How to Cope with a Breast Cancer Diagnosis

I’m sorry that you’re reading this blog post. I know just how awful it is to receive the call that your biopsy came back positive. I know what it is like to feel like the world just fell out from underneath you. I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in July 2018. Just two months later, a very close friend’s sister got the same news. The one question she had for me was “how do I cope?”. This is the letter I sent her….but it is just as much for you. 

Dear Breast Buddy,

Oh my, I’m so so sorry. This is absolute shitballs, and I know right now you’re in the midst of a total whirlwind of stuff. I know this feels like a total rip-off. It is.

I honestly couldn’t integrate my diagnosis at the start and the whole thing felt surreal. In terms of coping initially, I broke it down into three parts:

 

1)    What Can I Control (because I know everything just feels out of control right now)

2)    How Can I Take Care of Me? – Self-Care

3)    What do I need to keep my mindset positive?

 

What Can You Control?

For me, these were the things that it helped to focus on initially. I threw myself into working out what I could do in the midst of feeling like so much was out of my control.

 

Some of the things that worked for me (doesn’t mean these things would work for you but I hope they help get you thinking):

–       Researching and understanding breast cancer (The Mayo Clinic have a great book. You can find it here: Breast Cancer Book)

–       Connecting with other breast cancer survivors (I had two acquaintances who were wonderful when I reached out to them. We’re all breast-buddies now)

–       Finding the best doctors I could and being confident in my care

–       Logistical stuff – calling in help from close friends/family for kids and to keep me company

 

I’m usually quite a private person, but because I have this online community I felt the responsibility to tell my people, which meant I had to tell everyone in my life. Honestly, the social support aspect has been unreal. Reading messages of love and support is incredibly energizing and empowering…so in case it is not your natural nature, I’d say, don’t be afraid of letting them know where you’re at. I feel like if people texted me, I just replied with it the first time. “How are you?” “Well pretty crappy actually. I was just diagnosed with Breast Cancer.” It was that easy. I didn’t have the energy to keep it back or pretend everything was all okay. Do what works for you, but don’t underestimate the power of people supporting you.

 

 

Self-Care – Taking Care of Me

I’d encourage you to give yourself massive permission to do whatever feels good over this next wee while. If you have ideas of your favorite types of self-care, then I think now is totally a good time to indulge them ALL.

 

For me, I’m a total hibernator, so I just went into my shell for a bit. I love reading, but feel like I never give myself time for it…and I read and read and read those first few days. I also watched movies, Netflix docos, and sulked…because that’s allowed. And ate chocolate. Hey…whatever works I say. I also decided I really didn’t have time to worry about other people’s feelings which was liberating – so if I didn’t have the energy, I didn’t explain it.

 

This stuff might look totally different for you. If you’re more outgoing, you might want to be surrounded by people. Just feel no guilt about taking care of you and doing what feels good. Self-Care is what will replenish your emotional energy, and you’ll need a boatload of it as I’m sure you can already tell. So let focusing on replenishing your emotional energy be your number one priority.

 

Positive Mindset

This one totally comes with a disclaimer…you’re allowed to feel like shit. I let myself feel crap when I was, and to be honest, I’m not one who usually journals, but I went to Target and bought myself a breast cancer folder (like a little document pouch) and a journal, and I decided it was my breast cancer journal. I wrote all the shitty feels in there, and it really helped to write it out. That may not work for you, but either way, I think the mindset stuff is about processing your emotions, not just being positive all the time.

 

I feel like it’s like being on an emotional rollercoaster. At the start I felt like I couldn’t cry and that I should be…but I think I was still processing. I’m not much of a crier at the best of times and didn’t cry a lot, but if I did cry, I would find it was when I was lying in bed, or driving by myself or in the shower. So my thoughts on this – you’re allowed to cry and scream and whatever else, but don’t put pressure on yourself that you have to either. I totally lost it one night and I think that is okay too. But in the midst of that, I felt ok as well. As I said, it was like riding a crazy wave of emotions for a lot of it.

