Here I am, diagnosed a couple of months ago, and halfway through my 3 months of hormones, to take me up to my radiotherapy towards the end of January.
I've been through all the stages of worry and panic through what seemed an endless round of diagnostic stages, but despite what you expect the telephone call to tell you "You have Cancer!!", panic is almost compulsory. Your partner also panics and you start the stage of considering the options, and then worrying if you've made the right choice.
Then you enter the stage of predicting the future, the 3.00am challenges start, with the questions going round and round, such as: Is this my last Xmas, will the end be painful, and when will it happen, will I be incontinent for the rest of my life??? I had many more, too many to list!
I guess a lot of us identify with this.
Eventually you get fed up of it and say to yourself "STUFF IT, I CAN'T CARRY ON LIKE THIS, IF PC DOESN'T DESTROY MY LIFE, I'M DOING IT TO MYSELF"
I remembered that many years ago I used a technique to resolve an emotional issue which very nearly destroyed my marriage, so I went back to it again!
It's Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT in short. It's a technique which helps us to realise why we think about things the way we do, and makes us look at it in a completely new way, so the negative analyses go in the bin and realistic thoughts replace them. In essence it's very simple, it just needs a bit of practice.
To cut a long story short, my thinking process was always to sort out every problem immediately, and if I couldn't I got angry and tried even harder, failed again, got even more wound up and round and round the destructive circle I went. Some things you can't solve on your own.
I'm now untroubled by my cancer, positively positive (!!!), I now know that I'll be around for many years, it's not even a topic of conversation any more. I know I might be unlucky, and my troubles are only starting, but I'll cross each bridge as I get to it, the CBT might make a reappearance, I don't know?
Your thinking process might well be different, this is personal to me, but convinced me that it can really help.
We've all met people who have had serious challenges in their lives, but handle it with not much more than a shrug and a smile.
How do they do it? They probably just have different non-destructive thinking patterns.
Start with Googling it.
Good Luck and positive thoughts everybody