keep yourself at peak mental performance for it at all times; you have to determine what your weapons will be, learn all you can about them and how to use them; first to defend your position, and then to take a proactive stance and turn the tide of battle in your favor so you can win it! These things will form the figurative description of girding your loins.

Preparing Yourself Mentally

In the battle against cancer, surely, and in some other serious illnesses, your mental attitude has a great deal to do with how well you can fight that battle, and for many years there has been a lot of controversy about just how much that attitude can help you to extend your life, improve its quality, and just what effect it has on your physical condition. There is still much controversy, and it may be that there are so many variables in this aspect that it will be impossible to catalog this effectively for all people. I can only speak with surety from my own experiences, based on what I have seen and done in my personal case, and my objective here is to show you what has happened in this case, based on the decisions I’ve made. Right or wrong, I’m hoping that seeing exactly what can be done will help you prepare for your personal battle, even though your personal medical case will be different, your weapons will vary from mine in many cases, and the other variables may be quite different than mine. Hopefully this can be used as a guide to help you determine just what fits your case, and use it to prepare yourself in the best way possible to battle and defeat the enemy.

Fighting Shock, Doubt, Confusion, Fear, Stress & Strong Emotional Swings

As soon as a diagnosis in your case is made, you will be immediately plunged in rapid order into all of the above emotions that will rob you of the clarity of mind needed to function as you should, and your life can most often be likened to everything being tossed into a basket, shaken violently, turned over and tossed out completely topsy-turvy, leaving you exhausted and muddled without the slightest idea of how to hold onto any of it, let alone organize it again so you can move forward.

You will immediately be plunged into a sea of tests that will require you to make some very important decisions, decisions that your life will depend upon, at perhaps the worst possible time for you to be able to think clearly enough to be capable of making those decisions. In most cases you won’t even know what you really need to take into consideration before making them, or whether you can depend on whatever advice you are receiving from a doctor you most likely won’t know, and this will lead to more doubt, confusion and distress.

Taking the First Step…

In my case, since I had become progressively weakened by the growth of undetected cancer for six years, the absence of any progress toward finding a cause put my mental state in poor condition, and despite my hesitation to take any medicine to control my emotions, when I reached the point where I could not even discuss the problems with the doctor without crying at the drop of a hat, I finally agreed to take Paxil, an anti-depressant (temporarily) to dull my emotions so I could better cope with it all. This was about one month prior to being diagnosed with cancer. Consequently, I was in better condition when the diagnosis was made, and it actually came with a sense of relief, as serious as it was, because I finally had something tangible I could fight against. Unfortunately, it came from a Physician’s Assistant who was as distressed as I with the decision. She was competent, just inexperienced in this aspect of patient/doctor relationships, and we had to console one another with it.

I found that the first thing I had to do was to prioritize things, and this became progressively more important as things moved along, in most every facet of my life. My health was weakened, and I had very limited physical health, something I was completely unused to. I’d always had a strong work ethic and been a workaholic for most of my life. I not only had to prioritize all my physical activities, I had to prioritize all those feelings that threatened to drown me so I could organize my thoughts to dig myself out of the muddle they put me in. I am basically a very organizing-type of person, and the simple act of attempting to organize and prioritize helped me feel I was finally taking charge, providing enough relief that I could continue on with it. Whether you are organized or not, you will find that this step is necessary to provide a solid foundation to pull yourself up out of all these conflicting emotions you’ll be faced with in every facet of your life.

I’m hoping that having the benefit of my experiences will help those of you who do NOT like to research and organize to use as shortcuts to help you circumvent some of the work I have done, while getting the benefit from it. I know this is a lot of information to read and assimilate, and if you cannot do it all at once, then do it in segments, but get it all in, because much of this is important to know before you need it, to save having to go through some of the problems associated with it. It is impossible for you to be aware of all this at the beginning.

Prioritizing

My emotional state was a shambles long before my diagnosis, and was perhaps much worse than some of yours, but whatever your mental condition, the diagnosis alone is enough to plunge you into a shock that can render you unable to function at the level you need. You must find out how to pull yourself up to where you can feel you are accomplishing something, and the act of prioritizing what you need to do can accomplish this, and be that first real step on the road to recovery of your sanity, and your health.

