Friends will know from Facebook that I’ve been in pretty rough shape physically these last weeks. My anti-depressant has been leaving me lightheaded for a year and a half. The chemo meds sap all the rest of my strength. Putting them together, I often have a hard time even getting from the bedroom to the bathroom. On a couple of occasions, I’ve fainted and found myself on the floor. Not good.
But my post isn’t about that. It’s about a puzzle of mental wellness.
I thought — my wife Anita thought, my therapists thought, nearly everybody thought — that my Bipolar symptoms would be through the roof during my cancer treatment. We even made a point of including my psychiatrist Dr. D in my cancer team at Victoria Hospital, anticipating that her expertise might be required to understand my non-neurotypical reactions to the stresses of cancer treatment. That hasn’t been happening, however. To the contrary, not just my sadness symptoms, but even my fear symptoms, have been pretty much absent over the last while. Indeed, I would say that it has been years since I have been in such good shape mentally.
It’s inherently interesting to reflect on my paradoxically positive mental state. But there may be a larger pay off: maybe there are lessons here that I can draw on when my symptoms come back, post-cancer?
So, what the heck is going on? I’ve cobbled together a handful of hypotheses.
1) I am always better off mentally when I am “climbing a mountain”. When I have a writing project. When I’m training for a run. When raising the girls. Now, facing cancer itself, and facing its debilitating treatment to boot, make for a great big mountain that I am facing. Maybe fighting cancer, far from worsening my mental health, actually helps?
2) Relatedly, when I am distracted with meaningful activities, my Bipolar symptoms partially subside. Well, there aren’t many things more attention-grabbing than cancer. And there aren’t many things more meaningful than fighting to stay alive.
3) When I was first diagnosed with esophageal cancer, and it remained a very real possibility that the disease would kill me in short order, I found myself reflecting on things that I was likely to miss out on: walking my daughters down the aisle; co-authoring the monograph on history of philosophy of language with my friend Ben; travelling to new destinations with Anita; etc. My focus shifted from the final years of life, which had been a focal point of my fear and sadness, to the next decade or so. Maybe this has made me centre my attention on things worth living for?
4) It is often helpful when I am facing Bipolar symptoms to focus on the present, and on the body. Boy, am I focused on the present and the body these days!
5) Finally, it feels good to feel loved. It feels good to know that folks are wishing me well. And my cancer diagnosis resulted in an outpouring of affection and countless offers of help. Granted, when I’m really depressed, it’s hard to get even such positive things to penetrate: everything seems gray, despite the objective facts. However, I was not deep in a depressive state, so these “goodness facts” may have been able to influence my mood for the better.