Life During and After Breast Cancer
Increase Your Chances for a Quality, Long Life After Cancer
Apr 21, 2009
After hearing the words "you have breast cancer", develop a positive attitude, take care of your health in new ways, and you could live for many years.
Everybody with cancer wants to conquer it and move on with their lives. Not everyone will achieve these goals, but you can increase the chances of winning your cancer battle and prospering for many healthy years to come.
Maintain a Positive, Happy Outlook
- Envision yourself living another 30, 40 or more years. In order to more easily get through cancer treatment, it's important to see the healthy person on the other side.
- Tell yourself many times per day "I'm going to live". A positive mantra in your head helps remove the negative thoughts many people are inundated with when they have cancer.
- Watch funny TV shows or listen to comedians on CDs. Experience how differently your body feels after half an hour of belly laughing compared with half an hour of a pity party.
Research Alternative Healing Methods
- Check out the Learn to Meditate site and practice every day. Soon, you will get the hang of it and be effective, even if only with your form of meditation. You don't have to be a pro. Any meditation is helpful.
- With visualization, you can imagine you are a healthy person, that your body is forcing cancer cells out through your fingertips or that you are lying on the beach in Hawaii. Many options are available for visualizing good things which ultimately help achieve greater health.
- Make sure what you decide to supplement with does not interfere with your traditional medicine. One supplement that might fit in with your health goals, post-cancer, is IP6 by Enzymatic Therapy. IP6 is a natural killer cell booster. If you decide to supplement, the important thing is, do your homework and come up with a plan that fits your health goals.
Get Some Physical Activity Each Day
- Lift hand weights while relaxing in your favorite chair. This is easy to do, and before you know it, you have done a couple sets of several reps, but don't push yourself to skip a break. Listen to your body.
- Deep rhythmic breathing, done properly, can count as exercise. Do you need to detoxify your body? Then increase the amount of oxygen running through your body by breathing deeply and completely. This simple act charges your lymphatic system and, along with drinking extra water, flushes toxins from your body.
- Get outside and walk, even just to the mailbox, and increase the distance each day; 50 more yards is great. Being outside in fresh air is invaluable and walking helps clear your mind.
Make the Weeks Go Faster During Treatment
- Make a paper chain with the number of links equal to your number of treatments. After a treatment, remove one more link from the chain.
- Plot a course on paper and divide into 1 mile segments. If you are having 8 treatments, you will have 8, 1-mile long segments. The first week you have a treatment, walk the first mile segment. The next week, walk the second mile, etc. This is one more way of visualizing how many more treatments you have. How good it will feel when you have the last mile to go. Have a healthy partner go along on each walk segment.
- If you are to lose your hair, and it will be tough for you, realize that after your hair is gone, it's the bottom of that tragedy. Things will only get better from then on!
The copyright of the article Life During and After Breast Cancer in Women’s Health is owned by Terry Overbeek. Permission to republish Life During and After Breast Cancer in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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