Coping with anxiety

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Guitardiva
Guitardiva Member Posts: 17 Member
in Ovarian Cancer #1

I have been having severe, paralyzing anxiety for several months now, even before the recurrence was found in April. 

How are other people managing that?  I meditate, take walks, pull weeds in my garden, have started using medical cannabis, listen to certain songs, and when I can't stand it anymore, take an Ativan.  But I know they're going to cut off my Ativan pretty soon and I feel like I am completely losing my mind.  I can't think, I can't sit still, I can't get any work done.  This is hell.

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  • NoTimeForCancer
    NoTimeForCancer Member Posts: 3,369 Member
    #2
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    Guitardiva, everyone has to

    Guitardiva, everyone has to find their way - and you have mentioned some of the things people have probably done.  Maybe you want to find someone to talk to - who will give YOU their undivided attention.  I can tell you, that stress is not going to help you so you need to find to let it go.  Unfortunately, many of us have others we are also worrying about and having to take care of - the focus is them then and at least it makes me feel ok.  

  • derMaus
    derMaus Member Posts: 558 Member
    #3
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    Strange Days Indeed

    Cancer had led me all kinds of strange places I never would have gotten to on my own. Some of them are oddly beautiful. I have not considered myself a christian, but recent events have reconnected me with my childhood Catholicism via a great order of nuns who run a school in my neighborhood. After two different people mentioned the St. Francis prayer (sometimes called the peace prayer) to me, I looked it up. You can Google the whole thing, but the closing lines are what affect me the most. I'm copying them here for you. Strangely, I find the panic recedes when I'm involved in consoling or helping someone else; I feel like I have done something good in the world and am holding the darkness at bay. It's not a quid pro quo, more like tapping into a sense that there's a larger universe out there with all kinds of things going on, and I can affect it positively by my own acts. I can't quite believe I'm writing these words, but as I said cancer takes you strange places. I grew up in the 60's and 70's, the time of Desiderada and giving peace a chance, so doubtless that formed my world view and maybe is helping me cope, now. 

     

    Oh divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, 

    To be understood as to understand, 

    To be loved as to love.

    For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned 

    And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

  • bettyboop3917
    bettyboop3917 Member Posts: 45
    #4
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    I am battling a recurrence

    I am battling a recurrence myself. At the start of knowing the cancer was back and waiting for them to find it the stress was very hard to deal with. There is times I remind myself to breath deep and repeat. Dealing with a recurrence you know what is coming in the way of chemo and all the appointments. This is when you have to remind yourself it is ok to take it just one day at a time and not to look to far forwards, or you will drive yourself crazy. I am also not counting  treatments but rounds and I only count what is lower. Like when I first started it was 2 rounds down with 5 rounds down I look at it as one round to go.  Each one of my rounds has 3 treatments to it so I don't count how many treatments I have done or left to go or it would sound like so much. 

     

     I am wishing you luck in you battle and keep in mind breath deep and repeat. hugs

    Betty

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