Creatively Recalibrating Meaning (When a Coping Mechanism Needs a Makeover)
Myself with Dr. Hoppe, my radiation oncologist, in 2009 and in 2024
When a carefully constructed meaning that gave you comfort starts to crumble, convert into another that works for you. There is always a bright side.
I don’t know if you do this, but one of my major coping mechanisms in life is to assign things meaning.
It tends to work great until my assigned “meaning” comes into question.
Two days ago, I learned something that caused a carefully constructed meaning of mine to crumble, leaving me feeling rather vulnerable.
When I chose to receive Proton Therapy radiation in 2009 at the age of 24 as a consolidative treatment for cancer, I told myself I was doing the RIGHT thing.
The doctors told me this treatment would give me the best chance of not having a relapse, so I put myself in their expert hands and allowed them to treat me for 30 days with radiation (protons).
Two years ago, when I started noticing I could not let out a full-hearted laugh without my chest squeezing in pain where I received the radiation, I told myself, “Yeah, that sucks, but you did the RIGHT thing.”
When other stuff in the irradiated field began to hint that late effects may be showing up, I told myself, “You did the RIGHT thing, but now it’s time to see someone beyond a PCP. It’s time to see a doctor who specializes in cancer survivors.”
I started by seeing Dr. Hoppe, who oversaw my Proton Therapy treatment. He is the kind of doctor who listens and genuinely seems to care. That is a big reason I went with him back in 2009.
At our meeting, he listened to my concerns, answered all my questions, and pointed me in the direction of a survivorship clinic and physical therapy.
It is my hopeful intention that through positive thinking, physical therapy, exercise, prayer, and other relatively simple interventions, I will be able to experience a complete reversal of any and all late effects from the radiation treatment.
However, my self-talk, “You did the RIGHT thing by getting radiation,” took a big blow.
Based on the most recent studies, radiation therapy would no longer be recommended in a case like mine today. The doctors consider the risk of late effects to outweigh the risk of relapse.
This is a significant change in the medical understanding of “adverse risk factors” in relation to “bulky” Hodgkin’s, and it just happened in 2018.
The latest relevant study shows that radiation in addition to chemo (in the type of disease I had) only brings up the chance of not relapsing by about 5%, from ~86% to ~91%.
So even if I had not gotten the radiation, there is an 86% I would not have relapsed.
Part of me has been kicking myself for not listening to my mother when she argued with me about my getting the treatment.
I joked with her that I will have “I should have listened to my mother” carved on my tombstone.
Morbid jokes aside, what’s done is done, and I can’t go back and change it.
The fact is, 14% chance of relapse is still a chance. For all I know, the extra 5% of security meant everything in my case. I could have forgone the extra therapy, and I could have ended up back at square one.
In that case, I would have been kicking myself for listening to my mother! (Sorry, Mom).
So, instead of telling myself I did the “RIGHT” thing or the “WRONG” thing, I’m going to tell myself, “I got cancer, and I was one of those fortunate people who was given options with strong odds in my favor, and I chose one of them.”
It’s not wrong or right. It’s not anything. It’s just the past.
Today, it is in my hands how I will respond to the present moment.
And I choose to respond with self-love and GUSTO! 💜