How do you do this? Well, it helps if you can make a list of all the decisions you are facing, and put them in order of importance. Once you’ve done this, you have something tangible in front of you; you can adjust It if necessary. Once you have it all in the proper order of importance, then it IS prioritized, and you have the basis for the steps you need to take. As you begin to take charge of the things you have to do, you are taking progressive steps in the right direction, and you’ve started on that long road. For me, this helped all of it fall into its proper place in my mind, and gave me a measure of clarity with which to make the critical decisions, and to help me start learning what all I needed to know to proceed. It’s easier when you know you’re making the most important things first, and know what can wait – it allows you to free your mind for the important things, in order.

Identifying Weapons You Can Use, and How

This step may be difficult for some of you who are not used to doing research, and it is with that in mind that I’m attempting to give you all I know so you can take advantage of the research I’ve done, and that others have done, to reduce the amount of research you might need for this. In the area of actual weapons, I had already acquired one of them I needed when I agreed to use the anti-depressant for a time. I have always resisted taking medication since it often has a very strong affect on my system, so it was a difficult decision to make, but I know now that it was the right decision, and I would have made many more mistakes along the way if I had continued to refuse it. This is something you may want to discuss with your medical team to help you make a decision about.

My next step was in using my rock and my foundation for all of life (my strong faith in God), to help me make every decision. God’s Holy Word, the bible, says that He wants you to come to Him with all your cares and worries, and that’s exactly what I do. He is always there, and if you listen, He will help you every step of the way. You may not have the same faith I do, or any at all for that matter, and if not, I don’t know what you could replace it with. I simply want to show how it helped form the foundation of all that came after in my case, and still does.

I also have one of the most loving, caring husbands imaginable, who has been a tremendous support and helps immeasurably in my recovery be being all that he can for me, and ever there to support me in every way. If you don’t have this support, then you need to search elsewhere for as much of it as you can find. This battle is difficult enough with good support; without it, it would be infinitely more so. You really need to have someone whom you can turn to, if for no more than using them as a sounding board to discuss things, and I know that in some cases support groups are available to help a lot with this, and large cancer groups can often help with finding one in your area.

You may not be aware, but virtually all hospitals are connected now in a National Cancer Registry, and when a patient is diagnosed with cancer, they are entered into the registry and their case followed, with the patient’s help, until the day they die. This is a national effort to form all the complicated data needed for statistical research to help with finding better ways to treat cancer and to extend life with, or after, cancer. All that’s required of you is to call them when you move to give updated information, and each year you’ll receive a telephone call on the anniversary of your diagnosis, to see how you are doing.

There are now several large cancer societies that have volunteer groups across the country to provide the help that is needed and often lacking for cancer patients, and patients of other life-threatening illnesses. These groups have volunteers who man phones to help you, and if they are needed you should avail yourself of their services, they are there to simply help you, and the ones I’ve been told about, work very well.

The Role that Your Attitude Can Play in Your Recovery

There is a lot of controversy surrounding what effect on your recovery that attitude can play in your recovery, and I think it is probably something that is going to be very difficult for them to catalog, since it is a very difficult thing to set parameters for, to cover all the variables that can pertain to it.

In my experiences, which are all I can really go by, I first came into close contact with cancer when my mother-in-law developed it in the late 70’s. I helped nurse her through 18-months of hospital time after that, because as soon as she was diagnosed at an advanced stage of cancer, she refused to walk, and decided she could no longer eat, due to the fact that she had cancer. She accepted that she was on her way out, and she never walked again. She spent all but two weeks of that time in hospitals. being fed with a tube. She had surgery, but they were unable to remove it all, and she refused chemotherapy, so she just lay in bed waiting to die. Because they moved her to convalescent hospitals when they could no longer give her more help, her daughter and I took shifts of staying with her each day, to see that she got better care than that available to normal patients.

