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How Will You Look at Death?
Nobody knows how they will react to a cancer diagnosis
Nobody really knows how they will react to a diagnosis of cancer.
You may think you’ll be stoic. Or freak out. You don’t know. You hope you will never know.
Your family and friends don’t know how they will react to your diagnosis either. They may believe they’ll be stoic and brave, selfless and supportive. They don’t know. They hope they will never know.
Both of my parents died by the time I was 25. My mother died when I was 14. You could say this traumatized me for life. It doesn’t feel that way to me. It was so many years ago. It’s just part of who I am.
But when my oldest sister was diagnosed with cancer? I cried. I was in shock. And then I coped, because she was coping.
My sister was strong. She made considered, researched choices about not having chemotherapy. She had been a nurse for more than 30 years, but she also knew that nobody’s cancer is like anyone else’s. Some are aggressive and you have very little time. That’s what she thought she had. The first doctor said three months. My sister went instead to an Ayurvedic doctor, changed her diet and her lifestyle completely and took up meditation. She approached all of this totally seriously.
