Tired of hugging a teddy bear: Get in touch with your negativity.

It is a rare day when both my son and one of  my most educated friends send me an email about a Guardian article recommending a book by Barbara Ehrenreich called ‘The Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.’  Barbara  and I are on the same wave length. I just take a lighter tone.  She was diagnosed with cancer and learned how many sham ideas are around to ‘help you with it’.  I recommend  Barbara’s blog  http://ehrenreich.blogs.com/

Get in touch with your negativity:

1.     On waking, lie or sit on your bed, cross your arms over your chest and shout, ‘Cancer Sucks’  at least 10 times.

2.      Take a page from your health care policy and find a dart, hang it on a wall across from your bed and throw the dart at it.  Once is powerful enough. Don’t bother to get up and pick up the dart and try again, unless you feel you need to. No dart?  Anything will do, a fist is fine.

3.     Tea-a-thon. Make yourself tea ten times in one day and give yourself a donation.  Find a cancer researcher who has no ties to any drug company and donate your few pence or dollars to him or her.

4.      Just like running a marathon, a tea- a- thon can attract sponsors.  Once you find a researcher who is free of drug company support you can call on friends to sponsor your trips to the tea pot.

5.     Stand naked in front of a full length mirror and repeat:  Mirror, mirror on the wall cancer has not made me look better at the mall.

6.     Find a friend who has NOT said you will be fine.  CALL  your more negative friend immediately.  Discuss your ‘living will’, your prognosis, and the crappy way you feel.  If you’ve  chosen well he or she  will be happy to address these issues with you and you will feel better.

7.     Cancer survivors are people that die in car crashes.  I’ve survived for 13 years with cancer, but I will not survive cancer unless I overdose, cross the street in traffic, am murdered, or have a heart attack. Instead of turning off the news(which is advised by the positive thinkers) turn off the survivor interviews. Hearing that some fit movie star or athlete turned their life around by working out, keeping fit and living a more humane life will not get you out of bed if you are tired, nauseous, having your side effects and it just makes you feel you ‘should’ being doing more.  Forget it. Turn it off, get warm and have a day of rest and anti sickness pills.

8.     Put ten foods you really like back in your refrigerator  Let’s get real. We already have cancer.  (OK fair enough- if it is your first go you might want to eat properly) But there is not a lot of great research saying that what you eat will cure your cancer.  So  find ten foods that you love but have decided that you won’t touch again because they are ‘carcinogenic’.  Probably, when eaten by the truck loads, they are  bad for you and when  given to rats in the lab definitely are.  I’m not advocating eating them all the time. BUT lets get real.  Replace ten must have but hate foods, with ten love them and miss them foods and see what happens.  I am pledging to have one cocktail a week.  What the hell.

9.     When someone asks you to buy a “pink ribbon’ teddy bear, participate in a five mile ‘Cancer Walk’, run a marathon, trek through the Himalayas, bike through Africa or, as I was recently told about, jump out of an airplane for cancer, hang up. Contributing to someone else’s hard time is not useful and having that as some sort of goal when you are coping with cancer is ‘positive thinking’ gone insane. Forget it.  Where is the money actually going?  The research on cancer (read Barbara’s book or blog) has not gone very far. We need to find something that might change things, but it is probably out of the remit of our charitable friends.

10.   If you are working, caring for children and also dealing with cancer,  having a positive outlook may help you get through the day, but ‘cancer sucks’ and you never asked to be a ‘superwoman’. YOU DID NOT BRING THIS ON YOURSELF.  You were not dealt these cards you are being asked to play.  In tribute, take a deck of cards and throw it on the floor.  This ritual will help you visualize the situation.  You can hold the cards over your head and throw them over your head for maximum effect.  Think ‘ I was not dealt these cards and I did not deal them’.  They just happened and CANCER  SUCKS!