Maintaining a Survivor State of Mind

Fighting cancer is tough. It takes every last ounce of the body’s energy, and it leaves you feeling like crap a lot of the time. But it doesn’t mean that your mindset has to feel like crap too. In this post I list out three of my favorite ways to maintain a positive, “survivor” mindset.

As you’ve probably seen on other parts of this site, I believe a Survivor State of Mind involves something like my definition below:

“A ‘Survivor State of Mind’ requires an individual to believe in themselves and their ability to keep fighting no matter what challenge is in their way. A Survivor State of Mind is maintained through a sense of humor, always believing, setting goals, leaning on love, and some may even have the desire to inspire others along their journey.”

This sounds great in theory, but if you or anyone you love has ever fought cancer, it’s pretty obvious that this isn’t the case all of the time. I like to think I have held a Survivor State of Mind for a lot of my journey, but there were plenty of times when I fell into what I like to call “the Patient State of Mind.”

I think of the Patient State of Mind as the total opposite of the Survivor State of Mind. It was all the times that I didn’t believe in myself. It was all the times that I was too tired to keep fighting. The times where all of the vomiting just didn’t seem like it could possibly be worth it. It’s when I felt like a cancer patient instead of a cancer survivor.

The first thing I will say is that it is totally okay and totally normal to feel this way sometimes. After all, you need the low points to be able to appreciate the high points. Some of those low points may even become motivation later on.

Even with that said, there are times that fighting cancer really just SUCKS and all you want to do is cry. And that is okay. But, in this post, I’d like to list a few ways that helped me to get out of the Patient State of Mind and back into the Survivor State of Mind during my many years of fighting cancer.

For now I will list my top three methods with a brief description. But I will be diving into each one in individual, more detailed posts soon so stay tuned.

Method #1: Setting Goals

Setting goals was an integral part of my success through chemo, radiation, my bone marrow transplant, and all of my recovery. The key is to make them attainable and make them daily.

For example, in my transplant days, staying in bed had a way of keeping me in the Patient State of Mind and to get to the Survivor State of Mind, I needed to get up. I needed to feel like I accomplished something other than laying in the bed all day. So my goal each day was to walk as many laps around the transplant unit as it had been days since my transplant. This meant that on the day after my transplant, I had to do one walking lap. 15 days after my transplant, I had to do 15, and so on. Some days I had to split it up into several sessions, other days I felt good enough to do it in one. But you can bet I got all of my laps in every day.

By the end of it, I had the doctors and nurses cheering me on and holding me accountable – and when I was doing the laps it gave me the sense that I was kicking that cancer’s butt with every step.

Method #2: Motivating Others

This is probably my favorite method of all, and it is directly in line with our definition of the Survivor State of Mind.  Motivate others to keep fighting. In the hospital around you, there is always someone stuck in the Patient State of Mind that could use a little boost to snap out of it. Remind them how incredible they are. Remind them how much of a hero they are for taking on this crazy disease full-force and fighting back. Remind them how strong they are.

This does two things in parallel. It boosts up another person, and it reminds you how incredible you are, and how hard you are fighting this disease. Never forget that. Every day you fight cancer – every day you put that brave face on and say you won’t back down – you are a hero and an inspiration. It is worth reminding others going through similar situations that they are as well.

You can also motivate by example. Every day during transplant, one of my neighbors a few doors down the hospital wing would post a “joke of the day” on his door. We never met in person, but we both knew about each other through the nurses. He probably doesn’t even know about it to this day, but his jokes got me out of bed on multiple occasions. On the days that I didn’t feel like doing my walking laps, he would motivate me to get out of bed and go read the joke.

He had a Survivor State of Mind. Not only was he powering through a bone marrow transplant, but he was so strong that he wanted to keep people laughing through an extremely traumatic time in his life. He knew how to spread the Survivor State of Mind without even leaving his room. Which bring me to Method #3…

Method #3: Having a Sense of Humor

This sounds cliché, but seriously! How can you be sad when you’re laughing at yourself? When I am nervous I crack jokes – I’ve always done that. But what it made me realize is that joking about the awful situation of a round of chemo or a hospital stay sort of disconnects the mind from the sadness. It makes it seem manageable, because how could something be so bad if you’re able to laugh about it?

Make a joke about how your 21 pills a night make for a delicious dinner! Or how you’re going to try to break yesterday’s record for pee output when they have you pee in those awful Tupperware things with the milliliter markings on the side. I got my whole family making jokes about things that no one outside of the cancer realm would ever think is okay. But do you know what happened? It made all of us feel better to have some comic relief! My aunt even got me a baseball hat that said “Q-Ball” on it when I lost my hair. I laughed like crazy when she gave it to me.

The thought that I would like to leave you with is that it is okay to feel down about the situation that you’re in. Sometimes it is crummy and that’s just the way it is! The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not you are going to get back up and fight back.

I sincerely hope the tips in this post can help you hang on to the fact that you can do this and that you are so strong! Hang on to that Survivor State of Mind!

As always, please feel free to reach out to me on my contact page if you have any questions, tips of your own, topics you would like to see covered, or just feel like chatting to someone that’s been through it. I am always here for you.

-Alex

 

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Featured photo by Zac Durant on Unsplash