By Dan Johnson and From The Futurist — 1998
Rick Fields, poet, writer, and editor-in-chief of Yoga Journal, was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in 1995 at the age of 53.
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CLEAR ALL
With each diagnosis, knowing her life hung in the balance, she was “stunned, then anguished” and astonished by “how much energy it takes to get from the bad news to actually starting on the return path to health.”
Studies of dying patients who seek a hastened death have shown that their reasons often go beyond physical ones like intractable pain or emotional ones like feeling hopeless.
My Feb. 5 column, “A Heartfelt Appeal for a Graceful Exit,” prompted a deluge of information and requests for information on how people too sick to reap meaningful pleasure from life might be able to control their death.
A calm mind and even temper can help make peace with life’s difficulties.
1
In the end, I fall back on one statement that I repeat to myself pretty often. “We are not given the burdens we deserve, we are given the burdens we can bear.”
2
A panel of experts has released guidelines stating that regular exercise can help prevent cancer as well as help people undergoing cancer treatment.
Understanding the patterns of reaction to a prolonged illness with perhaps years of remission and a significant chance of being cured will help you put your emotional survival in focus while your doctor concentrates on your physical survival.
After treatment ends, one of the most common concerns survivors have is that the cancer will come back. The fear of recurrence is very real and entirely normal. Although you cannot control whether the cancer returns, you can control how much the fear of recurrence affects your life.
I need to slowly add the important things back into my life.
It wasn’t until I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from my urologist who informed me that I had prostate cancer that I started to panic. It took me a few seconds to comprehend what he was saying. He then ticked off a list of things I had to do.