Don't tell me I should be positive in the face of my illness

Don't tell me I should be positive in the face of my illness
Posted By SUE HENDLER
March 20, 2009

I've written a couple of columns about questions I have been asked. If I had to say what one thing I had been told, not asked, it's the importance of being positive. This has, to be polite, started to irk me. Why? There are lots of reasons.

While my surgeon once told me that some of his patients had said cancer was the best thing that ever happened to them, I think this must have involved curable, turn-your-life-around kinds of cancer. I seriously doubt anyone would laud the benefits of a cancer that, at least 97% of the time, is going to kill you. It's hard to think positively about a disease that is almost always terminal. It's also difficult to glue rose-coloured glasses to your head and assert that you are going to beat the odds, no matter how much those odds are stacked against you. So, as someone who tends to be a realist, it has been important for me to acknowledge that I will probably live a lot less time than I thought I would and that cancer is to blame for this.

Second, it's easy to feel like a failure if you can't do this thing that everyone tells you that you should be doing. That is, when people tell me to be positive or think positively, and then I have moments or days when this seem impossible because I feel too scared or sad or angry, I start to see myself as having failed: failed to believe I will get well, failed to smile and be cheery, and failed to be brave in the face of adversity.

So, the bottom line is that not only have I failed to be healthy, I have also failed to stay positive in the face of a serious illness. I don't know about you, but I'm not good at seeing myself as a failure.

The third reason follows from the second. If I don't do something that will help me get better, then I can be blamed for not getting better. In other words, if people are right in asserting that being positive is important in healing, then not being positive can actually be a reason for getting sick or staying sick. So, I am responsible for my cancer! Clearly, this is one of the last things I need to hear right now, and it certainly wouldn't help me be positive (and therefore supposedly heal myself ).

My friend, Christine, has suggested that maybe people want me to be positive so I don't show them how upset I really am. This may help them feel better -- or at least less uncomfortable -- when they are around me. If this is true, I am pretty sure it's not a conscious thing, in that I think the people telling me to be positive really do want me to get better and beat this thing.

Whether being positive is good for people around a sick person, or for the sick person him or herself, the empirical question remains as to whether optimism actually helps someone get well.
A recent study in the journal Cancerconcluded that "emotional status was not associated with survival rate" in people with certain kinds of cancer. When this was reported in the news during the fall of 2007, many people responded with anger, disappointment and a sense of betrayal. We are so wedded to the idea that thinking and acting positively is important, even the suggestion that this could be wrong generates a strong emotional reaction.

Regardless of the medical data, I think it makes sense that enjoying our lives makes for more enjoyable lives. Irrespective of the amount of time we have on this planet, how do we want to live? To a certain extent, I think we can choose whether to be caustic, critical and pessimistic or pleasant, constructive and joyful. But there will always be times in which anger and/or sadness take over.

In my case, these are days in which my pain level makes moving uncomfortable, the sores in my mouth from the chemotherapy make eating difficult, and my cats insist on eating house plants and then barfing all over the place -- especially on the bed because, if you have to throw up, why not do it in the most comfortable place possible?

I don't need to be told that my feelings of irritation and negativity at these times may fester even if they don't actually shorten my life. I'll figure that out for myself and hopefully get to a more "positive" place in time.

After my diagnosis, my mother asked me to tell her when she said something wrong or something that was not helpful. While I won't say it's wrong, I've definitely asked her, and anyone else who will listen, to avoid telling me to be positive. I'm pretty sure -- no, I'm positive -- that would make my life easier, and maybe even better.

Sue Hendler is a former member of the Whig-Standard's Community Editorial Board. She is contributing regular columns on her experiences while she travel her breast cancer journey.