I tried, in every conceivable way to help motivate her to fight the disease, showing and reading her stories of people who had overcome this same type of cancer successfully, and giving her the benefit of any and all research I could find at the time (there were no computers at this time), but it was all to no avail. She was not interested, in the slightest; she had been given a death sentence, and she patiently waited for it to come. It was so sad. She missed most of her grandchildren’s lives during that time, and she loved them all dearly. She denied herself of all the things in life she could have had. She was not ill, she had no pain, there was no physical reason why she could not rise from that bed, walk out of the hospital and lead a full life… no reason except that she refused to believe in it. They gave her a prognosis of only a few months, but she lasted far longer than that, and the cancer didn’t kill her. As soon as she began feeling pain, the fear killed her, and she slipped quietly away one night soon afterward. I sorrowed a long time afterward, and vowed at that time that if I ever got cancer I would fight it tooth and nail every step of the way. Was this just coincidence, or was this in God’s plan for me all those years ago? We can only surmise, for none of knows what God’s plan is, while we remain alive on this earth.

After I contracted cancer, I began doing some further research, but as I suffered from the effects of all the chemotherapy I was having, I was unable to use the computer, sometimes for months at a time, and most of the last year I was in Alaska I used it seldom.

After we moved to Oregon, when I was able I’d have periods of research I did, and as I delved more into various aspects of this disease that had taken over every facet of my life, that controlled all I did and could not do, that dominated our conversations and activities, I realized that if I could work to control things better, there might be a life out there that moved beyond that control, at least part of the time, and that became my goal. I wanted more out of life, and I proceeded to work toward getting it. After I broke my ankle I still tried to do some work on this by propping my leg up on an additional chair and sitting for short periods to do research on the computer. It helped.

I began working on an article I wanted to submit to a magazine, on the lines of this information I’m putting on my website now, and that was when I first researched and came across all the statistics associated with my particular cancer, and realized how very blessed I was to still be alive at all! And with each day, each week, each month now, I become more of a rarity. I had gone through a period when I didn’t want to celebrate birthdays, but now… after fighting through each day, a birthday is a major goal, and when it arrives, I REALLY want to celebrate it. It is a great achievement!

After reading a whole lot of the controversy regarding attitude, I decided to discard all that, because they seem to have no clear-cut answers that all can agree on. I have found that my attitude has had a great effect on my personal recovery, my longevity, and my ability to still live a full life despite many problems to overcome. We make adventures of it all, for our life together has been nothing but a series of adventures, strung out in a bright string of memories that mean a lot to us, and continue to bring us closer together. Maintaining a good attitude has kept us younger, in mind and heart if nothing else, and it has brought us more joy than we might otherwise have had. I don’t feel I would have been nearly so blessed in my life without the adoption of attitude that I have. Although I have made mistakes, I don’t regret any of them in this journey through cancer, it has all been a valuable learning experience, and perhaps that is in God’s plan so I can pass it all along to many others through the avenue of my website, and save them much of the heartache and trouble I’ve been through and provide some of the encouragement that we all need.

Remember, do not discount your attitude and the effect on your life it can have. Get mad at your cancer and will it to be gone! Ask the Lord, who is all powerful, to help you, since you are not able to do this on your own… He will listen to your prayers. And He will answer them. His answer may not be what you ask for, and will be in His time, but He has a plan for you, and if you have His salvation, you will rise to sit in heaven for eternity when your life here is done – that is undoubtedly his plan for some of us… when he feels we are ready, we will find our peace there with Him. I know I have thought of this, and it may be that’s in His plan for me, but I don’t try to second-guess His plan, He will unfold it as the time is right, all I have to do is follow His lead, and that’s what I try to do.

Visualization Techniques To Help Relieve Stress

So… once you have assembled your support group, you are ready to proceed with further organizing your other weapons. These will vary, but will consist of some of the things I’ve put on other individual pages in this Cancer section. In my case they involved finding out in what ways I could actively take part in my fight. For one thing that helped in getting started with this, it helped me to use a visualization method I’d been taught to help with relieving stress years prior to this. I was told to lie in bed and visualize all my problems written out individually on pieces of paper. Once I had handled all that I could, I was told to visualize myself in a location that was the most relaxing for me. At the time I lived in southern California, and worked part-time in the mornings while my children were at school, and when I returned home I had lunch and then my favorite thing to do was to go out back and take a short swim in the summertime in our small pool, and lie in the sun, reveling in the warmth this brought to my entire body to feel the sun on my face, warming me with the warmth of sun God provides, that melted away all the problems of the morning, and helped me better face those that might crop up during the rest of the day. As I lay in bed I visualized all those problems, forming a heap of papers, lifting into the air one at a time, floating over a tall wood fence to go into a sturdy chest for safekeeping but out of sight and mind, and when they were all there, the chest automatically closed and locked them away so I could go on with living the day as best I could. This was very relaxing, and I found that this was again a method that helped me deal with the stress.

