Thriving Through Cancer: From Health Crisis To Strength

Cancer was not on my vision board. I have no family history of cancer and am the healthiest person I know. I’ve been a registered dietitian nutritionist for over 30 years and, as a board-certified health and wellness coach, help other women optimize their well-being.

Yet there I was on April 12, 2022, on my son’s 21st birthday, the day of the Jupiter Neptune conjunct in Pisces hearing: “We see a mass in your left breast in the upper outer aspect about 3 cm out from your nipple. It’s 7 millimetres in its maximum. I’m calling it a category 5 mass, meaning it’s 95% likely to be a malignancy.”

With the word malignancy, I went numb as the pathologist rambled, dropping words like biopsy, breast surgeon, oncologist, radiation, and chemotherapy. I wondered why she didn’t save us both time and simply say, “You have breast cancer.”

In numb autopilot, I traded the crisp, royal blue Johnny for Levi’s and a T-shirt, found my car, paid for parking, and drove away from the hospital, knowing my life would be changed forever.

This was my second midlife health crisis. The first one, three retinal detachments, had occurred four years previously during a difficult divorce. While the retinol detachments didn’t threaten my life, if not treated immediately, I would go blind.

The cancer diagnosis felt very different. The retinal detachment was a duel between fear and faith with no choices. In contrast, the cancer diagnosis felt like a nightmare: “Why me?” pity party with guilt, shame, fear, confusion, overwhelmingness, and anger invited to the table.

To complicate matters, shortly after my diagnosis, I had genetic testing and discovered I have a BRCA2 mutation. This means that I have an increased risk of developing several types of cancer, including breast, ovarian, and pancreatic.

How I navigated my health crisis

How did I navigate my health crisis? Luckily, I had a roadmap, my book ‘Rock Your Midlife: 7 Steps to Transform Yourself and Make Your Next Chapter Your Best Chapter’ which I had published four months prior to my diagnosis.

I won’t promise it can solve all of your problems, but in my case, it was very helpful. Here’s how I used the 7 steps to weather my health crisis.

1. Know Yourself

Knowing yourself is key to navigating both midlife and a health crisis. Why? Because it can help you maintain your identity and stay grounded.

When you understand your needs, limits, core values, and strengths, you gain clarity around decision-making. This enables you to create a healing plan and path that resonates with who you are and who you are becoming. Plus, you have the confidence and courage to communicate your desires effectively to healthcare providers to get personalized care.

Understanding your emotional responses and coping mechanisms enables you to manage the stress, fear, and anxiety that accompany a health crisis. Self-awareness also supports self-care and intuitive healing, guiding you to rest when needed and avoid behaviours that might set you back. 

2. Practice Self-compassion

Just like when sailing in a storm, you wear a life jacket; when navigating a health crisis, you need a personal flotation device to stay afloat. Self-compassion -essentially treating yourself like a good friend – is that life preserver.

Not only will self-compassion derail your “woe is me” pity party, but it will reduce anxiety, depression, and stress and increase your well-being, teaching you to love yourself. Over time, you become your own BFF there to support you 24/7, especially when life is really hard!

Start your self-compassion practice by asking yourself, “how would I treat a friend who was experiencing a similar health crisis?”  Then treat yourself the way you would that friend. Instead of ruminating, try to accept what’s happening and ask yourself: “What do I need right now?“. Then you give yourself what you need.

It’s helpful to remember the three elements of self-compassion: Kindness, Common Humanity, and Mindfulness. When you’re having a bad day, you comfort and soothe yourself rather than judging yourself. One added benefit of self-compassion is that it can improve your midlife body image. This is a huge plus because a health crisis can alter your appearance causing weight shifts, hair loss or thinning, skin changes, scarring, muscle loss, swelling, or make you look more tired and aged.

3. Energize yourself

My cancer treatment was exhausting, especially radiation, which required me to drive two hours a day for treatments for an entire month. Taking steps to support my body and stay energized was crucial for maintaining my physical, mental, and emotional health.

I focused on four areas: nutrition, movement, stress, and sleep/rest. While my diet was already good, I worked with a functional medicine doctor to improve it. I reduced inflammatory foods, like sugar, alcohol, grains, and dairy products, increased anti-inflammatory foods, such as berries and leafy greens, and took recommended supplements to promote healing and strengthen my body.

I continued walking and strength training, adding daily yoga to boost my energy and mood and rebounding to promote lymphatic drainage. To reduce stress, I doubled down on mindful self-compassion, spent more time in nature, traded work for more play, got regular massages, and practised breathwork. Finally, I prioritized rest and sleep.

