Your Need To Commit To Work Hard To Beat Your Cancer

Cancer is a serious illness; even early low-grade cancer can become dangerous.  However, with today’s technology, it often is not life threatening, especially if you do your homework and become a CANCER THRIVER.

Cancer is often not immediately life threatening.  For many of us, it is possible to create a situation where we can influence the outcomes of our cancer, delay its progression and sometimes completely halt it, but it will take hard work from you.  It is important that you, very early on, make a commitment, most importantly to yourself, to your family and your friends that you will do this work.  By making this commitment, you might be able to extend your life, and you can certainly improve its quality.  With hard work and dedication, your life can be long, healthy and happy.  

So, what type of work do you need to do? 

Your very first and most important task is to decide to become responsible for your healthcare.  You need to not to be lazy and let others, like your doctors and family members, become responsible for making your personal medical decisions.  You need to be the captain and the Chief Operating Officer (CEO) of your health care. You are the person who is ultimately in charge of directing and controlling your own health care decisions.  You and not your doctors, you and not your family should be 100% responsible for all your medical decisions. 

You should not rely on others to make your decisions, to determine your treatments and to decide your ultimate fate.  A good CEO learns everything they can about the subject and the questions facing them.  They surround themselves with the very best advisors, solicit their opinions, listens to them, asks questions, finds a way to get them to communicate with each other, asks more questions and then weighs all the information and opinions provided.  A good CEO then can make great decisions.  

To be able to take on this task you will need to learn about both yourself and about your specific cancer or cancers, to elicit the cooperation of your advisors, your family and all of your healthcare providers.  Decisions should be made in consultation with your experts and families, this process is called “SHARED DECISION MAKING.” Accomplishing this task can be difficult because the world of cancer is full of medical jargon, which will initially be like a foreign language.  We can all master this language because we must.

You can do all of this, yes it is a lot of work, but don’t forget the stakes involved.  Only by doing this work will you make what will be the best decisions for yourself.  When it comes to cancer, often there is no right or wrong answer, just the best possible one, given that specific moment in time, who you are, and the nature of your cancer.  The best decision for one person is not necessarily the best decision for another person.  

When making decisions, it is important that you take your time.  Great decision making with cancer requires that you spend adequate time to educate yourself, get multiple opinions from different healthcare providers, family members, and other experienced patients.   When this time is available, without compromising your health, do the necessary work get to know yourself and your cancers as well as their treatments.