As my best friend drove me to my first oncologist appointment, I warned her what to expect in the coming months. I wouldn’t be an inspirational, life-affirming breast cancer patient who carpes the diem and dances in fields among the butterflies. I’d be a dark figure pacing in the corner, muttering that people who hit me with their puppy dog eyes and bottom lip pouts when they hear my diagnosis need to back off.She remembered, for instance, when I forced my way out of a stuck elevator.
And was a cookie-cutter mindset of blind optimism my only chance? I had optimism when I found the lump in my breast. I was so positive it was nothing that I didn’t tell anyone but my family doctor. Even after the mammogram, the ultrasound, the biopsy and when the biopsy results came back in three days when I was told to expect them in seven to 10, I held fast. Women find benign lumps all the time, right? My mother’s side of the family had no history of cancer, breast or otherwise.
Except, it turns out if you are a little bit belligerent and a whole lot pragmatic. Then you do have to change. You have to hand over the core of yourself to cancer because somebody somewhere decided that people like you don’t make it out of this place alive. Literally. . Dr. Maté cites research that found breast cancer patients had worse prognoses if they reported handling the cancer well as opposed to considering it an adversary to fight. He claims we create a state of chaos within our bodies when we ignore or downplay anxieties and stressors, which results in poorer health.