1. YOU NEED AN ADVOCATE THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE PROCESS
The most important advice I can offer is that you need to have someone (ideally the same person) who can sit next to you during doctor appointments and help you keep track of medications and symptoms. They could also be the same person who helps you with meals and home errands, or you could ask a group of friends; this isn’t the moment to be proud and independent. You may be able to handle it all for the first several appointments. However, I think it’s constructive to plan for the worst. How can you ensure that you can be fed and make it to appointments in the case that you are too weak to move? It’s best to start in the framework that you want to end up with. If someone doesn’t immediately come to mind, check with your hospital on patient advocate services.
2. DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY STAY IN THE MOMENT
Don’t think about what six months from now will look like, don’t think about what’s happening outside of your physical sphere. Do whatever you can to keep your blinders on and focus on one foot in front of the other.
3. PLAN FOR THE WORST, HOPE FOR THE BEST
Not to be morbid, but if you think about the worst possible situation or a situation where treatment is substantially more difficult than you could have imagined, what infrastructure might you need to support yourself? How will you communicate your needs to the people who love you? It’s essential to come up with a plan before you start treatment, working backwards to ensure you will have what you need. Who will take you to appointments? Who can help you get and organize meds? What will you do for meals if you aren’t physically able to make it to the grocery store? Who can you turn to spiritually and emotionally if times are bad? And so forth.
4. GIVE YOUR BODY THE BEST POSSIBLE FOOTING
Try to keep your weight steady and your muscles working. There is a lot of literature on fasting before chemo, and after going down that path, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s unbelievably important to keep your weight up, eating whatever you can. Small walks, gentle stretching, and fresh air and morning light (or light therapy) can make a difference in your outcome. Block out the latest fads and trends and focus on everything you can to take care of yourself and maintain strength.
5. SHARE WHAT YOU’RE GOING THROUGH
This may sound counterintuitive and uncomfortable for everyone, but I highly recommend it. Friends and family don’t know how to help unless you tell them. It allows your community to express how they feel about you. Sharing gives your community a way to express love and support, and it can be surprisingly healing on both sides. Talking about what’s happening helps your brain and body process the trauma, instead of storing it for later. You don’t have to share everything, or with everyone, just enough so you aren’t carrying this alone. While it may be tempting to think that you can muscle through this on your own, you’re doing yourself, your friends, and your family a disservice. If you have always been a fixer or a giver, this is a valuable opportunity for you to learn how to receive.
6. YOU MAY NOT GO BACK TO WHO YOU WERE, BUT YOU MAY END UP AS SOMEONE BETTER
Going through an experience like this gives you a perspective that not many others have. This will put you on a different track, but it’s not necessarily a bad track. I found a lot of solace in leaning into differences rather than feeling discouraged about not being back to myself.
7. SURVIVORSHIP CAN BE HARDER
Treatment is hard, but I found survivorship harder after my first round. Give yourself time and space to recover and relax after if you’re able to. For family and friends, it’s just as important to be there after treatment as it is during. It’s taking me a while to get closer to a normal place.
8. COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS
Every time I felt sorry for myself, I met someone whose cancer experience was horrifyingly worse. It didn’t erase my pain or invalidate my suffering, but it helped me put it all in perspective.
9. THIS PROBLEM ALREADY EXISTED, BUT NOW YOU KNOW, AND YOU CAN WORK ON A PLAN TO ADDRESS IT
A friend said this to me at the start of treatment, and it really stuck with me. Whatever was happening in my body was already happening. The difference is that now I know. Knowing gave me information, agency, and options. It enabled me to turn fear into something I could look at directly and act upon. This mindset helped me at the start and also when anxiety around follow-up scans crept in.
10. FACING YOUR MORTALITY HELPS YOU LIVE MORE AND BETTER
Everyone is going to die. You may now have more clarity on how. My mom said this to me at the start of my experience, and while it shocked me at the time, I realized how much wisdom those words contained. When you’re faced with the realization and recognition of your own mortality, you start to appreciate how fragile and beautiful life is. You stop wasting time on people who drain you or projects that don’t light you up. You are cognizant of what matters to you. None of us can extend our time, but we can shift our attention. You can’t choose the circumstance, but you get to choose the meaning. And now that it’s happened, you can use it to build a life that feels true and deeply, and wildly alive.
If your friend or family member has cancer, scroll to the bottom for my tips on how you can best be there for them.
MY CONTEXT
To give you some context, I found my first treatment for Stage III cervical cancer (five weeks of Cisplatin, external beam radiation, and hospitalization for brachytherapy) significantly harder than my second systemic treatment for Stage IV (six cycles of 21 days each of Carboplatin, Abraxane, Avastin, and Keytruda). I am also on an experimental therapeutic peptide vaccine.