4. Reprogram Your Brain 

Thanks to a phenomenon called neuroplasticity, we can change the structure of our brain, allowing it to adapt and rewire itself in response to new experiences, thoughts, and behaviours.  Positive thinking, savouring the good, and practising gratitude help strengthen neural pathways associated with optimism and contentment. These practices can help you shift your focus from what’s not working to what is.

Among techniques that foster positive brain changes, there are also mindfulness meditation practices. They help calm the amygdala (the brain’s fear centre) and increase grey matter in the parts of the brain associated with emotional regulation, focus, and stress reduction. This is why I made a habit of meditating during both radiation and chemotherapy.

Visualizing positive health outcomes can be a particularly helpful way to reprogram your brain and promote healing. To promote healing and reduce anxiety, I visualized a positive outcome prior to my two surgeries, a lumpectomy and salpingo-oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries and fallopian tubes).

Regular physical exercise, adequate sleep, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and learning new skills are additional techniques and strategies that can change your brain and provide benefits that support both emotional and physical healing. These can help you thrive, not just survive, through difficult times.

5. Empower Yourself

As a conflict adverse, recovering people pleaser, empowering myself was the hardest of my seven steps to follow during my cancer journey. I wanted the doctors to like me and knew that if I didn’t follow all their recommendations, they might disapprove of me.

However, I followed step one and used one of my top core values, well-being, to guide my journey. Unless necessary, I vowed to advocate for myself and avoid treatments that could irreversibly harm my body.

Empowerment became a powerful tool to navigate my health crisis. It helped me to find my voice, regain a sense of control, and promote resilience. For example, when my oncologist recommended a “cocktail” of paclitaxel (a common chemotherapy drug) with Herceptin (a type of immune therapy), I refused the former. While there was risk associated with not following the standard treatment, after doing my own research and consulting with my functional medical doctor, I knew it was the right decision for my long-term health.

Knowledge is power, so educate yourself and understand your treatment options. Don’t simply follow your doctor’s orders. Ask questions and get alternative opinions. 

6. Rehab Your Relationships

There’s nothing like a health crisis to tell you who your real friends are, who has your back, and who doesn’t. This insight may require you to rehab your relationships, which can be challenging and rewarding. However, it’s key because to get through the crisis, you must build a support system by surrounding yourself with people who lift you up and encourage you.

You rehab your relationships in three ways. You give yourself permission to say NO, create a Personal Bill of Rights, and learn how to communicate to meet your needs.

My cancer diagnosis was a get-out-of-jail-free card that empowered me to say NO whenever I needed to. I used NO, which is a powerful, complete sentence for everything from treatments that I didn’t want to parties that I didn’t have energy for.  I learned that saying no was one of the most important things I could do to feel in control and prioritize myself and my health.

Along with saying no, I set boundaries by creating a Personal Bill of Rights (PBR). Your PBR is a list of the limits, guidelines, and rules of engagement you set for yourself within relationships. Examples include I have a right to be happy, I have a right to personal space, I have a right to change my mind, and I have a right to prioritize my needs.

To meet your needs, I highly recommend checking out Nonviolent Communication (NVC), a technique developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg. It consists of four parts—Observations, Feelings, Needs, and Requests—that guide you in communicating how you feel and what you need and can be used in both personal and professional relationships.

7. Enlighten Yourself 

My cancer journey was messy, scared the sh*t out of me, and brought me to my knees repeatedly. Fortunately, spirituality is one of my core values, so I had a tool kit of spiritual practices, including prayer, gratitude, self-compassion, Reiki, and yoga, to help build inner strength and resilience.

One huge turning point came days after my diagnosis. Angry, overwhelmed, and feeling sorry for myself, I mustered the motivation to roll out my yoga mat and practice virtually with Heather, one of my favourite teachers. While sobbing in child’s pose, I had a powerful AHA moment: Yes, I had a small tumour, but the rest of my body -trillions of cells working together to keep me alive – was just fine.

Ultimately, my health crisis taught me that the Universe has my back even when I feel hopeless. It deepened my relationship with God/Source/Spirit and brightened my soul. I learned to accept, rather than fight my situation and find peace when faced with illness.

Rather than despair, spirituality helped me to find meaning in my suffering and turn the experience into an opportunity for personal growth, reflection, and connection with others, myself, and life itself.

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