There are other visualization projects that are often used in the treatment of cancer, and there is still a lot of controversy about how much good they can do. I can only tell you what I’ve done, since even researching studies that have been done was difficult because once you delve into them, you find out just how complicated a thing that is, and in reports you read about some of the studies, not all of the parameters (or the full limitations of exactly what was studied, by whom, on whom, and with what particular result – and only that result was the object of the study) are included, so the results can be very misleading in those reports. It is not an easy thing to figure out.

Thus, you’ll have to possibly give it a trial and see how it works for you, but I will warn you, unless you firmly believe that it can work, it will never work. That’s the entire premise. I know they use this method a lot in the case of children with cancer. They ask them to draw out what they think their cancer looks like. Then they tell them to talk to it, to try to “will” it out of their body by different methods, and to rid their bodies of it. This is to help them to prepare a mindset that appears to be helpful in many cases. What I’ve described here is a much generalized description, but information on specifics can be readily found on the Internet to help you if you want to give it a try. It does help me, but what I do is personalized for me, specifically. As in all things, I turn to God. I don’t feel I have the power to do this on my own, but God can, if it is within His plan for my life, so as He asks, I turn to my Lord Jesus Christ, asking in His name for help with this, for He can do all, if asked in His name. I ask for healing if it is within His plan; I ask for help in accepting whatever His plan for me is, I ask for strength, for peace with whatever He wills. I thank Him daily for all that I see and am able to do, all that He bestows on us as blessings each day, for this brings peace to me, and I wish Him to see I am truly thankful for all that He does.

For you, this visualization process may be very different, and perhaps the key is in finding the right one that works for you, and having a firm belief in it for it to work effectively. At least that’s my concept of the idea.

I have to say that I’ve lived with pretty heavy stress my entire life, and at times it caused me a lot of physical distress due to the high levels it reached. And, with the help of my faith, my husband, of using Paxil temporarily (I believe I actually took it for a couple of years, and then with my doctor, reduced it gradually over a period of months), and by the success that all my proactive methods of helping in my recovery, my stress levels are remarkably low, and I have less physical distress from it now that I’ve had most of my life, which is amazing. It speaks volumes for the resiliency of our minds and bodies to proper care.

And, lest you get a false sense of security, this is something that has to be constantly worked on, and the signs of stress and depression must be continually guarded against. It can sneak up on you very unaware, and we are constantly amazed at how, although we should recognize it immediately, and try to look out for it, it nonetheless sneaks up on us and rears its ugly head, already grabbing a strong foothold before we’re even aware of it being there; only when it manifests itself in a physical way do we recognize it for what it is. It is at times like this that having a sounding board is very effective, so you can see it for what it is, or someone else can, and then you can immediately take active steps to reduce it and rid yourself of it.

There will be setbacks along this road you are on, so you must learn to expect them. It is not a smooth, flat road by any means. I don’t even attempt to know how many there have been on my way. I do have a visualization of this road that comes unbidden to my mind, and the depression, or valleys that road takes. When I am down in the valley (or down in the dumps), I have to begin that long climb out, and this is not a climb up a gentle hill, or even a steep one; this is a climb up a very tall straight cliff of hard, sharp rock, where you fight for every handhold and foothold, slowly clawing your way up toward the top, having to rest, exhausted, to gain strength to proceed from time to time. This has come to mind more times than I can count, so I guess I just have to live with it, but that is what I feel I have to do each time I sink into depression, or let the fatigue take over for a time.

Additional Ways to Combat Stress

Stress remains one of the main stumbling blocks to the patient’s ability to move forward with competency in beginning to fight against cancer. It is difficult to convey the importance of getting beyond this stress. You CANNOT move forward until you have a handle on the shock and stress of the diagnosis, and until you have accepted the diagnosis and have prepared yourself to move ahead.

