The Mind-Body Connection

Okay readers – brace yourselves – we are about to get a little trippy. Or as my husband and I would say – I am about to get a little hippie dippie.

Up until my last post, some of you readers were probably surprised by how well I have been doing considering my diagnosis. Some of you may even think I am in denial. Not that it really matters, but I am not in denial. I am well aware that my time on this earth is limited.

The fact of the matter is, though, that it is hard to feel like you are dying when overall you feel healthy and well. Which, up until a few days ago I did.

Having cancer is a funny thing – not funny haha more like funny hmm. At first it doesn’t typically make you feel ill. It is not until the cancer cells have reached a critical mass in your body that it starts affecting you symptomatically. For example, if your cancer cells spread to your bones – at some point you will have debilitating bone pain. If they spread to your lung lining – like it appears that mine have started to – you can have some serious pain with breathing.

I did have pleuritic pain, which is the fancy medical term for pain with breathing. That is what initiated the testing that ultimately showed my cancer had spread to my lungs. It is better now – either because of the steroids I took for 30 days or ideally because the medicine I started on Saturday is working and causing those cancer cells to undergo apoptosis or die.

Anyways, this is all a lot of words to say that when I physically feel fine I typically mentally and emotionally feel fine. My social worker/therapist and I talked a lot about this during my chemotherapy infusion sessions. On the days where I was cooped up in my bedroom unable to do anything but sleep or watch TV I was angry and sad. I was depressed on those days. I felt closer to death. I felt more hopeless. But, on the days where I felt well and was just a normal mom taking care of her baby boy, I felt happy and hopeful.

How you physically feel affects how you mentally and emotionally feel. This should be common sense, but at least in my experience, until you live it firsthand it is hard to wrap your brain around. Or I may be dense – both seem equally likely to me.

This connection is beaten into medical students’ brains during their four years of medical school. Or at least this seemed the case at my specific medical school. I went to an osteopathic medical school, where they focused more on the mind-body connection. I think that this is becoming increasingly more mainstream and is a topic at all medical schools these days.

Anyways, how you feel affects how you feel. My husband experienced severe sciatic pain the first few months of my son’s life. This was highly annoying to me, because not only did we have a new baby, but I was enduring cancer treatment. The pain seemed to be relentless. It exhausted my husband and I think it depressed him as well.

Now that I am experiencing back pain, likely from this new medication I am on, I have a newfound empathy for what he was going through. Back pain sucks! It is also very common. I think it is one of the most common chiefs complaints for a primary care physician to see.

I find it interesting that most of my symptoms from chemotherapy are pretty mundane. They are not unique to me. Back pain certainly isn’t. Nor is fatigue. I saw both in my short time of training. I tried to be compassionate, but at the same time in my head I was thinking well it can’t be that bad. Just take some Tylenol. Just sleep a little bit more. Buck up. Pull yourself up by those bootstraps!

I don’t sound very empathetic or compassionate. I am ashamed to admit this, but I think honesty is important. Accountability is as well. If I knew what I know now I like to think that I would have been more understanding. It is hard to be in a good mood when you are in constant, unrelenting pain. I get this now.

Looking at me you wouldn’t know that I am exhausted or that my back constantly aches now. You probably wouldn’t even know I’m a cancer patient. My hair has grown to a length that it looks like I have a pixie cut that is on purpose.

I have a chronic, invisible illness. There are many of these. To name a few: rheumatoid arthritis, type I diabetes, crohn’s disease, fibromyalgia. The list goes on and on. Many people aren’t up front about these chronic illnesses because they don’t want to be treated differently. Maybe they don’t want to think about their illness. It’s their prerogative.

It is interesting to me though, that my symptoms are in no way unique. The only thing that is unique is that I may die sooner. Or I may not. No one really knows. My oncologist doesn’t know. I certainly don’t know.

I don’t want to get too preachy. But, please just bear with me for a second. Maybe we could all be kinder to one another, because we don’t truly know what is going on beneath the surface. As my dad would say, we don’t know what demons another person is fighting.

You all certainly didn’t know what I was going through until less than a week ago. Sending love and light to you all. Until next time dear readers.