{"id":2164,"date":"2019-06-08T00:19:56","date_gmt":"2019-06-07T21:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/?p=2164"},"modified":"2019-06-08T00:19:56","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T21:19:56","slug":"chronic-hope-2-learning-to-be-healthy-and-have-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/chronic-hope-2-learning-to-be-healthy-and-have-cancer\/","title":{"rendered":"CHRONIC HOPE #2: Learning to be healthy and have cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Georgia Coats<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cWow!\u00a0 You look great. Did you lose weight?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"In my late 20s and newly married, I enjoyed the positive feedback on an otherwise bleak situation.\u00a0 I joked to myself, Yeah, it\u2019s this great new plan\u2026 the CANCER DIET<\/strong>.<\/em>\u00a0 But in real life, I awkwardly responded, \u201cThanks,\u201d with no explanation of the dark secret to my weight loss success.<\/p>\n

Then there were the people who knew<\/em> I had recently been diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML)<\/strong>. \u00a0They said things differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cAwww, you look really good,\u201d which was accompanied by a sympathetic head tilt and a hint of relief.\u00a0 They were glad I wasn\u2019t bald, pale, and gaunt like the poster child for the leukemia society.<\/p>\n

I felt overwhelmed by these new life circumstances out of my control. \u00a0I needed to manage something.\u00a0 This was stirring in me a passion for healthy living.<\/p>\n

But, what is healthy<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before my diagnosis, healthy<\/em> meant the opposite of being sick<\/strong>.\u00a0 After my diagnosis, healthy<\/em> meant giving my body it\u2019s best chance to thrive in the given circumstances.<\/p>\n

Healthy<\/em> meant being a wise manager of things I COULD control.<\/p>\n

Healthy<\/em> also meant not over-worrying about the things I couldn\u2019t control.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t control leukemia.\u00a0 And I didn\u2019t know how to manage the overwhelming feelings of fear, loss, and dying dreams.<\/p>\n

If chronic leukemia was my new normal, I needed effective survival skills.\u00a0 I needed to nurture hope and figure out healthy ways to interact with chronically present negative emotions.<\/p>\n

With cancer come toxicities. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Toxicities that wear on the body accompany even the best cancer treatments.\u00a0 Also in the shadows of effective cancer treatments looms the real threat of financial toxicity<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Healthy<\/em> meant identifying and eliminating unnecessary toxicities while learning to live with the necessary ones.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t control the toxicities of my treatments, but I could help my body be strong enough to handle them as best it could.\u00a0 I rested more.\u00a0 I ate less sugar.\u00a0 I tried to stay active even when I felt fatigued or depressed.<\/p>\n

I learned to sort my worries.<\/p>\n

Author Amber Rae, in her book, Choose Wonder Over Worry: Move Beyond Fear and Doubt to Unlock your Full Potential<\/u>, says that not all worry is bad<\/em>.\u00a0 We need to get rid of toxic worries <\/em><\/strong>so we can more clearly address healthy worries.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Devastating life challenges can be toxic on a marriage.\u00a0 Or,<\/em><\/strong> they can make a marriage stronger.\u00a0 The guilt of being a burden to my new husband was toxic.\u00a0 But I couldn\u2019t eliminate it on my own.<\/p>\n

My husband chose to share my burden and join in my sorrow.\u00a0 He waded through bills, unsolicited advice, and on hold with the doctor\u2019s office.\u00a0 He always referred to our <\/em><\/strong>diagnosis.\u00a0 He took seriously his role of tenderly caring for his wife.<\/p>\n

Together we learned to weed out toxic worry<\/em><\/strong> and trust God with each specific life challenge out of our control.<\/p>\n

Rae describes healthy worry<\/em><\/strong> as a complement to wonder,\u00a0 \u201cIf worry is the fear of what could go wrong, wonder is the curiosity of the unknown.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I was far from nurturing curiosity.\u00a0 But I could take baby steps towards healthy<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 I felt empowered by healthy eating habits and an exercise routine.<\/p>\n

For my husband and I, healthy<\/em> meant being in the best spiritual, physical, and state of mind we could be to thrive through the toxicities we<\/em><\/strong> couldn\u2019t control.\u00a0 Healthy<\/em> meant taking on our new life challenges\u2026 together.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Georgia Coats   \u201cWow!\u00a0 You look great. Did you lose weight?\u201d In my late 20s and newly married, I enjoyed the positive feedback on an otherwise bleak situation.\u00a0 I joked to myself, Yeah, it\u2019s this great new plan\u2026 the CANCER DIET.\u00a0 But in real life, I awkwardly responded, \u201cThanks,\u201d with no explanation of the […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2166,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2164\/revisions\/2166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}