Hot:

Strephon Personal Decision Making On Cancer Diagnosis Decisions

(sorry it’s long but it’s a record about me and only for those fascinated with process and detail)

Decisions Decisions And Cancer Diagnosis

This is Strephon using his decision-making article on himself” Decisions Decisions And Cancer Diagnosis

Up to the minute decision – made just now to cancel the doctor diagnostics they want to do on me. Dr. Jacobs will call but I shall assert my own right to how I live my life.

My partner is concerned that I am not going right away for tests and doing the right thing with the medical approach. I must not let that burden me yet be caring with her.

I always have to separate out my own life and emotions from others or I lose my personal self. I am the one the focus of the moment here, but I don’t have rights unless I assert them.

The Daily Wisdom of today is: We don’t have rights unless we assert those rights.

The following questions are key questions for Strephon right now, and he shall answer them in his responses here hopefully.

Will Strephon make the right decision for himself?

How will he handle the different points of view from people sharing?

How will he make his own decision?

Is Strephon strong enough?

In response to my own questions above I don’t know how strong I am to make the right decision for me. Since the cancer diagnosis is happening to me I am not a consultant or psychotherapist to anyone else. I am the object of the issue.

Does Strephon have cancer and what does he choose to do about it at age 75?

The Decision-Making Process

I sent mailings out to all my readers, ex students, friends and got supportive responses back, many with input as to how to handle this life threatening issue of having cancer and what treatment approach to use.

Also I am immersed in daily decisions. Some of these have been so far the following:

Going to the medical doctor in the first place because of a persistent cough lasting through the winter which is three months, one of the indicators one probably has cancer. Was it Redux, gastro gas, or lung cancer. The x-rays pointed to lung cancer.

The other major decision how far to go with the modern medicine approach. The doctors want me to take two days of invasive tests. Then they will suggest surgery and chemo and radiation most probably. But do I want to go through that at my age?

Another major decision is how shall I respond immediately? This has been the decision to report in detail my experiences on my StrephonSays blog, and to undertake a thirty day juice fast.

The Big Decision Pending

1. What healing approaches to go with. The big medical hospital and the regular doctors?
2. Or seek out what non-invasive alternative treatments to do, as with my current juice fast?

I have chosen a 30 day juice fast and recovery to a Vegan diet for the next month as a signal to my body and its cancer.

I have chosen not to take the doctors’ tests and treatments as well, putting this off for two months of alternative to see what happens there, plus to make my body healed already.

I was overweight and into obese by 10 kilo: Now bring it back down from 92 to 80, maybe to 70 or 75 which I used to be years ago. In four days I have lost 3 kilo it seems and so at last I found something that works to lose weight.

The vegan diet recommended also keeps your weight down. A friend lost 10 kilo from his diet change to vegan.

I am investigating other natural things to up the immune system at my age.

If none of this works because of real lung cancer from two partners smoking 10 to 13 years ago while I lived with them, and probably my genetic disposition since both my parents died of cancer, at least of have chosen for natural health and it then is really time to die if that is the way I am going.

But on the positive side I could live years longer.

My age is another factor not to trust the regular medical.

The other argument for taking the tests now given by the doctor is to know if I have cancer and what type. Even my partner wants this so it is a position. The doctors want to diagnose, so this is their way also.

However, I keep saying now, what for?

Why do I need to know what I have when their rate of cure for my age cannot be that high?

The hospital doctor said, let us do the two days of comprehensive tests and then I will discuss with you what kind of cancer you have and how long it is estimated you have to live and what treatments you offer.

So the doctors don’t want me to make a decision before they do. It’s the fight on who is the expert with my body.

Lung cancer seems to be one of the biggest killers in the United States where they have all these hospitals and doctors. This indicates to me that their doctors are not that successful. 50 percent remission for the best cases is still chance to me. Do people live longer and better with treatment than without?

I need more time to investigate all this before choosing an option. This is also a life-style decision as to how I live my whole life.

The Decision-Making Process

INSTRUCTIONS-read these over and make notes if you like. Write down your impressions and insights associated with any of these markers. The effect is to help you make clear and more fulfilling decisions, instead of unconsciously or consciously handing over the problem-solving decisions to others. So you make notes to these questions and then at some point you simply have to make the best decision possible for you in your life. Okay? This is an effort also to keep you out of spacing out in fantasy or spiritualism also. When we make real decisions we have to be in reality, the experience of what is happening now.

