Does a Scarcity Mindset Exacerbate Cancer?

I write this from a hospital. I just couldn’t cope with the stress of waiting for appointments to be scheduled with little to do beyond a little Spring cleaning. My mother also pushed for me to go to the hospital, but that’s an aside. How does cancer spread in the body and can your mindset speed it all up?

Since checking myself in, a few strange things have happened.  I got snowballed with psyche meds and forgot how to retain composure. I was sad, ruminating on what had been,  and how every opportunity available to me was substandard in at least one of the critical ways I needed others to show up. I really can’t blame people, I wouldn’t make friends with a potentially dying person either.

I’m pretty hungry because there’s not much you can eat in hospitals. The food is mediocre at best. I’m both drained and sore from this exercise. But at least my appointments in Kelowna seem to be tentatively scheduled.

Today would have been my dad’s 70th birthday. He lost his battle to cancer. In some ways i wonder if his miserly ways might have contributed. He penny pinched and bought used and wore clothing into holes and closely monitored his investments and market activity.

It’s stressful to have cancer when the problems other patients have seem more important. Medical care shouldn’t be competitive really. Transparency into why I was deprioritized or what I was waiting for could have helped.

Since being at KBRH, I have got 2 tests in rapid fashion,  it must help if you are just there and the nurses and doctors can chase you down without the bedside manner demonstrating chit-chat that delays scheduling.

I’ve done a few things in hospital to keep busy, like exercise, gardening of sorts, a lot of thinking about what I’ll do when I get out. Walking, trying to watch TV, listening to music. There’s lots of crafts activities, even copying recipes out of magazines.

Here’s a flower I made, but no activities coordinator around to finish it. I picked up a lot of dogwood flower petals to make a picture. I call it wagon wheel, but it will just end up trashed in the end. Could be a cool thing framed if I had the time and resources. Crafty really isn’t me.

All and all, today went well.  I wasn’t stuck thinking about anything dark. Got out for a break.  Got to talk to my boss, all is being handled on that front. My stuff is all there, so I’m in a positive head space.

I’m not quite sure I feel abundance,  but I’m not stuck in poverty either. A scarcity mindset is defined as being consumed with a specific need so that it causes tunnel vision. I believe in the case of cancer, maybe that’s a good thing.

A never-ending focus on being unwell, on the other hand,  has to make you less well. Deep dives into research with words outside your lexicon,  those probably make it spread if I can think of a reason.

Anyway,  told a nurse I’d like to be discharged tonight… hopefully that kicks the next steps off. Then if things are scheduled far enough out. I’m thinking Iceland,  or Ireland,  or Paris to Marseilles… I want to see things before I’m really sick… is it really too presumptuous to imagine that I will need chemo?

Ugh, when it’s all up in the air, what do you do?

At the time I wrote this, I didn’t understand what I was waiting for. A few more tests and a consult with a medical oncologist. I was pretty sure the protocol for stage 3 melanoma would involve radiation, chemotherapy, and potentially immune therapies because I looked that up. My personal case, however, had not been established. My mother was acting as my liaison, despite me having cellphone access most of the hospital stay. This is my only complaint – it’s bad form to let an aging mother speak for a nearly 42 year old patient.