How im living with Prostate Cancer
This blog is dedicated to the 1 in 8 guys and the 1 in 4 black guys that sadly will get this cancer and have to learn to live with prostate cancer. My hope is it might help someone with a new diagnosis to cope better. I’m always happy if anyone wishes to share what I write, I write for both myself and for anyone else who may need some help somewhere in their life.
I am not a doctor of any kind but I felt this blog, after reading through so many cancer forum posts just needed to be written. I’ve read a lot of negativity from people that have been diagnosed with prostate cancer and of course that is totally understandable in all ways. But you don’t have to be totally negative, you have to search for positives other wise this cancer will literally bring you down to your knees mentally in a heartbeat.
The prognosis
Just to hear the words I’m sorry to say you have prostate cancer is absolutely devastating. When I first heard those words myself the realisation hit me like a run away train. Well that’s not strictly true because it took several weeks to process the fact that I have cancer and a few more to process the fact it was incurable stage 4 Prostate Cancer, that was the point where I went numb. My world literally froze and I went around in a daze of complete uncertainty. I remember driving back from the hospital and thinking the world is now a completely different place because I have cancer. The world, although was still the same in reality but my experience of the world changed. I probably shouldn’t have driven home that day when I was given the devastating prognosis after the biopsy revealed it’s worst secret. I was completly unaware of everything except my mind just repeating the oncologists words” it’s incurable it’s aggressive”, I never took in the positives they were all masked in a shit sandwich of bad stuff, but there were positives. The positives get washed away in a tide of negativity, washed up in a corner where it’s dark and no light can get in, that is untill you decide to open the door. Just a crack at a time that door opens and the first rays of hope start to filter in.
My prognosis was not so great but there is still hope. People with far worse conditions have turned it around and that’s what I hold on to. If one can do it then why can’t you or I. Most of the prostate cancer diagnosis are not so extreme, many of you will live long lives if it’s caught early and is able to be monitored fairly easily. A lot will just carry on living a normal life with regular check ups, some will have radical surgeries to prevent it spreading out of the prostate. In this case the prostate is removed and this is life changing in many ways too but that I can’t comment on as that has not been my case.
Living with prostate cancer
This blog post is really about how to live with advanced prostate cancer in a more positive way. This is where, when I first found out I was left in the dark unable to find a light switch. I didn’t know what to do , I didn’t know how to face life with this supposed life sentence being imposed on me. The first thoughts were “why me”. It took time to just let the dust settle before I started to see things more clearly. It’s not easy to suddenly find out that your comfortable little world that you have been living on has suddenly stopped turning. But take it from me , it will slowly start turning again, it will take a while but it will start to turn.
Your mind & keeping it positive
The most important friend you have is the power of your mind. You have to start believing that it’s not going to be all bad. Our minds love negativity, we are biased to be negative and scientists have worked out that for every piece of negativity we think about we need 5 pieces of positivity to cancel the negatives out. That’s not easy but it can be done. I’ve been asked a few times by people how come I’m so positive with dealing with my cancer, particularly as it’s advanced. Apparently It shouldn’t be possible but I have one answer to this question, firstly it’s got nothing to do with not being afraid or being brave because if you want my true thoughts I’m not afraid because of one reason and that is I haven’t really thought about being afraid yet, I’m sure if I chose to start thinking about being afraid I will become afraid, even if it’s normal to be afraid scared or frightened they are just thoughts and thoughts are made of nothing they can’t harm us and have a habit of vanishing when we stop paying attention to them.
I’ve got so much to lose and that’s what scares me most, in a way I’m a lucky guy because I’ve got so much to lose, its hard to explain that but it’s true. I’ve got two young daughters who I’m terrified about leaving, and a wife who I love to. I’m lucky to have these beautiful people that’s for sure and I’ve not always realised that as much as I should. Cancer has awakened me and given me another chance another go to get it right, I’m terrified of having that taken from me and I’m terrified for them losing me too. But at the same time I’m also incredibly lucky to have that. Many people who have cancer have nothing to lose and I feel so deeply in sympathetic with that even though it would be much easier for me to have nothing to lose.
