Writing a blog about cancer

I was thinking a few days ago about why I blog and what benefits I get from writing a blog and perhaps pass this on to someone who may be in a similar situation as I was when I was first diagnosed with cancer last September. First off when I started the blog it was to pass time whilst in the hospital especially on the long sleepless nights during my radio therapy treatment and I don’t think that the thought even crossed my mind about going public with it.

If you have been following it from the start you will see a lot of my writing was done in the dead of night when the steroids and various other drugs decided I didn’t need sleep. Those nights were strange because I’ve never been so wide awake in my life during those hours. It was like I was more awake at night than during the day, as soon as nightime fell I became absolutely wide awake and this went on for weeks even months.

These dark quiet and still times were when my thoughts became alive and frantic. A whirlwind of thoughts often spinning around in my head like a washing machine on its fastest cycle. Often the thoughts just piled up and I found they needed somewhere to go and so I started typing them out. I soon found they left my head pretty quickly as I put them into writing. I often could literally feel them jumping out of my mind as a typed.

Thoughts are one of the biggest problem for someone who is clinically or mentally suffering in some way. Thoughts can make things a lot worse as our over indulgent imaginations take over. Imagination is just another word for thought, you can’t imagine something without thinking about it and often a troubled persons imagination will be very negative.

We imagine the worst because that is what human beings are made to do. We imagine the worst to keep us safe, unfortunately we have the ability to tell ourselves so many fabricated stories based on our fears most of which never actually happen.

When you are diagnosed with cancer your thoughts go into overdrive. You can’t think rationally and these thoughts just multiply untill you actually feel worn out through thinking. At this point we need a distraction, my distraction was my writing. My thoughts didn’t know what do with me and I didn’t know what to do with them.

I chose to just write out my thoughts and feelings on a day by day basis when, at the beginning there was so many emotions fighting for a place in my head. I found my thoughts took me on an incredible rollercoaster ride with its dips and troughs, highs and lows.

When you are told you have got cancer it’s like youre life has hit a brick wall and stops dead. You don’t know what to do or who to turn to you just stumble through the initial days fearing the very worse. Your bodies protective systems go into overdrive your mind assumes the worst and that’s exactly how it feels untill the dust settles and you start to see things from a different angle. Light starts appearing as you come to terms with things, I found the more I wrote the lighter my life became.

Thoughts are not all bad, by writing my blog I could read them back and discover where my thoughts were going. Thoughts invade our mind and love nothing more than to follow patterns, bad news bad thoughts negative thoughts, negative feelings, the whole thing becomes a cycle of thoughts and feelings. By thinking positive about the situation I was able to write more positive day to day blogs which made me feel better.

Maybe writing is not for everyone, I enjoy it because it brings me comfort and allows me to express myself to myself and of course others. I began to realise once I started publishing the blog that it was helping others in similar situations and that inspired me to keep it going. The next blog will be number 100, it’s hard to believe that I’ve written 100 blogs nearly. I read back through them and it makes me realize how lucky I am now when at the beginning it seemed so dark.

I made an early decision to keep positive and the blog has helped me to do that and I would recommend writing a blog for anyone going through a similar thing, you don’t have to publish it you can keep it to yourself, but I’m sure whatever you do it will help some what.

Getting those thoughts out of my mind was the best thing I did. After my diagnosis my mind was so crowded and it needed some kind of release, writing became my pressure valve, the more I wrote the more pressure was allowed to escape.

Every one deals with life’s ups and downs in their own unique way, up untill my diagnosis things had been going great. My way is to write, sometimes I was unaware of what I was typing my fingers just took over as I stared into the screen. One thing for sure with out writing the blog I think my positivity would have been hard to find. Sometimes the positivity is buried in amongst a mass of negativity, sometimes it just needs a way out.

take care

love Woody ❤️