This was a long process for me, and I thought I had it conquered time and again only to find it rearing its ugly head again. There were several realizations that finally emerged to help me with this recurring problem.

· First, I found that I had to ask for help with this. Help from God, help from my husband to help me stay on track, and help from my friends from time to time. At the onset of very bad news, there is no denying that at first I need a bit of time… not much, but a bit of time to grieve and to assemble thoughts so I can turn to God for help and peace with the turn of events. All this takes place in less than a day, sometimes only a few hours, but if it remains a stumbling block, and you give in to feeling sorry for yourself and wallowing in pity, you can’t move forward.

· Second, it helped me a great deal (along with a lot of prayer), to be able to look at my condition with objectivity and a new perspective. I spent much time over anguish at feeling I had a death sentence hanging over my head that I thought would be there the rest of my life. After much prayer I was finally led to believe that it is all in perspective. None of us, whether we are well or ill, have any guarantees about continued life beyond the current breath we are able to take. So, in looking at it like that, it is in some ways a blessing to have a warning that you don’t have infinite life stretching out before you, but then, no one else does either… most just don’t realize it or think about it. You’ve been given the opportunity to realize just how precious this life is, and it will bring a new awareness and joy to life every day; it will give you a new appreciation for all that is truly meaningful in your life; you’ll find new enjoyment in each activity, each interaction with loved ones, as well as a great appreciation of all that God has provided for us, which will holds new meaning. This perspective changed my life forevermore.

· Lastly, my practical side took over. It is no use crying over spilt milk or feeling sorry for yourself, and sorrowing over the things that are now in the past. They may return again or they may not, since we age as we go through this process. There is no denying that your life as it is right now this very day, is what I call “What Is.” It helps me to remember that what I am right now, what I have right now, is what IS my present life, and I do not want to waste even one moment of it, so I need to figure out how to get as much enjoyment from it as I’m able, and somehow in the doing of that, I am able to affect changes that lead to a new “What IS, and it is invariably better than what it was.

I think these three things have provided the perspective I needed to accept my life, and make it much easier to relieve the stress I was formerly plagued with. They have led to a happier, more rewarding and more fulfilling life for me, and has helped me hold up my end of the deal… to take the life that the Good Lord has provided, and make the most of it.

Fighting Fatigue

Most often these bouts of fatigue are brought about by setbacks in my condition or my treatment, due to activity of my cancer. This is the most frequent complaint of cancer patients, this strange fatigue that seems to plague all or most of us. It is unlike any fatigue I’ve ever experienced, and as mentioned above, I have a very strong work ethic. I have always been able to push myself to do whatever I felt needed done, no matter how hard, how long or how dedicated I needed to be, and with a short period of rest at the end of it, go on with no ill effects. Well, I have had to make a serious adjustment to my life in this respect. I was working full time and more when I first became ill, and with no known way to combat something that seemed impossible for them to identify, I progressed to the point where I could no longer work efficiently or effectively a full year before diagnosis, and felt I had to quit out of respect for those I was working for. As long as I continued to work I was miserable and was only able to work about 50% of the time the last few months I worked, and every single one of those days was reduced to just getting through the present hour of every single day… a very rough way to go, but it kept me moving and kept me from descending into deep fatigue.

