Regret

Since I’m writing a memoir about my cancer experience, my favorite genre of reading is understandably autobiographical. I’ve read a number of health-related tomes where the main characters respond with a variety of different attitudes and actions. Some, like Tessa Miller’s What Doesn’t Kill You, are fatalistic. While I gained insight into Crohn’s disease, and she included some very helpful information about how to choose a physician, she seemed to say that sometimes illness just appears and there’s nothing we can do about it. “Control is an illusion,” she wrote. My perspective is very different. Ultimately, I believe God is in control of my life. That’s a good thing because God is omniscient while I make some pretty dumb decisions sometimes. But this belief doesn’t absolve me from taking care of my body in the best way possible. If I eat junk, stay up all night, drink alcohol daily, never exercise, and hold on to bitterness, I will still be a Christian, but I’ll be a sick one. I control my lifestyle choices: what doctors I see and medicines I take, what I eat and drink, how much exercise and sleep I get, how healthy my emotions and relationships are. No one makes these decisions for me, especially my physicians. I will probably always regret that I allowed my first oncologist to make health decisions for me. I’m grateful for an immediate surgery to remove my tumor, but I wish I had changed my diet and other lifestyle factors before throwing chemotherapy at my body. I will never know if a plant-based diet would have kept me healthy or what the long-term impact of chemo will be on my body. I didn’t have all the information then that I have now in order to make a different decision. Since I can’t go back, I just have to make the best health decisions I can going forward, using all of the information I have at my disposal now. If you’re interested in my lifestyle changes or favorite resources, you can find them on my website as well.