Fighting Spirit

One thing I've found helpful in the fight against cancer is to just plain old get mad.

Well I really don't get mad. I get determined.

The chemo makes cancer patients lethargic, nothing feels better than just sitting there doing nothing. The toughest part is getting up and getting started on something. Once you get started, well it's kind of like pushing a ball down a hill, the most challenging part is the initial push and then it's just rolling along from there.

It's hard for me to start exercises everyday. My motivation for exercise always seems to fall in the mid-morning. If I get mad, get determined, if I just say to myself "I'm going to get up and kick cancer's butt!" before you know it I'm up and at it.

If this isn't enough there's always competition for time, something we all deal with each day. Many times during morning hours there are other things that need to be done, trumping my exercise time and making me try to be flexible - although the body and the chemo has little room for flexibility.

Once I start exercising it helps for me to get mad, to be determined. I think to myself "I'm going to beat this horrible disease. I'm not going to let the chemo continue to eat away at my body weight, my muscle mass." I get angry and add 10 repititions to every exercise.

You have to have confidence. You have to believe. You can't approach life thinking only about when something difficult may end, but thinking about how much you're going to push it and how much benefits you're going to enjoy from it for working hard.

Oh, I have my moments. Moments when I just want to sit back and relax. Moments when I feel completely unmotivated. But overall I'm a fighter. And cancer has no idea who it has just picked a battle with.

As I said to my oncologist earlier this week, "You can count on me being here to bug you for years to come."