I’ve spent a lot of time here chronicling efforts to keep fear from rendering myself and others inert. This morning, an article in The New York Times captured it from the vantage point of people living with cancer.
There’s much to unpack in this narrative by Susan Gubar, distinguished emerita professor of English at Indiana University who has battled ovarian cancer since 2008.
Her storytelling and personal reflections are not to be missed. Read it all. But for the sake of some quick takeaways, I’ve distilled it into the bullets below.
Mood Music:
Gubar sets the stage by describing things cancer patients have to worry about daily in a world teeming with contagions and how steps that are standard operating procedure for them are the very things that still seem weird for the rest of us who now must do these things:
Having survived months or years of living intimately with the mortal threat of cancer, the members of my cancer support group — who now connect via email — manage to carry on while keeping as calm as possible during the current health crisis. Not fully resistant to bouts of contagious terror, we nevertheless find coping mechanisms.
We know that fear can be debilitating, but it can also be self-preserving. The chronic patients in my support group cultivate vigilant fear: They use their trepidation to do everything they can to extend their survival without being capsized into despair, hysteria or paralysis. One of us picks up her shopping wearing Nitrile gloves, just as she did when in chemotherapy. Upon returning home, she swabs what she has bought with a disinfecting wipe.
Gubar describes the usefulness of fear as the trigger to make people take the necessary safety precautions while acknowledging that fear unchecked will grind people to rubble. To combat that and maintain a degree of mental health, she describes some of what cancer patients have put in their toolboxes.
The ultimate value is that these tools help distract people from their fears, even if only for a little while. Routines and challenges allow them something they can exert control over. These are not new by any stretch, but the the solace they bring illustrates their continued value. They include:
- Breathing or stretching
- An intriguing task to accomplish
- Baking/cooking
- Nature walks
- Knitting
- Volunteering for a cause or organization: food banks, for example
- Practicing a musical instrument
- Painting
There are many more I could add to the list, and it’s important to acknowledge that if fear has pushed someone into depression, the motivation to do any of these things can ebb.
But when confronted with disease and other threats, it’s good to have these lists lying around.
Wishing you all peace and strength, amid cancer, COVID-19 and everything else that threatens our well-being.
