How to Get Through Cancer Treatments
How to Get Through Cancer Treatments
A friendly guide by Eve Monroe
The way to get through radiotherapy: Pretend you are at a fancy spa. So when you are checking in at reception, pretend you are checking in for your spa treatment. And when you are asked to change into a gown, pretend it is a fluffy robe. And when you’re asked to lie down on a piece of machinery, pretend it’s a high-tech piece of state-of-the-art equipment for facials. (Apparently Gwyneth Paltrow uses it, so it must be good.)
And when they come and pin your head down firmly with the bespoke blue plastic mask so that you can’t move a muscle, pretend it is a fancy facial device.
The radiotherapy nurses will talk above your head in a kind of technical jargon. Pretend they are Spanish facialists discussing your skin type in Spanish.
Then, when the radiotherapy actually begins, switch tack, still channeling Gwyneth. All the way through, tell yourself that this treatment will flood your brain with healing and vanish any remaining cancerous debris. Manifest it to be true. Will it to be true. Make it be true.
Don’t think about the bald patch that this treatment will undoubtedly give you. Bald patches are not very Gwyneth.
Before you know it, the therapists will be back, unpinning you and asking how you feel.
Sit up, blinking, and think, I got through that . And now you just have to get through the next one.
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The way to get through chemotherapy side effects: Do a five-hundred-meter sprint every day, eat only cabbage, meditate, and write a daily gratitude journal to your creator.
I’m joking. The way to get through chemotherapy side effects: Go to bed.
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The way to get through an MRI scan: Don’t move. Pretend the noise is some piece of contemporary music or building works next door. Send positive, healing thoughts to your brain with mantras—e.g., My scan is clean, the disease has not progressed— in the hope that this will affect the result. (If your mind drifts to the Sweaty Betty sale instead, do not beat yourself up.)
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The way to get through scanxiety: Is there a way? Please let me know what itis.