Once I was no longer working, I spent weeks just lying around, sleeping many hours of the days and nights while I was content to just let life pass by, telling myself that I was “helping” my body heal. What was happening, in actuality, was that I was really sinking into this fatigue, which only seems to increase and perpetuate itself. One of my doctors told me it is the cancer telling my mind “…Just lie down here and rest, and you’ll feel so much better…” and that was true; it was heaven to curl up on the couch on pillows, under a warm blanket, and just completely relax. It was the only time you were relatively free from all the pain, you could lose yourself in watching other lives on television and not even think about all the things that were so hard to think about with regard to yourself (or anyone else, for that manner), and I sank to the point where it was an effort to even move a finger, let alone an arm, since any movement or any action just seemed too difficult a goal to attain, and this was probably starting me on the long road to “Muscle Wasting.” The less you do, the less you are capable of doing, and even small bouts of movement can bring on extreme pain and create great difficulty in performing the simplest tasks of everyday life. Take a shower, for example. It used to take me ten minutes to go through a showering process. Well, that has all changed. A shower is now a “big deal.” It now requires careful planning, and takes three times as long to accomplish, and requires a period of rest after it is over. To now take a shower I have to plan it for right after I use my inhaler, something I have to use four times a day to counteract the damage done to my bronchial tubes by radiation treatments. This is because the extreme humidity in the shower makes if very difficult to breathe while I shower. This is complicated by the fact that although I’ve reduced the prescription drugs I have to take, I still have four that I must regularly take, and they all cause dizziness. This prevents washing my hair in the shower, or my face and neck, because I cannot close my eyes without holding onto a wall, or I completely lose my sense of balance and be in danger of falling and injuring myself. I have not had a shower in which I can easily sit to do this, which would simplify the process, so I have to wash my face, neck and ears separately at the sink, along with my hair. I usually do the first two prior to showering, and then after a short period of sitting after the shower I wash my hair in the sink. My shower is additionally hampered by my stiffness and difficulty in being able to easily wash my lower legs and feet. Each shower we have is different, but I have found that a back brush helps, and bracing myself against one wall of the shower helps with balance problems, so these are not insurmountable problems, it just serves to make it a more involved, lengthier process. Right now, the shower in this house we just bought needs some adaptations that will simplify it further, but we’ve not had time to make them yet. With these things having to be considered, and depending on the immediate priorities to consider for the day, I don’t take a shower as often as I formerly did, which was another loss of my “normal life” that I had to come to terms with.

A strong lassitude set in with the fatigue, and soon I found myself having to struggle to maintain even a semblance of cooking, housecleaning, etc. Jim lovingly and graciously came to my rescue by helping me with the important things in all those areas, because it was extremely difficult to give them up, they made such a change in my entire lifestyle, and some things created even more problems. Since many of my symptoms when the cancer is active center around allergies the simple process of keeping the house dusted, since dust is a main culprit for me, becomes a big problem, not a nuisance. We are still working on ways to minimize this, as it continues to be a problem. It is very difficult to escape dust, and while there are lists now available to help with this on the website of the American Lung Association, some of them are expensive, complicated, and difficult to comply with when you have limited mobility and strength.

These problems ultimately brought on the deep depressions I began sinking into. With this fatigue, no matter how much you sleep, you always wake up at least as tired and fatigued as you were prior to the rest, and you often feel worse! It never goes away. That makes it very hard to overcome, and the longer you allow it to go on, the harder it is to dig your way out of it.

I don’t doubt that with such serious illness, as a tumor grows you need additional rest and you need additional nourishment of the right kind, but you also need exercise. Exercise is an enemy of cancer, and a very effective weapon you have at your disposal. You have to realize that every step away from exercise you have to take allows the cancer to proceed more rapidly and take a stronger foothold on your entire system. This realization helps to mobilize me.

I find I need to clarify what I mean by exercise. I’m not speaking of a regimented exercise program. The exercise I speak of is possibly more aptly described as mobility. Doing the normal things that you never think of when you are healthy like walking to and from one end of the house to the other, many times a day. Putting something up on a high shelf becomes difficult to impossible. The ability to carry a load of laundry from the dryer to closet and cupboards to put them away… all the many things you’ve always done that you are suddenly incapable of doing, because of physical restraints such as difficulty breathing, or lost mobility from the fatigue changes your life in many ways. This does not happen overnight, it is another of those things that creep up on you, and needs to be kept in your mind so you can hopefully avoid the problems many of us have had with it. By being forewarned, you may be able to avoid a lot of it, and that is by far the best method, since it is so very difficult to overcome, once it has a hold on you.

