I Am Done Making Lifestyle Changes

When I was 19 and diagnosed with thyroid cancer, after treatment the doctors told me to stay healthy, take care of myself, eat right and get plenty of rest. Um, great advice. I was in college so it did not exactly fit my lifestyle.

But I did put some deep thought into how I was going to live my life. Having cancer sucks (if you want to disagree with that, please let me know). It was a big wrench in my life. A huge elephant in the room. And one I was not too sure how to approach (there was no social support for cancer people in 1981). However, I decided cancer was not going screw up my life.

I made the decision that I would try to live a healthy life style. I was going to make sure I took care of myself. But I wasn't going to let cancer interfere with my life.

But then cancer decided to show up again nearly 26 years later. I did make some lifestyle changes during chemo. I did change our eating habits to include more fruits and vegetables. I made sure any processed foods were removed from our diet, not that there were that many. I finally quit smoking.

Now, nine years later, I think I am done with altering my lifestyle. I know my primary care doctor is going to tell me to eat more vegetables and stuff like that. But I am done with that.

I enjoy a glass of wine and am not going to stop drinking. I try to get plenty of sleep. I mostly eat right (but some how a bag of potato chips fell into my grocery cart last week). I try to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables. (Potato chips are vegetables aren't they?)

I have enough going on that I am not going to make any more lifestyle changes. I have so may issues right now with my health. I think I have made enough changes. The only way I am making more lifestyle changes if they will cure cancer and get rid of all my other ailments.

Warning: A Cynical Post

They, the infamous, all-knowing 'them', say that after a cancer diagnosis, in one year you will reach your 'new normal'. As I have said before, the whole new normal thing is bogus and not worth seeking because it doesn't exist.

And its not after a year either. That year concept is wrong. First of all, your treatment may not end in a year. You are forever changed and even if your body returns to something resembling your previous body, your mind has been irreparably scarred. At every doctor appointment or test or scan for the rest of your life there is that evil little voice that says 'what if....'. It also shows up in the middle of the night when you can't sleep, or it wakes you up.

Also there are the people, like me, who find that after that cancer diagnosis, your body continues to rebel and send you down the never ending medical spiral of more ailments. While in chemo, in addition to growing a benign breast tumor, my gall bladder developed gall stones (a completely separate ailment) which led to surgery. Other people I know have developed cardio issues and other treatment side effects. And the women who chose reconstruction face additional surgeries. Never mind all the people who suffer from significant side effects from treatment and surgeries.

I am lying in bed this morning, waiting to take the (damn) cats to the (damn) vet. They are sleeping peacefully next to me but I know at the first sign of the dreaded carriers, I will be faced with the game of 'chase' with me chasing them so I can stuff them in their carriers. Full carriers are hard for me to pick up and carry to the car. When I arrive at the vet it will take two trips to get them inside. But they need their physicals and shots and exams (which they will hate). When we come home they will hate me. And my back will be killing me.

And I hate it that my body no longer allows me to do all the basic things in life that I used to be able to do. I am frustrated with my pudgy body that makes that is difficult to lose weight.

Yesterday I finally finished the latest request for information for my SS Disability application which includes asking me about how my ailments have changed my life from before when I was sort of healthy to after when I can only when I can watch everything I used to like or that used to be easy for me that are now a struggle. I really do not need reminders of the things that I can no longer do.

Pause. Deep breath.

Sometimes my inner cynical b*tch comes through and needs to vent. Maybe this is why I need therapy to cope.

Rethinking things

So my life has been in a bit of a transition for the past few months. We decided to move, then we started packing, house hunting, more packing, having a cold for weeks, the holidays, moving, losing (and then finding) the cat, unpacking, and unpacking.

For the first time I got up this morning and went into the kitchen and started puttering around. I moved the coffee maker to where it should be (on the counter under the cabinet full of coffee cups) instead of where we had first plonked it on the counter the day we moved in. I then started looking for things in the cabinets - to find the salt (which we do not have) - and rearranging things some more. Then I even did some tidying. Now I want to do some more puttering and cleaning. So I feel settled. Finally, and it feels good.

I have had some friends over so far. I have even reconnected with some from whom I used to live further away. Some were content to sit and chat. Some wanted to help unpack. All had advice for numerous suggestions on what we should do next - move furniture, select paint colors, lighting ideas and more. Some we will take to heart and do and others we will politely ignore.