I have been saying this for many years and this is quite simply the single best piece of advice I can ever give anyone. There’s nothing wrong with you, until you think there is. Yes I’ve got cancer, there is no denying that fact, but my cancer experience is made better or worse by the way I think about it. The world turns on an axis of thought , humans only experience what they think. I have stage 4 metastatic cancer, my reaction could be my god I’m going to die of this, my reaction instead is cancer has awoken me and opened my eyes to what I was missing and just how beautiful the world can be. My thoughts have turned a negative into a positive and I’m experiencing a far more positive situation than someone else who is exactly in the same situation as me. In other words it’s not the cancer that’s causing my experience, it’s the way I’m thinking about it that’s actually creating my life experience right now. I’m feeling my thinking and so for as long as on the inside my thinking is positive then nothing on the outside can change until I let it. I saw this interesting artical from the guardian about positive thinking kills cancer cells. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/apr/16/theobserver.uknews2
Life throws some big curve balls at times, but every one of those balls are molded into positive or negative realities just by the way we deal with them in our thinking. Once you understand that one simple fact it will fundementally change everything you believe about life forever. The only thing you have to be afraid of is your thoughts but as I said earlier they don’t stick if you don’t follow them, if you wait awhile new thoughts like clouds will float into you conscious you can chose to follow it or not, if you don’t like it stay calm and another one will soon replace it. This cycle of thoughts is what makes us exist, each set of thoughts can take us down a new path each thought we chose to follow can open one door or close another. The only time we stop thinking completly is when we die. Our houghts are echoes and mixtures of our past experiences and our perceived future experiences. Thoughts don’t care if they are telling the truth or lying they are what you make up subconsciously in your head. Once you can learn to understand how thoughts work you need never to be frightened of anything again.
I have learned a number of tricks to keep thinking positive. Of course I slip every now and then but I’ve found ways of becoming positive and I can share a few now. It’s actually 2am now as I’m writing this, it’s one of those nights where sleep has abruptly just stopped and I’m wide awake what better time to share a few ideas. I’ve been saying a daily mantra now for 8 months, I do this every morning and every evening and sometimes in-between like when I’m driving to work. It doesn’t matter how I really feel the mantra is always said.
Every day in every way I’m feeling better and better.
Every day in every way I’m becoming stronger and stronger
Every day in every way my cancer is getting weaker and weaker.
I say those 3 lines no matter how good or bad I’m feeling, it creates a positive state of mind and the most important part is I believe it, no matter what the doctor’s say I believe it. For some reason I always feel better once I’ve said them. It’s as if my cancer listens to these words and gets scared. Who knows what the effect is on the inside, I just know it does something to me that just makes me feel better and that can’t be a bad thing, right!
In order to keep a positive mindset you have to surround yourself with as much positivity as possible. I try to follow positive stuff on the internet. The internet clearly shows the human bias to negativity, it’s full of it on social media and web articles. But it’s not all negative. Here are a few sites that regularly focus on the good stuff, they are worth saving for a rainy day.
/https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/
https://www.sunnyskyz.com/feel-good-stories
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cx2pk70323et
https://www.readersdigest.ca/culture/good-news-stories-world/
https://www.mirror.co.uk/all-about/feel-good-news
Positivity is all around you, no matter what you are going through you can always find some thing online that will warm your heart and make you smile, despite how you are feeling. The best medicine is a positive mind and a smile. A diagnosis of prostate cancer doesn’t have to be a dark cloud that follows you wherever you go. The sun can still shine. Just remember, even on your darkest days, the sun is always there just waiting for that moment to break through and shine down on you.
Before I finish the post for this week I want to keep on raising awareness. Over 160 men are diagnosed with Prostate cancer in the uk, sadly 30 people die each day of this cancer. You can change these statistics if you are aware of the risks. Every man should be clicking on this simple risk checker. If it’s caught early enough then it can be controlled and monitored. Every man in his forties onwards should click this link. Please share this post and get the message out there.
https://prostatecanceruk.org/risk-checker
Take care, be positive and kind and grateful whenever you get the chance.
Love Woody ❤️
