Fear

“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”: FDR

This famous quote resonated with me in the days after my diagnosis of DCIS. I had nothing to fear, yet I was full of fear. At times I was paralyzed with fear, I could not think straight, I could not function normally.  Was it fear of the unknown?  I was not and have never been particularly afraid to die.  It is inevitable, we will all die one day, but I thought of death as some distant happening, not something to be faced with at 49.  While this fear was of course greatly exaggerated since I was not in imminent danger of anything.  I felt fine, with the exception of my biopsy lump.  I had no pain, I had nothing to fear really, but that sentence "You have cancer" strikes fear that is deep within.  Fear of a limited future, fear of leaving two children without their mother.  Fear of dying from an unforgiving and brutal disease.

A few years prior to my diagnosis, a friend of mine did indeed die from what started as breast cancer.  You cannot die from breast cancer itself, you die when it metastasizes to more important body parts, like your lungs or liver.  My friend had breast cancer 5 years prior to her death.  She had a double mastectomy and had reconstruction and all seemed well.  5 years later she had a pain under one of her implants, she went to the doctor and they said it was nothing, a possible injury.  Well the pain did not subside and on a subsequent visit to the doctor she was told her cancer was back and not only back, but it had metastasized to the liver and bones.  She passed away 3 months later leaving two boys without their mother at the young age of 45. In those 3 months I watched my friend go from a vibrant woman to a shell of that person, she looked like a little bird before she left us.  Cancer is a terrible disease.

Years prior to that another friend of mine suffered the same fate.  She had breast cancer, had the conventional standard of care treatments, the cancer came back and she passed away.  The details of this friend are not as vivid to me as she was living in England and I was here in the US during her ordeal, but again another vibrant woman was lost to this terrible disease and a young age.

I knew many people who died of cancer, some older relatives, some as young as 27 from breast cancer that metastasized, one the young sister of a school friend who died of leukemia.  It seemed to me that once you have cancer you will eventually die from cancer.  The exceptions in my life are people that have only recently had cancer.  It seems you are never cured of cancer until you die of something else.  That was my fear that one day I would not only die but would die of cancer, which is not a pleasant death.  And in the meantime I would be subjected to all sorts of unpleasant treatments which may or may not work.  

I knew I had to first tackle this fear, it is debilitating since you cannot sleep well when you are in fear, it is bad for the immune system and makes for a not very pleasant person to be around.  I was never a fearful person, I was not a worry wart.  I grew up in New York and felt I had a toughness about me as a result of my childhood environment.  At the age of 5 another neighborhood kid tried to mug me with a butter knife.  I stood my ground and he slunk off.  I worked in Manhattan in the late 1980s when you could not wear a gold necklace around your neck or it would be ripped off by some passing hooligan.  I walked around the city at night with keys intertwined through my fingers in case of being jumped by someone.  I would not go down without a fight in any situation and I was not going down without a fight here either.  I tried mentally to stop the fear.  It was easy during the day, I was very busy.  I worked full time as a software engineer and was fully engaged in my job, my children kept me busy after work with various activities.  I kept up my running which helped quite a bit, but it was the nighttime when the fear was at it's worst.  Lying in bed at night in the dark while my husband slept I was unable to sleep and thinking dark thoughts.  

I knew fear would undermine any other things I was doing to reverse the DCIS.  I felt fear could indeed wreak havoc upon my immune system and could possibly allow the cancer cells in the breast ducts to proliferate.  I knew I had to stop it, but fear is a tricky animal which in my case was primarily nocturnal.  

During my first pregnancy I watched one of those news shows like 20/20 or 60 minutes which aired a segment on Hypnobirthing.  I had wanted to have a natural childbirth and this seemed to me the way to go.  I found a local practitioner and after 6 classes and hours of listening to a very empowering guided meditation I achieved my goal and had a beautiful baby girl without the aid of an epidural.  Birth the way nature intended.  The guided mediation was on a CD, it suppressed my fear of child birth and the pain that may be associated with it and let nature take it's course.  Since guided meditation worked before I had every reason to believe it would work again.  

I scoured iTunes for suitable guided mediation tracks and finally settled on one that really worked for me.  I am an avid reader and had read a book by Anita Moorjani titled "Dying to be Me".  The book really spoke to me and I found that Anita had made a guided mediation.  I downloaded the track and started listening nightly.  After a few weeks I could feel the fear subsiding and I credit the guided meditation as a large part of the cure.  I still listen to the CD most nights, although I think at this stage I could sleep without it.

The second thing I did that really removed the fear was I visited a doctor of Chinese medicine who did energy work, not acupuncture, but energy medicine.  I had several sessions with her and one session specifically addressed fear.  Whenever I felt fear it was always manifested in my stomach.  One of the sessions addressed fear and focused on my stomach and by the end of the session any fear that was left in me was gone.  Even if I try I can no longer summon up those feelings of fear.  I can sleep very well at night and I am at peace throughout the day.  I hope you can find what will work for you since we truly have nothing to fear but fear itself.