JANUARY FEBRUARY 2009 Wellness.indd - Cancer Support ...

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WELLNESS
...from previous page
January/February 2009
Humour has always been my best friend and it served me particularly
well now. I took the lead from Norman Cousins (author of the classic
1979 book Anatomy of an illness) and built my own laughter library.
I tried to retain and enjoy my ability to laugh no matter what my
predicament.
Humour’s therapeutic benefits were numerous. It raised and
maintained my spirits. It helped me face countless procedures, and
contributed along with music and writing to enable me to access and
express my emotions, enabling tensions to be released.
Meanwhile affirmations, positive language use, visioning and goal
setting collectively focused my mind on favourable outcomes and in
a very real sense sustained my hope, faith and will to live.
Coping in my darkest hours
I have always been at my core, an enthusiast for and lover of life. But
when you find yourself in the dark abyss that cancer and its treatments
can take you to, the pain of the present can make it difficult to see a
future worth fighting for.
As my MBS programs helped sustain me, I reminded myself
constantly that my suffering was only temporary, while always
conceptualising and planning for an even better future ahead to fight
for. I was adhering to Nietzche’s philosophy that people can endure
almost anything if they have a why.
Packaged into self-administered programs, these measures have
allowed me to manage my circumstances to a discernable extent
through all of my cancer diagnoses across four decades. Thanks to
their healing effects, for the most part I have felt empowered rather
than helpless, hopeful rather than hopeless.
Having relative control over my circumstances enabled me to
remain stronger mentally, emotionally and physically, even when
sorely tested through advancing disease and heavy treatments and
procedures.
I have always adjusted my programs and their focuses as I felt
necessary. I try to listen to my intuition to meet my needs at a given
time. Meanwhile, I haven’t ignored my physical needs. Exercise,
diet modification and supplementation, and a range of anti-cancer
and immune system-boosting products and interventions have been
embraced too.
The science of MBS medicine
While conventional medical interventions ultimately became my front
line weapons against cancer, there is no doubt in my mind that MBS
measures have also been crucial to the restoration of my wellbeing,
to my longevity, and to the wonderful quality of life I enjoy today.
Lending ever-increasing credence to the healing properties of MBS
measures is the science of psychoneuroimmunology – the study of
how mental state and neurological and hormonal factors affect the
functioning of the immune system. International research in this
discipline has indicated crucial benefits for people living with cancer
including:
• greatly enhances their ability to cope physically, mentally and
emotionally with their diagnoses, ensuing battles and posttreatment
challenges
• enhances their tolerances to, and can speed their recoveries from
the primary treatments – maximizing the treatments’ efficacy
www.cancersupportwa.org.au
environment • wellness • healing
• stimulates their bodies’ natural healing mechanisms to function
better, establishing environments more resistant to the cancer
and more receptive to the recovery process
• positively influences their ‘points of view’ – their states of
mind, attitudes, emotional tendencies and expression, thought
patterns and processes, and ways of seeing their situations
– such that they may become catalysts for the positive
outcomes sought from their cancer battles and for quality-oflife-enhancing
changes during and after cancer.
An under-utilised healing resource
Incomprehensible as it is to me, most people living with cancer don’t
engage in MBS measures, or in any other way actively try to manage
their emotional trauma. Discussions with people living with cancer
indicate the following reasons:
• A complete lack of awareness of their existence. Many
cancer support organisations offer a range of MBS measures
(they sometimes refer to them collectively as ‘psychosocial
support’). But the great majority of people diagnosed with
cancer don’t approach these organisations. Some studies have
suggested around 10% do, but many within the 10% only access
general information about the cancer they are diagnosed with
and/or the treatments they are to receive.
• No appreciation of how in practical terms such measures could
support them during a cancer wellness journey.
• No awareness of where or how they could access them. It’s
unfortunate that as a generalisation, oncologists are notorious
for not referring their patients to where MBS/psychosocial
support measures can be accessed.
• An aversion to asking for help of any kind or accepting help
offered (sometimes perceived as an admission of weakness;
or a selfish action).
• Enquiries made about them to medical professionals can be
met with either neutral or negative responses as to their worth.
Doctors’ wholesale scepticism and suspicion of complementary
measures is lessening, but the pace of change is slow.
An invaluable inclusion in a cancer
wellness program
Mind-body-spirit measures perfectly complement conventional
treatment programs, as well as those based exclusively on the holistic
therapy philosophy. They sit particularly well within integrative
programs combining conventional and complementary measures.
What’s more, when self-administered or accessed through a non-profit
cancer support organisation, they can be totally cost-free or heavily
cost-subsidised. And, they are all simplicity itself to practice.
Given their proven benefits, my heartfelt hope is for a future where
all people living with cancer employ MBS measures in whatever
recovery programs they establish. ✦
Phil Kerslake is a New Zealand leadership coach, speaker, author and
television presenter who has appeared frequently on the week-day
morning series, Good Morning as well as in numerous other New
Zealand media. Phil is also perhaps New Zealand’s most well-known
and noteworthy cancer survivor.