By Mary Engel — 2016
Three in four depressed cancer patients don’t get enough help; survivors tell what it’s like to slip ‘down the rabbit hole’ — and how to climb back out.
Read on www.fredhutch.org
CLEAR ALL
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.
An added component of cancer treatment is discovering what is most meaningful in the patient’s life and using that to buoy them during difficult moments. That, in a nutshell, is the psychiatrist's role.
This is written for the person with advanced cancer, but it can be helpful to the people who care for, love, and support this person, too.
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Frankl’s thesis echoes those of many sages, from Buddhists to Stoics to his 20th century Existentialist contemporaries: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
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