Submitted by Dr. Robert F. Lane on
IDENTIFY YOUR ADVERSARIES AND TAKE THEM OUT
You have had your first treatment and you are going to be taking more until you are in remission or deemed cured and at last start down the backstretch. You know what treatment is like and at least that fear which so occupied your thoughts has subsided. Now you have the time and energy to think about many other things – whoa – and that can be overwhelming and scary. So let’s face them and whittle them down to size.The physiologic battle with cancer brings the existential battle with the Dragon, (by whatever names you call it: guilt, fear, anxiety, evil, devil) into the open. The final battle has begun even if the finish line is far off. What is at stake is you heart and without that no one can run a good Bell Lap.
There are some practical things to learn about your physical adversary, cancer, and your psychological/spiritual adversary, the Dragon. Cancer is primarily your doctor’s responsibility, but the Dragon is all yours. It can strike your head with depression and your heart with fear; maybe not yet, but the blows are coming. You have to win the battle in your heart and head so you can best assist the doctor in taking on the battle for your body.
Running into the near corner it is easy to get tripped up, boxed in or shouldered out by competitors for your attention: the ideas the Dragon throws at you. Its weapon is THE BIG FEAR plus many smaller ones which will nip at your heels. You have been able to manage or outrun them before cancer but now, disconcerted and off balance with a new diagnosis and coming into the near corner of a race you never planned to run, you will find yourself more vulnerable to their old moves.
The Dragon may not confront you head on just yet and even when he does it will offer you escape routes through denial and bargaining. It knows if it can scare you enough maybe you will just drop out of the race altogether, surrender your heart and soul and shortly thereafter your life. Depressed people can’t take enough treatment to fight off cancer for very long and go down in the record books as DQ (disqualified) or DNF (did not finish)
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