Fundamental choice

Anyone who got diagnosed with cancer should make a choice: Am I willing to do everything within my power to resist this disease or will I let the odds (and doctors) do their work and just live my life as I am used to? This is a fundamental choice you have to make. As a young (37) father of two (1 and 3 years old) for me the choice was clear from the very beginning. I have too much to loose.

Accept my cancer

It took a few months of fighting until I realised that the cancer and I will have to live in the same house (body). Aggressive fighting costs too much energy. I had to learn to accept the cancer in my body and control it as much as possible. See for example this blog entry.

Own responsibility

Without blaming myself for anything, I believe that cancer has genetic as well as personal lifestyle and environmental causes. Everyone develops tumor cells all the time, but in normal situation the body's immune system will simply remove the bad cells. For some reasons last year my immune system was not strong enough to prevent tumor growth, due to for example stress, not enough sporting, bad diet, who knows.

If there are factors that I had influence on to grow a tumor, then the good news is I also have influence on undoing it. I strongly believe that people have way more influence on their health than they think. In general we rely too much on the doctors to make us better. Even more so, doctors generally induce that behavior.

Soon after my diagnosis I developed my own healing process, doing whatever I could do to turn the odds to my favor.