The Cancer Series: How to not Get Overwhelmed by Your Treatment Plan

I once tried to count exactly how many doctor’s appointments I had between being diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer in February 2018 and being declared ‘in remission’ in July 2019. It came out to something like 70 trips to hospitals, doctors’ offices and clinics. And I was lucky, some people go through a lot more than that.

Nowadays, most cancer treatments are pretty standardized – as soon as your doctors know what type of cancer you have, what stage it’s at and so on – BOOM, you have a treatment plan. Depending on your particular situation, your doctors will probably give you a pretty detailed treatment protocol, that’s usually also pretty lengthy, and may include a combo of surgery, chemo, radiation, oral drugs, injections, immunotherapy and a bunch of other amazing medical procedures.

I knew from day one of my diagnosis that I’d have to do one type of heavy chemo, then another type of lighter chemo, then a mastectomy, then radiation, and then target therapy via triweekly injections. My boyfriend at the time worked at a bank, and he brought home one of those massive cardboard accounting calendars that laid out the whole year in excruciating detail. On it, he had put down every single one of my scheduled treatment appointments – sixteen sessions of chemotherapy, a mastectomy, twenty-five radiation sessions and eighteen Herceptin injections. Wow. Did I bawl my eyes out when I looked at that thing. Truly, something in me almost broke. It somehow seemed both like a never-ending vortex and a room with no doors – a place I would be stuck in for a very long time with no hope of escaping.

Your cancer treatment protocol may also feel like that right now. But you’ll get through it, bit by bit, just like I did. Here are some of the things that helped me.

Acknowledge that it’s going to be hard

First thing’s first – acknowledge that cancer treatment is going to suck ass. Acknowledging that it’s going to be hard is not the same as being defeatist – it’s preparing for a tough road ahead and giving yourself the space to mourn the fact that you will have to go through it. You know that saying, “Life’s a marathon, not a sprint”? Well, that’s exactly what cancer treatment is like – a long and shitty marathon, and if you don’t want to lose your mind, you should approach it as one mentally. If you go into a marathon excepting a sprint, you’ll be setting yourself up for failure.

Accept that, just like in a marathon, there will be parts that are easier for you, parts that will be much harder, parts that will be tedious and parts where you will completely lose momentum and want to stop. Is it gonna be as bad as what you see in the movies or as bad as it was for your best friend’s colleague’s grandmother’s sister? Maybe yes, and maybe no (watch out for an upcoming post on what chemo’s really like) but accepting the fact that it’s happening and that it’s not going to be fast or easy, will help you be at the top of your game while you’re going through it. Accept it and make peace with it, because there is literally nowhere to run. You didn’t sign up for this particular marathon, but now that you’ve been thrown into the middle of it, you don’t have much choice but to run along with the rest of the crowd.

Divide it up into chunks you can swallow

Like all marathons, your cancer treatment will have a beginning, a middle (or possibly several middles), and an end. Find mileposts in your treatment protocol – for example, getting through a certain number of chemo cycles, getting off one med and starting a new one, or getting an important control scan. That way, you can concentrate only on the next portion of your treatment, instead of being overwhelmed by the whole thing in one go.

My treatment protocol had five very clear stages – four cycles of EC, followed by 12 cycles of Taxol, then a mastectomy, then five weeks of radiation, finished off by months of triweekly Herceptin injections. All of this started on 23 February 2018 and ended on 13 May 2019, and believe me, at the beginning the whole thing seemed like a never-ending laundry list of crap. Instead of freaking out about my treatment plan in its morbid entirety, I tried to look at each separate chunk on its own, which kept my brain from constantly ruminating on the awfulness of the whole process.

Try to do the same thing for your treatment protocol. If you’re finding it difficult to find natural mileposts in your treatment plan, speak to your doctor and ask them to help you. Or you can also divide your treatment up into one-, two- or three-month increments, whatever works for you. The main thing is that you will no longer be looking at something insurmountable, but rather smaller challenges that you can tackle one by one.

