Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Obsessing

So how much do us cancer people think about cancer? This summarizes it. Except the years are wrong. This was my life in the years surrounding 1981 and surrounding 2007.

You do see that it starts to taper down but with every cancer related appointment or medical adventure you get yanked back up to the top level. This is my life. Today, we'll just say I have a couple of cancer related appointments. How's my stress level? I thought I was camouflaging it well but have been accused of crabbiness over the past few days so maybe I am a tad stressed.

We'll see what the day's adventures bring.  First I will go to the gym to work off the fattening food I ate yesterday. Then I will get some work done before spending some quality time at the hospital. Then I get to go to a meeting if I am still sane.

There was an article recently in the field of Psycho-Oncology that talked about how the way the patient feels in terms of fatigue, symptom burden and risk perception caused the worry regarding recurrence. But I disagree. Once you have cancer, no matter how you feel, you are going to worry about recurrence. And the field of psycho-oncology? I think all oncologists should have a background in psychology to help their patients cope and improve their bedside manner.

All cancer people obsess over recurrence whether overtly or internally.

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