EVENT-ISSUES-POSITIONS-CHOICES-EFFECTS-PERSPECTIVES-GOALS-OUTCOMES POSSIBLE-RESOURCES AVAILABLE

EVENT-What really is the event? You will get people commenting and wanting things about this event. The x-ray showing a possibly malignant tumor in my case is the event. The doctors then want to do more tests and their style of treatment. But what do I want?

SKW-What really is the event? The x-ray shows a tumor that may be malignant or is. Why wouldn’t I want this diagnosed by the best medical equipment available? Because you don’t demonstrate a cure. And I don’t want to identify with your mindset of being ‘the identified cancer patient.’ My best therapy is psychological. Don’t let myself be typed as a cancer patient. Stay a person who makes the best of what he has and makes his own decisions.

What is the event?

The x-ray and what that evokes for everybody. Also the persistent coughing over the last three months or so and the phlegm that never went away. The doctor put me on a drug for it which I have now refused to take because it affects my liver.

The event for me is a major life challenge. I was not healthy enough. I was pretty healthy, never having been ill with anything serious, but I had a fat belly and was too exhausted after playing tennis. This drove me in to the family doctor, which is where you have to go in the Netherlands usually.

ISSUES-What questions are raised about the event, like body, diagnostics, impact, treatments, relationships, choices, attitudes, decisions needing to be made, being placed in a time-fate sequence

What issues?

I have gone into some above. My response is to keep finding the real issues and then make choices and work tasks regarding them. My major process is to process. Keep working every day for as long as it takes to process the day’s issues, as you see me doing today. A clear and conscious mind is the health goal to activate the mind-body process.

POSITIONS-problem-solving. How do various people solve the issues caused by the event? What does the person want? What is possible? What is not possible? What kinds of problem-solving are available? Researching for accurate information. Consulting consultants and friends and friends of friends.

What are the health positions towards my having cancer to deal with?

I sent the news out to many people and got a lot of different responses. I want these perspectives from my fellow human beings with their experience also around this cancer issue and how to deal with it. And I got specific info to follow, like in possible alternative doctors and books to read and follow.

Yet, even here I realize don’t just follow some consultant or approach. Evaluate but resist the urge to give a healer, as well as a doctor, the problem. The doctors are trained to take responsibility for your bodily problems. Naturally they want to be successful, but are they that successful. A natural healer will also assert her approach but at least you ask questions and test this healer also before you follow their direction.

CHOICES-deciding against some positions, therapies, resources, support systems, and going with others. But it comes down to finally a single system to bare the burden of most of the problem-solving.

This is big, biggest of the big! I have always taught my students the choice-making process. You have to choose against the directions you do not adopt as well as choose for the positions you do adopt. My going against the diagnostics of the doctors leading to their treatments is a No choice to give space to a Yes choice for alternative treatments.

SKW-A now example is my saying no to taking the doctors’ hospital tests and saying yes to juice fasting, plus studying alternative approaches to follow.

EFFECTS-various approaches to problem-solving have various positive and negative effects. Research and know the effects when you can. People stories and statistics. Assertions of truth. Organizing outcomes to become clear.

SKW-Research?

SKW-Yes, I research daily now on the Web, following up on ideas there as well as all the suggestions that people write me about. It all gives me a more solid perspective on possible treatments or life-style changes for me to make now. Since I have chosen fasting I have bought a book about healing by fasting. Also a vegan diet stops cancer, asserts one of my consultants. Well, does it? I can research that via the web and also by trying it out.

PERSPECTIVES-like Positions, which are specific to the problem, Perspectives are general and involve different people’s views of life and what works and doesn’t work for them and the people they know. Consider a number of perspectives so you can form your own. Don’t just make specific choices without considering the larger context which a solid perspective helps you with. Place your choices within a perspective and lifestyle that is central to how you live your life.

