Well-being tip #3: Stop feeling guilty

Every cancer patient fells like that. At some stage, we all feel guilty about having cancer, or delaying chemo due to low blood counts (I had 4 consecutive weeks of delay and I got myself thinking if maybe that piece of chocolate or something else I did was to blame for), or something else related to our diagnosis, treatment or response. Cancer is a multifactorial condition, meaning it originates from combined genetic and environmental factors. A lot of these factors are not necessarily under our control. Also research shows that 1 in 2 people* will develop cancer in their lifetime, so everybody has a 50% chance of some sort of cancer at some stage. Thus, having a cancer diagnosis and doing chemo does not make us unique these days. But being positive about it might.

We need to accept that it is NORMAL to blame ourselves for such a difficult, sometimes life threatening, diagnosis. In between tears, my first comment to the doctor after I was told I had cancer was that I had done everything “right” (to avoid disease), and I still looked for something to blame in every single aspect of my life. Maybe it was my stressful job? Or that glass of wine or chocolate on weekends? Maybe it was too much exercise, or should I have exercised more? Too much green tea? Was I too skinny? I tried to find so many things that I could potentially had done to blame myself for my diagnosis. As a medical researcher, I tried to find scientific evidence of every single one. Until one day I gave up, because it just made me more stressed about how I was going to live after chemo, and I really wanted to have my life back. Every bit of it. And if you are a cancer patient, I am sure you want that too.

The truth is that blaming yourself does not make it any better or easier to deal with a cancer diagnosis, so we better get over it. I know this is not easy, but just accepting that many other people are diagnosed too and that it is okay to feel guilty helps to decrease the anxiety towards it. My suggestion is to set up a deadline to stop crying and feeling guilty, and start living again. At least I am determined to spend the rest of my days happy, independent if I have 1 or 15,000 more days to live.

If there are things you could change in your lifestyle to give you better chance of fighting the cancer, such as losing some weight, improving your diet and exercising more, please do so. It will also give you a better quality of life overall, even if you are cancer free.

Instead of feeling guilty, let’s enjoy this precious gift which is a brand new day called today. Otherwise in the future we will feel guilty for have spent our lives worrying about things we cannot control or change. But we can change the way we feel and what we do right now. So go and do something enjoyable today!

Fran xo

PS: photo shows sunset from our balcony over the bay in Melbourne

*Reference: Ahmad AS, Ormiston-Smith N, Sasieni PD. Trends in the lifetime risk of developing cancer in Great Britain: Comparison of risk for those born in 1930 to 1960. Br J Cancer 2015;bjc.2014:606.