I woke up this morning, and walked by my father. He’s right on my dresser in my bedroom so I walk by him often. My father died last year from complications of bladder cancer. I have his ashes so that’s what I mean by he’s with me on my dresser.
I often reflect on my time with him. How his journey unfolded and the months leading up to his death. There is much to share regarding his experience and my mother’s death as well and I’ll expand on that another time. But one thought resonated with me this morning and it lead me to sit down and write.
As my father’s diagnosis became a reality and we shifted into how to fight his cancer, he eluded that he’d had issues or symptoms for years leading up to the cancer diagnosis. Yup, I said YEARS! Bonkers right? How/why would you ignore these signs? Our bodies are miraculous machines. We are gifted a body, a spirit and a soul. I believe to live towards understanding these three elements is to live fully alive. So we’re in these bodies and we grow up in them. We develop, mature, age and we know and hopefully have an internal awareness of how we feel in our bodies. Our soul, spirit and body is connected, so why would we ignore a sign of abnormality?
I’m not sure it’s the same answer for everyone but I believe my father intuitively knew something was very wrong. However, he was more afraid of finding out the origin of the issue and face it so he ignored the signs.
When I pulled up to the house that august afternoon, he was standing on the driveway to greet me. I recall having the immediate thought when I laid eyes on him “fuck he has cancer”! I’ve witnessed enough people that have had this disease that I feel like I have an intuition when someone is ill. I share this not because I am proud of this skill or intuition but it allowed me to impose upon him to get several follow up appointments with the doctor and within three weeks we had the diagnosis.
By the time he was diagnosed, he was ignoring the signs of hematuria (blood in his urine). There were other signs as well, unintentional weight loss (a cardinal sign of cancer), and he felt weaker and had pain and aches through his pelvic region and upper thighs. He ignored all of it and never sought explanation for any of the signs until I pushed him to.
He lived 7 months from diagnosis to death. I’ll never know if he could have survived the cancer diagnosis if it was caught sooner but I imagine he would have given my understanding of the treatments that are available for bladder cancer. Or at the very least a more prolonged life.
I listened to a podcast earlier this week by Peter Attia. He’s an MD with a passion for longevity and will often speak about topics such as cancer. He shared some of his opinions on screenings and such, and how we might be more aggressive with some of the screenings that are available to us all in hopes of early detention to increase lifespan. I cannot agree with him more on this. However, in my profession and personal experience, I have seen decisions be made for screenings or diagnostics driven by insurance. I point this out because I find it entirely unfortunate that there are many barriers for individuals when it comes to healthcare. I could go down a dark road with this but I will instead bring this all back to my initial reason for writing. That is, for you to tune into your body and never never ignore signs/symptoms that your body is showing you. You must be your own advocate and ask, demand what you think you or your loved one might need from the healthcare system. Your very life may depend on it.
Tune into your intuition, connect, feel, know and love your body. You are here, you have life, don’t allow a disease to snuff you out prematurely. We do have many ways to learn and understand the origin of your signs/symptoms but you must be your own advocate.
Are you carrying extra unexplained weight? Are you not sleeping well and this is a new problem for you? are you more forgetful or not as functionally mobile? do you have pain somewhere in your body and you don’t know why? connect to yourself and look to understand why these changes are occuring.
I am not a medical doctor and it is out of my scope of practice to diagnose. But I can help point you in a direction to get you the help you or someone you love may need.
I wish for you to learn from my experiences and my father’s journey in hopes of even saving or prolonging just one life.
https://peterattiamd.com/podcast/ episode #202.
love and light.
Alli