Round 17 of HER2 Targeted Therapy completed on Wednesday, and another one more cycle to go. I feel like I’m contending in ONE Championship. ONE Championship is mixed martial arts that combines Muay Thai and kickboxing competition. My husband likes to watch it on TV sometimes.
That feeling of being physically battered and emotionally defeated. Imagine contending in 49 rounds of ONE Championship over a span of 15 months. That would sometimes give me not only a bad day, but a really badass day too.
Speaking about bad days and badass days…
From time to time, we all have days when it feels like the world is against us, or that the chaos and racket we are experiencing will never end. One undesirable situation seems to lead to another. On a bad day, we may wonder, whether anything in our life will ever go right again. Just like the COVID-19 pandemic…
We may consider a bad day to be one where we missed an important meeting because our car broke down or ran out of gas in the middle of traffic, and we received a piece of very bad news earlier in the morning before spilling coffee on the breakfast table. Or worse, dealing with the side effects of cancer treatments.
The aftermath of contending in ONE Championship, is much like the painful side effects of chemotherapy. Joint pain, muscle pain, chronic fatigue and extreme lethargy. Nausea and diarrhoea. Nose bleeds and swollen glands. Inflammations everywhere that I can’t even pinpoint exactly where the source of the pain is. Sometimes pain can cause emotional meltdowns.
But then again, a bad day, just like any other day, can be a gift. Having a bad day can show us that it is time to slow down, change course, or lighten up. A bad day can help us garner wisdom that we might otherwise have overlooked or disregarded. Bad days can undoubtedly cause us to experience uncomfortable feelings we would wish to avoid or evade. Yet a bad day may also give us a compelling reason to learn about ourself.
Several misfortunes that take place one after the other can leave us feeling vulnerable and intensely conscious of how fragile we are. But then again, bad days can only have a long-term negative effect on us if we let them. It’s better to ask ourself what we can learn from these kinds of days.
The state of our bad day may be an indicator that we need to stay in and hibernate or let go of our growing negativity. Bad days contribute to the person that we become or turn out to be.
Even though we may feel disheartened and distraught on our bad days, a bad day can teach us patience, resilience and determination. It is important to remember that our attitude is what drives our destiny. One undesirable experience does not necessarily have to be the beginning of an unending stroke of bad luck.
Undoubtedly, a bad day is not one that is easy to forget, because it is one day among many good days. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even bother to acknowledge it as a bad day. Know too, that everybody has their own bad days – whether or not you have cancer. Therefore, we’re not alone, and the world is not against us.
Luckily, I just have one more round of ONE Championship to go – Round 18 – and I would be done with targeted chemo. Tomorrow is definitely going to be a brighter day.