 

Gratitude: Ok, so I’m a psychologist so I feel like of course I’m going to say this, but honestly at the start, making sure I still did my gratitude practice was so important to me, as it made me think about things other than just my breast cancer. Breast cancer has a way of taking up ALL of your thought – I’m sure you’ve already found this. Sometimes it was really hard to find things to feel grateful for, but other days they flowed more easily. I personally just think of 3 things in the preceding day that I am grateful for as I lie my head down to go to bed at night. If you do a shitty cancer journal, you could put them in there too. The one thing I believe is really important though, is to make sure I really feel the gratitude when I think about them again.

 

Some of the stuff that came up for me was being grateful for tiny stuff, like my kiddos being excited that day, or a doctor being super kind in the way they approached me, or my husband bringing me a cup of tea in bed. Or that my lunch was really good. In the midst of my diagnosis, I made an extra effort to look for what was good and worth acknowledging. I know it’s not easy, but it really does help.

 

If you’ve ever meditated before, or had a meditation practice but fallen off the bandwagon, I’d encourage you to get back on it. If you haven’t though…don’t stress yourself out to add new things unless they feel good! No time to burden yourself.

 

Online support groups – I had someone add me to a couple of online support groups. I personally thought this would be useful, but I found it just a big impersonal mess and a lot of people weren’t positive, and for me, I found that it was bringing me down. Not saying that will be the case for everyone! But If you do join online groups, I’d also say, don’t feel bad for leaving if you get a vibe that you don’t think is really supporting you.

 

Right from the start, I decided this cancer bullshit was going to help me grow psychologically in some way, so I went at it with that mindset. What can I learn about myself? What can I learn about life? I’m not saying I have all these answers yet, but I know I’ve learned so much and this experience will have changed me for the better.

 

One of the acquaintances I mentioned earlier who supported me, Paige Davis, actually wrote a book about her journey with Breast Cancer called – Here We Grow. It was the first book I read after I was diagnosed and I devoured it. She is a little woo-woo (but not crazily) so it may or may not be your thing…but regardless, she talks about making medical decisions, mastectomy, reconstruction + nipple reconstruction…all things that I had questions about and she does it while just telling her story – so that was a nice way to help frame up my mindset I felt like. https://www.amazon.com/Here-We-Grow-Mindfulness-through/dp/1631523813

 

This just sucks…and I’m sending you tonnes of love.

 

Good luck with these coming weeks. I hope you have nice and kind doctors and that everything moves as quickly as it can for you to get the answers you need. The not knowing everything bit is so hard.

 

Love Kate (your breast-buddy) xx

 

p.s. I feel like as I started to learn about other people’s diagnosis I started to become nosy. If you don’t already know, you’ll learn a whole heap of stuff over coming days. My breast cancer was Estrogen & Progesterone receptor positive, HER2 negative, Grade 2, and my Ki-67 score was 65%. Bizarre how I didn’t know what any of that meant 2 months ago, and now it’s like stating random facts.

 

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                                                Hi. I’m Kate Snowise. I’m a Life Coach and host of the Here to Thrive Podcast. I  help people get clear on what they want, need and crave, and then helps them take the steps to move towards that.

I was also unexpectedly diagnosed with Breast Cancer 3 days before my 36th birthday. I had no family history and came back negative for all 29 genes that have been implicated in breast cancer. Who knows why? I’ve decided that question isn’t worth asking. The important ones – How will I grow? What will I do with this part of my story? 

I didn’t know what my final diagnosis was until after I came out of my bilateral mastectomy surgery. There is no other explanation than pure luck that my cancer was caught at Stage 1. I’m on hormone therapy to minimize the chance of recurrence, and my new breasts feel as much my own as the first set I had.

I don’t talk about Breast Cancer a whole heap. It is part of my story, but not the only part. I do rattle on a lot about how to live a fulfilling and whole life though.

If you’d like to stay informed and get a weekly love note from me helping you refocus on how to live a heart-filled life, you can sign up to receive updates here: www.thrive.how/free

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