Can-Help Tips
Principles to Guide Your Way through Cancer
By Gilbert Fan, Manager, Medical Social Services, NCC

As a Medical Social Worker, I have heard many stories. They are all life lessons from other people’s journey through their lives. All are touching and bring about diverse emotional responses. I will briefly share some pertinent life principles from these stories. There is no right or wrong, good or bad but they are guiding principles that can enrich us all. Many of these principles have also been retold by Ann Kent in her book “Life After Cancer” and Virginia Satir’s counselling experience with individuals and families. I hope these principles can help you navigate your path on your cancer journey.

Principle No. 1: Worry to make sense

Don’t stop worrying – you can’t; worry only at the right time as long as it does not interfere with your daily activities; worry to make sense (deserving your worrying) and not make sense to worry (worry more).

Principle No. 2: Cancer is a journey without maps

This applies no matter how much you know about health and medicine. The cancer patient maps his / her own journey so that he / she knows where the pitfalls are.

Principle No. 3: Having gone through cancer does not necessarily mean that you have dealt with the cancer

Coping requires you to have the right attitude. Sometimes, the right attitude ‘goes missing in action’. This is because people tend to cope in their own familiar ways in a crisis situation. New ways of coping may be highly uncomfortable and involve some risk-taking. Change can only happen when you are not doing the same old thing.

Principle No. 4: The PROBLEM is not the problem; COPING is the problem

To many, cancer may pose as a problem. In reality, it is how a person copes with cancer that remains a problem. Coping is subjective whilst cancer isn’t. Our coping is a manifestation of our own self-worth. The higher our self-worth, the better we cope – this is conversely true too.

Principle No. 5: Our feelings belong to us; we can change how we feel

Feelings are our ‘human thermometer’. We know it when we get out from the wrong side of the bed. If we remind ourselves of how we are feeling, we can take better care of how we feel.

Principle No. 6: Appreciating and accepting our past increases our ability to manage our present

Unpleasant events from the past often hurt and prevent us from coping well in the present. Our ability to let-go of the past increases our chances of coping more positively in the present. After all, we cannot change the past except for the impact they have on us.

Principle No. 7: Change is possible; even if external change is limited, internal change is possible

All of us have internal strengths and resources to cope with difficult situations. We just need a little courage to look deeper within ourselves to find them.

Principle No. 8: Learn to focus on personal growth instead of the illness

Likewise, we can learn to focus on possibilities rather than limitations. Life often poses many dilemmas. Just like a coin, we can look at either side and won’t be wrong. If there are two possibilities, why not learn to deal with one and focus your hope on the other?

Let us then look at our own life’s lessons and start taking stock of our lives.