The cancer diagnosis is only the beginning. There is so much you haven’t been told, and there is a staggering truth of so much more you won’t be told. We will live in a trial-and-error phase from now on. Nothing will ever be the same: your body, your thoughts, or your feelings. Faith may keep us going, but fact-finding and research will keep us motivated to find a better way—a better way to live and breathe in the aftermath of the diagnosis.
Where do we begin? The first direction is seeking guidance to extract what we feel may kill us. It seems legitimate at the time to desire accompanying accessories such as long-term medications we are told may help prolong our life or does it? And at what cost? We are sometimes thrown into a straight-line routine of what has been delivered for years. The standard of a plan, but what if the “standard” does not work for the individual?
You take your prescribed treatment accordingly but notice changes and try to voice concerns to the experts, yet you get resistance, frustration, and labeled. Your feelings are valid; your body changes, and the pain is not a lie. More adjustments are made, the following dosage should be better, and you continue the path.
The changed dosage and regimen bring new pains and challenges. Newly developed symptoms and diagnoses appear. It affects your physical strength and emotional stability; your faith in the experts and medicine diminishes.
The frustration alone from the diagnosis is just the tip of this heavy burden. The loss of support and understanding from your experts, exaggerated disbelief in your circumstance, and mismanagement of treatment can lead to a feeling of hopelessness and lack of direction.
Listen to us; please do not discard what you are hearing. It may not be the common standard that works for everyone. It may not be something you have previously seen or read about in a journal, nonetheless, do not discard its worth.
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