Plan lots of weekend trips

I didn’t realize it at the time, but one of the things that helped me in a major way were weekend getaways. My second leg of treatment involved going into the clinic every Monday for chemotherapy twelve weeks in a row. While my chemo schedule was not conducive to month-long yoga retreats in Bali or trekking in South America, it did give me more than enough opportunity to go on weekend trips. That summer, I was invited to what seemed like five hundred weddings and a class reunion, so I took weekend trips to Rome, Florence, Ischia (yes, there is an Italian theme to my preferred vacation spots), and Provence. I had not planned it that way, but each little trip helped keep me away from the funk that inevitably descends upon you when you’re going through cancer treatment.

Not everyone lives in Europe where foreign countries are just a hop and a skip away, but your weekend trips don’t necessarily have to be super foreign or even overnight – just plan something that will be an event you’ll look forward to and that will break up the monotony of the passing weeks. A day-trip to the countryside, a day at the beach, anything that will be a enjoyable and a chage of scenery.

Rituals, rituals, rituals,

You know how pediatricians offer kids candy to console them when they get vaccinated? You can do the same thing by creating rituals around your regular treatment appointments.

For example:

Find a great restaurant next to your oncologist, and have a nice meal before or after your appointment
If you enjoy walking, find a nice route and walk to your radiation appointments
Do a home spa day before or after your treatment
Go to the movies or watch a movie on Netflix on chemo days
Dress up for your appointments

Your ritual can consist of literally anything, as long as it makes you happy. Mine was going horseback riding at 7 AM every Monday before chemo. The chemo bit was pretty shitty, but I nevertheless looked forward to Mondays because I got to make a fool of myself on a pony.

Reward yourself on a regular basis

Obviously, the goal, the big reward of cancer treatment is (hopefully) being cured. That, of course, will take the length of your treatment to achieve. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t celebrate and reward yourself for reaching all the milestones on the way to the pot of gold at the end of the shit-I mean-rain-bow. Whenever you reach a milestone, whatever it may be – the end of a chemo cycle, bloodwork that’s ‘good enough’, or simply slerping through the night, literally WHATEVER – treat yourself. I was very partial to new purses and jumpsuits; you do whatever makes you happy and hopefully does not bankrupt you (like designer purses, cough cough).

Bring people with you until you are blazé about it

As I mentioned in my previous post The 6 Things You Should Do When You Are First Diagnosed, it is important to bring people to your appointments in the beginning. In my experience, this is especially true for your first chemo appointments when you don’t really know how your body will react, if you will be spaced out, groggy, sleepy, nauseous, etc. Not only will an appointment buddy provide you with physical support in case you need it, but you will also be calmer in knowing that you have someone there with you to keep you company, judge the bitchy nurse at the clinic, and eat your chemo snacks with.

Believe it or not, at some point your regular appointments will seem like nothing special to you, but if you’re dreading them, there’s nothing like good company to make it, if not more enjoyable, at least less un-enjoyable.

Assume that it will cure you

Finally, assume that the treatment will cure you, or, at the very least, keep you alive for a very, very long and happy time.

There are, of course, no guarantees that this will be the case – some people are lucky and some just aren’t. And maybe your doctor has even told you that it’s going to be a tough fight. But you know what? The worst way to do anything is to assume that you will fail from the get-go. Life is full of risks and potential failures, and yes, maybe the treatment will do jack shit for you, but maybe you’ll respond to it better than anyone else on the planet. You don’t really have much control over that (apart from following your doctors’ orders), but you do have control over the additional stress you’ll create by not believing in it.

Look at it this way: you’re going to do the treatment anyway, why not go into it believing in the possibility of success? If it fails, you’ll get on another treatment, but cross that bridge when you get to it, not while you’re still on the highway. I realized very early on that constantly wondering whether my treatment is going to work or not added a thick layer of additional stress on me, so I decided not to think about it, and just assume that it would work. It’s the same as riding a horse – you are doing yourself no favors thinking that you will fall, because, guess what, you're much more likely to fall off if you're thinking about it. So do yourself a massive favor and trust that everything will be ok in the end.

Like, share and comment on this post if you enjoyed it, and let me know if you have any questions about my experience.

DISCLAIMER: Please consult your doctor regarding your health and the topics evoked in this post. I am not a medical professional and can only share my experience as a breast cancer survivor.

B.V.