A snapshot of my cancer and faith journeys, and the bridging of two worlds into one centered around God.
How Rekindling My Faith Cured My Mental Health Issues
10 Mental Health Tips for the COVID-19 Pandemic
Nine years ago this month, I had just finished 4 brutal rounds of chemotherapy fighting testicular cancer, and was on deck for a highly invasive surgery the next month in June. You might be surprised to learn that this was all the “easy” part of my cancer fight. What was hard was overcoming all of the mental health issues that many cancer survivors experience in the aftermath, such as anxiety, depression, and even PTSD symptoms. Learning to overcome all of this at a younger age has perhaps left me better prepared for other challenges in life, including the COVID-19 pandemic, so here are some mental health pointers for Mental Health Awareness Month.
Does The Burden of Cancer Ever Go Away?
Cancer Survivors Are Grieving Too
One day I was reading my friend's website, and my jaw hit the floor when I read a post about grief. It was the first time I'd ever seen a "grief chart." I had no idea there even was such a thing, and I could easily identify myself at every single step of this big curve as a cancer survivor. I had been writing and sharing in my cancer journey for a few years at this point, and it had never occurred to me even once that this entire process and all that I was going through, was all really one massive grief curve.
The Power of Behavioral Change and Self-Love After Cancer
Overcoming Post-Cancer Depression
I happen to be a good baseline for what post-cancer depression can feel like, because there had never been even a single depressive ‘bone’ in my body prior to cancer. I was always upbeat and optimistic about everything, believed that there were solutions to every problem, and did not have pre-existing issues with depression or anxiety. My cancer diagnosis at the age of 33 is the first time I faced any mental health issues in my life at all, and they hit me like a load of bricks.
How I Finally Found Peace After Cancer
Cancer Is Not Just Rogue Cells - And Not Just Inside the Patient
As I approach six years of cancer survivorship, never has it been more clear to me that cancer is not just a disease of our physical bodies, but a disease of our minds and souls as well. Thus, the argument that many make, is that cancer is not just a matter of eradicating the rogue cells from one's body, but of curing the entire patient.
On The Power of Writing to Help You Heal
Writing about cancer and all of this inner pain that it had brought into my life has never been easy, but the rewards for doing so have always far outweighed the hardship. It's one of the hardest, but also simultaneously one of the best things I've ever done.
How To Overcome Your Fears After Cancer (Or COVID)
PTSD and Suicidal Thoughts
This morning, my wife asked me if during my darkest days of PTSD, I ever had thoughts of killing my entire family. No. Never. There's a terrible story in the news, one of those murder/suicide "family delete" type tragedies, where a woman had been suffering from PTSD and possibly other things, stemming from a health crisis in one of her young children.
PTSD After Cancer Part III - Managing Life After
In Part 1 of these essays, I described what posttraumatic stress felt like to experience, and in Part II, I described the various things that I did to cope with and recover from it. In this final essay, I'm sharing the things that I've done to manage my life after suffering from posttrauamtic stress after cancer.
How to Cope with the Fears of Cancer Recurrence
The passage of time without any new evidence of disease is the only way that we ever get to "cured", and that makes for a very challenging waiting game in our years after cancer. Nothing has been more terrifying to me during these years than the fears of recurrence, and every strange pain or irregularity in our bodies brings these fears to life.
Top 5 Lessons Learned in 5 Years of Cancer Survivorship
In November of 2015, I was invited by the Cancer Knowledge Network to write a guest post. CKN is part of Current Oncology, Canada's leading oncology journal, which is read by thousands of oncology professionals and patients.
PTSD After Cancer Part II - Coping and Overcoming
This is Part II of my three part series of essays on my struggles with post-traumatic stress after cancer. In Part I described what the whole experience felt like, and in this part I'm sharing the story of all that I did to cope with and overcome it, and all of the wonderful people that helped me get there. Fighting cancer was the easy part. Recovering from PTS after cancer is so much harder, because at first you have no idea who or what you're fighting against, only to realize it's you.
There Is No Easy Cancer
On at least two occasions when I've mentioned my cancer story to new friends or acquaintances that hadn't known, I've received comments that were just short of dismissive that testicular cancer is an "easy cancer", alluding to the high cure rate. I'll be honest in saying that I haven't been offended by such comments, because I know that short of having been there in some way themselves, it's simply impossible for people to truly know what a cancer diagnosis feels like, nor all that one entails.
PTSD After Cancer Part I - What It Feels Like
I thought I had been doing so well after cancer. I had a new job and was back to life and living, but little did I know just how wounded I was inside. The stress of cancer survivorship started getting the better of me. A cancer warrior friend had died, and other friends of mine were experiencing recurrences. I had strange pains in my body, and thought for sure that my cancer was back, and that I was next. I had done so well for so long, but was so spooked and simply fell to pieces just short of two years after my cancer diagnosis.
Coping With the Uncertainty of Cancer
What Cancer Surveillance and Scanxiety Feels Like
25 Appointments and Counting... On the eve of my 4 year check-up for cancer, I rather foolishly clicked on a news video link of Virgin Atlantic Flight VS43's emergency landing in Gatwick last December. I've watched emergency landing videos before, but this is just asking for trouble around surveillance appointments, and I should have known better. As the Boeing 747-400 came down without its starboard main landing gear deployed, and with emergency vehicles lining the runway that were prepared for the worst, it was as though all of the collective fear, anxiety, and tension of the passengers on-board that aircraft found a way to channel straight through me. I could relate to this so well, because I know exactly what this feels like, and it's how I had already been feeling at the sub-conscious level. This is what I've been going through for 4 years now, over and over again, as an 'S.O.S.' cancer patient, "stranded on surveillance."