But all this transition and change has opened a door for me to make some more changes in my life. Its not that I am hesitant to make changes but sometimes a making a few changes opens the door to making even more.

A little prod from one corner could make you rethink about why you have some connections or do some things. And sometimes they connect dots for you that you didn't really acknowledge previously. So more changes will be made in my life and I think I am comfortable with that as well.

Its not that I am trying to be vague here but I am not sure about all the changes I might make yet and have to feel things out some more. I might even redesign my blog again...

Big changes

So what do unhealthy people do when they have spare time? They pack up their house and move. Yes we are moving. There are lots of benefits for us in moving. We can cut our monthly expenses in half. I can consider stop working. I can get more rest.

I just have to survive packing and moving.

We have been discussing this for a while. We bought this house when I was healthy and working full time in Boston and commuting by public transportation. As my health has tanked, there is no reason to believe I will ever be going back into Boston daily. If we move 10 miles or so away, we can save big time. 

In the meantime, we are packing, house hunting, packing, preparing our house, packing, and packing. These are all things that healthy bodies are capable of but my not quite so healthy body doesn't like any of it. And my mind never likes change either.

Are we looking for the wrong thing?

As all cancer patients are told, after treatment you will find your 'new normal'. Basically you get to go back to being yourself again and regaining your life. But it never seems to happen.

A friend sent me this article from the New York Times on a young woman, after cancer, is looking for her old self, and being lost in transition from cancer land to her new self.

It made me think (a dangerous proposition at times). What if you are a non cancer (or non any major ailment) person, you go through life and you evolve slowly and your life changes, and its no big deal, its normal. Maybe you grow apart from some friends, gain new ones; start yoga and stop running; quit eating red meat and white sugar in order to be healthier; redecorate your house, or kept trying to lose those same damn 10 pounds. These changes happen over time but if you look at yourself from last year to this year, have you made changes? Probably. And unless you stop and think about it, you may not notice them.

With cancer (or insert any life changing diagnosis), you are yanked from your nice calm life and shifted into cancerland, riding the cancer roller coaster while holding hands with your friends, family, and oncology team who want to know about every sniffle. Then poof, you are pronounced 'cured',  get a little certificate from your chemo nurses, and your doctors don't want to see you for six months, instead of every week or month.

You are supposed to find your new normal by tomorrow morning and move on with your life, go back to work full time and be healthy, instantly.

Instead, you stumble around and wonder what a new normal is. You might be depressed, anxious, and still clinging to the cancer roller coaster at every ache and pain. Slowly you stabilize, still gasping from the whirlwind you went through for the past year.

You have lost some friends or even family who went running from the word cancer, in case it was contagious, but you gained some new ones. You got some new clothes, your work schedule changed, you bought yourself a present for surviving cancer treatment (I got myself a new watch), and you are still trying to lose the same damn 20 lbs (10 from before cancer and 10 from chemo).

And what if this is the new normal? What if its harder to find because you didn't evolve slowly but were yanked from your life to cancerland and then thrown back to your life? You have to pick away at the layers of changes to see what you like and don't like and try to get a handle on everything. Some of the changes that happened may not be the ones we want to keep but we have to learn to accept them.

We can never go back to the way we were, no matter how much we try. Who was it that wrote 'you can't go home again'? Its true, especially with cancer, we can't go home again, no matter how much we try.

There is a huge lesson here for all of us

We all have a lesson to learn here. We need to learn to accept our lives for what they are instead of allowing parts of it to cause us stress or depression.

I have now read this article three times. Learning to Live with It: Becoming stress free.

The more I read it, the more it helps me think of my medically disastrous life. I have continuous problems where my health keeps throwing another disaster my way and I have to learn to cope each one. A cancer diagnosis was one - maybe a touch of PTSD with that? But what about an RA diagnosis? Making life more fun each time.

Every change requires adaptation to survive and learn to readapt to the new parts of your life. But we don't need to change the external forces in our life - whether a bad partner, but learn to change our life to cope in its new version.

But the goal of learning to live with, not necessarily to accept it, but to cope, survive and thrive. That has become my goal now. I will keep reading and maybe learn some more about this. Many lessons here.