I also understand that with an onslaught of aggressive cancer, I have to realize that I must achieve a balance. I have to give my body some room to rest and make time for the medication to heal, without losing any more ground with mobility and exercise than I have to, because I know now just how difficult and painful it is going to be to get it back. The difficulty of building muscle mass becomes more pronounced with time and age, and your condition. This is a difficult determination to make, and I have had to use a trial and error method to determine that balance, and it’s not always the same. At the present time, having just had a first round of chemo, I gave in to it because it was so strong from rapid tumor growth I could not fight it, but with this second round I had today, I feel that I have a better handle on what to expect and can use the example of how I overcame it earlier this year to help limit a great deal of the fatigue problem from here on. Unfortunately the muscle wasting has progressed to the point where I lost much more than I wanted to in the last two months with all the problems I’ve had, and it will be a tough fight to climb out of it, but I am now psyched up to do that, and just have to keep focused on my goals and priorities at all times, call on the Lord for help, listen to the encouragement that my husband is so helpful with, and that of the friends who never fail me when needed.

These are the things that sustain me and give me the strength of will to go forward with life, every moment and hour and day; strength that’s hard fought for, and won. It is quite uplifting to succeed on your own, and each single step you take in that direction will make it easier to take the next step. If you push it further, even a little, every single day, it will become much easier as you go along. It is just those first steps that seem almost insurmountable that are the most difficult. Once you push past them, you have something to look back on, physical changes and gains that affirm your success, and this is just the boost you need to effectively win against this problem.

Learning to Listen Carefully

This brings to mind something else that becomes very important, and that is to “listen.” Jim says I have a very analytical mind that has stood me in very good stead in this illness, helping me to identify what is actually happening to me, and why, so I can correct it. This comes from learning to “listen to my body” or to be constantly aware of small changes, of problems that crop up, or feelings that emerge, and identifying what may seem to be very small, simple changes, but which, when watched and “listened to,” often lead to big changes. By working at being very aware of these at all times, analyzing them and finding out how they happen and why, I can then work actively to correct them, which has helped me a great deal with learning how to deal with side effects, as well as overcoming things like fatigue and lassitude.

Motivation - How Important Is It?

Over this last year I have discovered that motivation can play a much larger role in fighting fatigue and your overall recovery from cancer than originally thought. However, I also found that our motivation need can vary a lot among patients, depending on age, family situation and lifestyle. As I came to this discovery, it became clear to me that I had some disadvantages in this area, but I also had some advantages. To take several in the range of situations, you might consider a patient with an active family that involves young children in the home. This situation requires you to keep much more active than a patient with a calm, sedentary lifestyle such as mine has been since I had to quit working full time. At the other end of the spectrum would be a person who lives alone, and who may have more difficulty in finding the motivation needed to actively keep fit, active and using motivation effectively to keep their momentum moving. The tendency is going to go against it in this situation for most.

My situation changed this year with our move to California. Located not too far from a main north-south artery on the west coast (Interstate 5), we began getting news from many friends who were planning vacations either in this area, or who would be passing closely by, and who wanted to stop in and visit. This grew to include others, and once summer arrived, more unexpected guests popped up, but we knew early on that it was going to be a very active summer for us, and since my chemo was beginning to make some changes, we knew that I HAD to increase my ability to stay more active if I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity, and I did! This provided much needed motivation at first, and helped me get through the rough beginning stages. I had to work very hard at it, every single day, pushing myself more and more. This small rental house had no room large enough to set up the treadmill I’d used in Oregon, and since we lived on a mountain, the hilly, uneven terrain prevented me from walking outdoors. It was months before I could even examine the back yard, which was on a fairly steep slope of constantly wet grass that was too slick for me to walk on.

So, I had to improvise. I progressively lifted ever heavier cartons that needed unpacked to strengthen my arms, and since the house was long, traversing from one end to the other, countless times each day strengthened my legs initially, and then I resorted to practicing climbing and descending the five steps to our deck outside, up and down, over and over, to strengthen my arms further, and then to increase mobility in my legs. As I worked at it, the work became easier, and with each small success, and attainment of a goal that had been beyond my reach prior to this, it motivated me to work harder and harder as I continued. On the first of May, however, I found the ultimate motivation that spurred me on to heights of movement I feared at one time I might never reach again. Our friends Lee and Anita arrived in their motorhome, and since it was very early in the season and the water still too high, fast and dangerous to work in, they camped in our driveway for several weeks while we waited for the season to open and the water to calm down, while Lee and Jim did some exploring and prospecting to check out various promising locations to work later in the year. I was starved for companionship. My compromised immune system kept me from doing any shopping whatsoever, eating out, or getting into any groups of people, so unless we had company we could make sure was not ill, I was alone except for Jim. And, while we get along very well and love each other’s company, he had much to do, and spends a lot of time on his computer with his varied interests, so it was a very quiet household during winter and early spring.

