Compassion

Something I've been struggling with lately is compassion. Both for myself, and actually others, in relation to my cancer and just in general.  I feel that cancer has the ability to amplify whatever your feeling, makes sense, and in doing that it's like getting hit over the head with a feelings brick. Hurts a little bit, and is impossible to ignore, as opposed to the usual annouying poke that a lot of feelings tend to do. As an even tempered person, for the most part, sometimes I need a stronger internal signal to sense the blip on the radar. 

So that is basically a long winded way to say I've been having a lot of feelings lately. The self compassion is something that I have struggled with in cancer and not. I am admittedly very hard on myself, and in the past would just muscle my way through things, not really paying attention to how I felt and frequently to my own physical detriment. Ranging from just sleep deprivation to full on getting sick.  So now that I quite literally have no choice but to slow down, it's sometimes hard for me to deal with.  Lately in particular I've had trouble.  The thing about chemo is that it breaks your body down 

Umm yeh, wouldn't have a shinny head if something wasn't breaking down. So eventually your body pushes back. Saying nope you have to slow down even more. Sorry you're plan ain't going to work because I have other ideas. And let's just say I don't take that well.  First off I regard my 'cred' as very important. To me saying you'll do something and then not doing it / canceling at the last minute is the worst.  It makes me mad, especially when I already think I'm slowing down a lot.  It's been a very important lesson in listening to myself and though emotionally sometimes I turn into a two year old child having a tantrum, I have gotten better at listening to what my body is telling me that I need. This may or may not what other people think I should be doing. 

This goes into my second point. Unfortunately people have opinions and sometimes they share them when they are unsolicited.  Lately when talking to others, including medical professionals, don't really understand my situation. I've heard this from other young adult cancer patients, basically I'm in a very special group of people and people don't understand what is important to someone my age.  I had an appointment recently with radiation oncology and though they seemed very nice something they said really erked me. I was concerned about how tired I will be during treatment. And I was told it was good that I didn't have a family because I can just go home and go to bed. I mean really. It was sort of insensitive. And what I have come to realize is that people don't understand the need that may exist to be social, to go to yoga, to do basically anything that doesn't involve work. And really that doing those things will keep my mental sanity, maybe more important they sleep, and definitely more important then work. So let's just say I'm not looking forward to going back to them. But I will focus on being compassionate and tell them what I need.  Because it comes down to realizing that cancer docs don't deal with people my age that often and I have to advocate for myself. 

And I will continue to do what I need to do, with as little remorse for it, and attempt to not let others opinions for how I should be a cancer patient influence my decisions.