Just Breathe – You Go First​

Throughout most of December 2002, I shuttled between gym parking lots, determined not to miss either of my kid’s bi-weekly basketball games. As I moved about, I remember holding out my shirt to prevent chafing the stitches under my arm. After two lymph node surgeries to remove metastatic melanoma, I knew the redness and aching meant infection had set in.

Still, I had to keep going. In this critical time of their lives, my kids needed normalcy, which I must provide. I could not let cancer control our lives. But then I carted that infection right into the next surgery to remove lesions in my stomach and omentum. Intense fevers and morphine-laced technicolor nightmares lasted for days. I finally admitted to myself for the first time during my cancer battle, I had to slow down. I was compromising my immune system, doing neither me nor my kids any favors.

It’s the perfect analogy. Flight attendants tell parents to put on their own oxygen mask before helping their child. It sounds so selfish at first, but a thriving parent is in the child’s best interest. And so it is with fighting cancer – our kids need us to take care of ourselves. It’s in their best interests.

Now I realize every situation is different, but sometimes in my support role with Stronghold Ministry, I correspond with patients and caregivers who go beyond selfless sacrifice to literal self-sacrifice. They try to keep working too long and/or try to maintain the same workload at home. All this to keep things normal – but it’s not. Like me, they jeopardize their health to shelter their kids and loved ones from the new normal.

Sometimes fighting cancer becomes a full-time job, and the patient or caregiver needs to gently convert a full-time care recipient into a part-time caregiver. More on how to do this next post.

Now some may still not be convinced they must first care for themselves. Perhaps some Bible verses will help. These passages assume – and thereby affirm – that self-care is a good and expected thing:

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. – Ephesians 5:29-30

Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. – Philippians 2:4

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (many times throughout Bible)

Lord, set us free from compulsions and false guilt so we might navigate our cancer battles and trials with true wisdom.

*Do you know “The Two Ways to Get to Heaven“?