With Anita’s arrival, however, that all changed completely. I had been experimenting with new foods to help in my recovery, and had a lot of new recipes I’d developed from my research, and Jim actually had some he’d created also, in times when I was too ill to cook. So, we immediately began trying out all these new foods on Lee and Anita… other people began arriving, and there were people coming in and out at all times of the day, Anita and I worked on some sewing projects when the guys were gone, and she taught me how to crochet, something I’d wanted to learn for a long time, but since I’m left-handed, had never been able to pick up. Suddenly I was able to transpose to the other hand, and began crocheting up a storm. She helped me continue with unpacking and putting things away, she was helpful in any way she could be, and spurred me on to do ever more on my own, so we could get beyond what needed to be done so we could have more fun! And we did really enjoy one another’s company. We then moved on to camping out again, something I’d sorely missed. On our first camping trip we had one experience that will remain with me always.

We were camped upriver about forty miles, in a quiet location very near the river. Jim and I, since I could not attend church, have been having Sunday Bible Study lessons each week at home for a long time. Lee and Anita asked if they could join in them. Jim is well trained in this, and has a wealth of resource material and notes from his long years of teaching in church, so it has been a wonderful blessing for me to have this, since I am a relatively new Christian, and have much to learn. He’s a wonderful teacher, and we enjoy our lessons a great deal.

While we were up there, the weather was beautiful at our camp, and that first Sunday, as I waited at the table for the rest of them to gather, I thought of the history I knew of this particular area, and one resource had mentioned that a group had met very near us for church services more than a hundred years ago, meeting out of doors at first. As I thought back to those days I tried to picture what it must have been like. Families in this area were scattered, mostly far from one another due to the steep mountainous terrain, so I could picture them as they came together on Sundays to exchange information and news, the children gathering for play with others, and the family atmosphere as the families all brought foods for a potluck to be held after services. It gave a strong sense of history as it showed the continuation of our beliefs, and as I watched the river flow by, it brought a wonderful sense of peace to me, and I lifted my prayers of thanks to the Lord for helping me see this wonderful blessing. We had a great lesson that morning, and it set the stage for all the rest to follow. I know this experience will remain available in my memory forever, and will bring that same sense of peace whenever I refer to it. Our lessons took on a more active setting, and that increased as others asked to come from time to time. They take on a new aspect, but those we still have alone still have a very special meaning, also.

These are just some of the activities that provided me with additional motivation, and before too long I found I could easily walk up and down the steps just like a normal person once more, my balance improved a bit, and I could perform a great many more tasks than have been possible in a number of years… what a blessing that was! This continued throughout the entire summer, and through the several weeks of packing to move completely again at the end of August. Once the move was made, however, I got into some heavy dust unpacking things that had been packed about ten years, and that triggered some serious allergy problems, and it was all downhill from then on. I don’t know if I seriously over-exceeded my capabilities while moving and that triggered the cancer to grow rapidly again, or what, but active it became, and my worsening condition put me back down in short order. Allergy attacks, bronchitis again, and fatigue… that ever dreaded fatigue, was back. I slept a lot; I was worn out, since I tried to keep going as long as I could. We still had bouts of company until mid-October, actually, so it wasn’t until near the end of that time that I finally gave in completely to it, and came to the realization that it must be the renewed growth of cancer that was to blame. So, by the time I went for my next appointment in November I was prepared somewhat for the diagnosis.

As I looked back over the summer and the role that motivation played in the recovery I had, I realized just how much impact it had made in my life this year, and I hope by illustrating the varied activities that helped me, these experiences will help you with ideas that will work for you to seek out whatever motivation is needed for your particular situation to help you move through the recovery process to mobility and increased health far easier, faster, and hopefully help you avoid at least some of the pitfalls I fell into on the way.

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