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Playing Jedi Mind Tricks with Cancer

  • William Romanowski
  • Jan 4
  • 5 min read

Updated: Jan 6

January 2025

(5-minute read)

Keywords: cancer; Catherine Middleton; Princess of Wales; vulnerabilities; fatigue; perfectionism


After recovering from surgery and a cycle of chemotherapy, Catherine Middleton, the Princess of Wales, released a video message:

“The cancer journey is complex, scary and unpredictable for everyone, especially those closest to you. With humility, it also brings you face to face with your own vulnerabilities in a way you have never considered before and, with that, a new perspective on everything.”

Her reflections capture the gamut of emotions that in my experience come with being diagnosed and then living with a life-threatening disease. For that reason, I thought to write a series of blog posts profiling the characteristics of her “cancer journey” and adding a few more of my own along the way. Let’s start with …


Facing Your Own Vulnerabilities

Within a year after surgery, routine blood tests signaled my cancer’s return. At that point, I was on a three-to-five-year plan depending on the success of a protocol of treatments beginning with two months of radiation (that despite good odds eventually failed).


I tried playing a little Jedi mind trick on my cancer cells. Our fates are intertwined. Your existence is tied to mine. Oh, yeah!? Those malignant cells would hear none of it. They let me know they’re on a suicide seek-and-destroy mission. The report came back: metastatic cancer, which means it spread from the original site to other parts of my body.


Typically, that would be the beginning of the end. My urologist prescribed an aggressive treatment, a new targeted therapy that killed cancer cells by damaging their DNA, but not healthy ones. It was administered by radioactive injection into a vein every four weeks for a total of six injections. It was no picnic being on it, but it worked amazingly well at beating back the disease. Not a cure, but a good hard kick-the-can down the road. Take that!


Therein lies an enduring sliver of hope: the potential for a new treatment to become available to keep my cancer at bay, or in the best of all possible worlds, become a cure.

 

I’m No Match

The truth is, except in drive and determination (and alliteration), I am no match for my cancer. Not by a long shot. And as much as I did not want my disease to define me, that’s simply unrealistic. There are constant reminders: the daily regimen of pills, routine tests, medical appointments, and friends canceling because someone might be sick (I’m considered immunocompromised). And the difficulty of looking ahead. Whatever plans my wife and I make now always come with the caveat – God willing. In all these ways, cancer is a fixture in my day-to-day living, defining my reality.


To be clear, no one, including me, can tell anyone else how they ought to live with a chronic disease. What follows is a start at describing my experience. I have enough space to fit two related vulnerabilities.


Loss of Control

I understand it’s a common feeling – the loss of control that comes with having cancer. That is what tests some of my vulnerabilities the most. It began with the realization that I can no longer trust my body.


If you sprain an ankle, you feel the pain, see the swelling, ice, elevate, and stay off it until it heals. But you might remember it taking a while before you could feel confident running on it again. Imagine what it’s like having cancer. Inexplicably, normal cells have mutated – gone off on a fit of madness – evading your immune system and multiplying uncontrollably. These parasitic invaders are unbelievably resilient and ready to strike, bent on destroying the host environment.


The collective effect of treatments, I sometimes don’t recognize my own body. There is a discolored bump on my chest, a port for intravenous infusions. I have tattoos – radiation markers – that made my dermatologist’s decision to remove a new mole simple. The treatments have changed the texture of my skin. After a regimen of chemo, my hair grew back – greyer than before – but not my eyebrows.


The most pronounced side effect is fatigue. Fatigue is not just being tired. It’s exhaustion on steroids. And there is no rhyme or reason when it comes to fatigue, at least as far as I can tell. I have good-energy days and bad ones. We call it a “crash” when my arms and legs, my body, have a heaviness to them; it’s even hard to hold my head up. That’s when it seems like my body’s thermostat has gone wacky. And fatigue is not just physical, but emotional exhaustion, which can make it all that much harder to deal with normal mundane situations, the inevitable twists and turns of life.


The Bane of My Perfectionism

A blessing and a curse. If the perception is that perfectionists are obsessed with, well, perfection (and alliteration), professionals understand it as a personality trait having to do with never quite being satisfied with what you’ve accomplished. As one psychologist put it,

“it’s the feeling of never arriving to that place, never feeling good enough, never feeling adequate.” 

Perfectionism has certain advantages, like close attention to detail, “dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s,” so to speak, but always feeling like you could or should have done more is not one of them. And we can be hard on ourselves. I know.

 

So I tried another Jedi mind trick, this time to persuade my inner critic that when it came to coexisting with cancer, there is only so much you (third, not first person) could do. And you will have to be satisfied and learn to live with the uncertainty and enduring sadness.


You might be wondering, so how’s all that working out for you? Mmm. Making the adjustment has not been easy for me or those poor souls surrounding me. But the good news is, I’ve become a self-proclaimed patient-in-partnership with my healthcare professionals, and I am better at setting boundaries. I worked hard to reach a place where I could step away from writing my (second) novel and finished my blog posts for a January newsletter. Then I was all in on the holiday time with family and friends, as relaxed as if I was doing the resting Savasana pose at the end of a yoga session. Well, not quite, but I’m getting closer.


If you enjoy this article, I encourage you to share it with friends and visit my website for others like it.


Take a Moment to Read

  • What is Cancer? A comprehensive article with illustrations by the National Cancer Institute.


Photo Credits (in order of appearance)


William D. Romanowski is an award-winning commentator on the intersection of religion and popular culture and author of a number of books, including Reforming Hollywood: How Protestants Fought for Freedom at the Movies and Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture. With his continuing commentary, he is trading "footnotes for fiction," writing novels under the pen name (or nom de plume, as the French put it), Patmos Rhodes.


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