Notes
Sandra Russell, a Registered Psychotherapist, who has been living with cancer for eight years, suggests that finding words for your personal story can allow such difficult emotionally-charged conversations to enter the public consciousness. In The Feeling of Cancer, Sandra explains why she believes understanding your feelings and your inner world is the key to getting through intensive treatment and living with the everyday reality of your own death. Even though close to half of us will now experience cancer in our lifetime, we talk about cancer as a biomedical event, of doctors, medical treatment and disease, but not an emotional event. Because we can't always express the overwhelming emotional impact the feelings stay inside of us, hidden away. However, although it is a huge and painful process, being able to put into words the feelings around the trauma that comes with diagnosis and treatment, and also living with cancer as a chronic illness can help in managing a life-threatening diagnosis. Ultimately, if those of us living with cancer can put our emotional experience into words, we can encourage empathy and compassion along with a better of understanding of what it really feels like to live with cancer.