SKW-One of my biggest challenges is Perspective, because it gives me the value basis for making my ‘life and death’ cancer choices. In my work as a psychologist I have never advocated taking drugs for treating mental illness, unless there was no human help sometimes to support a person going through heavy emotions. So why should I not live that way myself. Treat the emotions and cure the body as well, if it is to be cured. Thus in refusing diagnostics from the doctors I am refusing the position that you treat the condition through the body, rather than reinforce the immune system with meditation and imagery work and consciousness processing.  Maybe I have this cancer x-ray to stimulate myself to a new level of consciousness? So why not? Here I am being in danger of falling asleep at age 75! Not any more!

GOALS-For you alone to decide. You have the event affecting you, and it may be deemed life-threatening, like cancer is. A lot of people die of cancer. What goals do you have for yourself? To get well? To get ready to die if that is what it seems is to happen? To extend your life? Thus with goals in mind you also decide the problem-solving approach that most meets your goals.

SKW-My first response was to get ready to die, Strephon. But that is rather gallant, and a response to partner and others who instantly felt grief when told about the cancer diagnosis. Yeah, yeah! Some did not respond that way to my news.

SKW-My Goals

SKW-to live a conscious life of value and choicemaking no matter what is happening to me.

SKW-to create greater health and balance at this time in my life.

SKW-to change my lifestyle, like in eating, so as to affirm the best health possible.

SKW-to send a message to my body and the possible cancer that I will do what I can to improve my health and that I assume the cancer is a symptom of imbalance that can be possibly corrected.

SKW-to live 25 more years like a Norwegian mountain man, lean and disciplined and alive with strength, yet not being ambitious in the world anymore.

SKW-to get my last and perhaps greatest work done in the modern Jesus novel that has little to do with Christianity and a lot to do with World Wisdom. I have been at this for several years now.

SKW-to create for myself the best health possible so that I have the time and energy for relating and for completing my writing projects, my purpose in the world. And to be responsive to those who need my help where I can give it, like students building institutes and so on.

OUTCOMES POSSIBLE-from the most negative to the most positive for you. You need to formulate this type of question so you can ask the problem-solvers you hire about their success rate and failure rate, as well as what the outcomes usually are.

SKW-I don’t spend much time on this here. People fantasize too much. Even the young doctor talked about cure if I have cancer. I’ve run out of energy for now at least to continue this inventory.

RESOURCES AVAILABLE-what resources are available from near and far to help you solve your problems? People make suggestions, but how much will they help? Some are too expensive or far away. The tension between the easiest resource to use and maybe a contrasting resource that is more effective but further away.

THE CHOICE-MAKING PROCESS-make yourself aware of your situation and its parts, like all of the above. You must be thorough and specific. You must also gage your strength and weakness. You may have to oppose some support people and their approach. Or deal with people close to you. You consult others but ultimately it is your own problem. No one can make your choices for you. Some approaches don’t give you much choice, like the doctors. They want to do their thing, like take a lot of tests to determine what kind of cancer you have, if you have cancer. So, how much do you go along with the problem-solvers or problem-solve yourself?

THE QUALITY OF YOUR LIFESTYLE-how have you lived your life so far by what values? How can you live your life by those same values through this choice-making process? How much should you change your style to fit the treatment proposed, like radiation and surgery for proposed removal of your cancer, but which is likely to be debilitating to you.

ACCESSING SPECIAL GUIDANCE-what ultimately guides you? A deep feeling, intuition, dreams, knowledge and rational decision making, relying on the advice of experts, pressures and expectations from those in relationship with you, your own desires, and what are they? Make them conscious, so that you clear your awareness to access guidance.

DECISIVE DECISION-MAKING-you gather together after awareness work the various aspects of your problem and choices available with outcomes possible. Formulate your decision clearly. Make it, sacrificing weakness and compromise, and then move forward with that decision and this choice and point of view melds in with what is now your ongoing life until the end.

AFTER-how do you see yourself after the problem is solved one way or another?

Note: I never got to finish this since I do a lot of processing each day and ran out of energy and time for the day. But at least I have in my active consciousness all these aspects of the processing and decision-making that I am using to deal with this possible cancer diagnosis and its implications for my existence and life.

related post

• Strephon I Am Affirmations
• Strephon's Cancer Health Report August 1, 2009
• $ 10 per year membership
• $ 10 per year membership
• Kyrie Eleison Lenten Meditation