What Actually Got Me Through Cancer Treatment

The Part I Didn't Prepare For

When I started chemo, I thought the hard part would be the physical side effects. The nausea, the fatigue, the way my body would change. I read everything I could find about side effects so I'd know what to expect, but I didn't prepare for the dread.

It wasn’t the fear of dying that I found difficult to handle; it was something smaller and somehow harder to name. A tightness that showed up two or three days before every infusion and didn't let go until it was over.

By round three, I noticed I was finding reasons to push my appointment back an hour, then a day. My oncologist was doing everything right. My labs were fine. But I was starting to white-knuckle my way through a treatment plan I believed in, and I knew that wasn't sustainable for sixteen more rounds.

I want to be careful here, because I've read enough cancer blogs to know how this part usually goes, and I don't want to oversell it. Nothing about what I'm describing replaced my medical team or changed what was in the infusion bag. What changed was my relationship to the hours leading up to it.

Trying Something I Was Skeptical Of

A friend who'd been through treatment a year earlier mentioned she'd worked with someone on the emotional side of things, alongside her oncology care, not instead of it. I was skeptical. I'd already been to two therapy sessions that felt like describing my fear out loud and then going home with the same fear. What I needed wasn't more talking about the dread. I needed something that actually changed how my body responded when I walked into that infusion room.

What Actually Helped

What helped, in practical terms, was learning to separate two things I'd been treating as one: the physical experience of treatment, which I couldn't control, and the anticipatory spiral I built around it, which I could influence. I started using simple visualization before each appointment, picturing myself sitting calmly in the chair, picturing the medicine doing its job, picturing myself walking out afterward. It sounds almost too simple to mention. But the nights before infusions stopped being sleepless. The drive to the cancer center stopped feeling like a countdown to dread.

I also stopped pretending I wasn't scared. That was its own shift. I'd been performing calm for my family because I didn't want them to worry, and the performance was exhausting in a way that had nothing to do with the chemo itself. Naming the fear out loud, to one person who wasn't going to try to fix it or talk me out of it, took weight off that I hadn't realized I was carrying.

What This Wasn't

None of this touched my scans. I want to say that plainly, because I think a lot of people navigating cancer get sold a story where feeling better emotionally is quietly supposed to mean something medical is happening too, and that's not what this was. What it did was make me someone who showed up. Every round, on schedule, without the bargaining and delay that had started creeping in by round three. My oncologist noticed I was steadier in the chair. My nurse commented that my blood pressure wasn't spiking the way it had early on. Small things. But sixteen rounds is a long time to fight your own dread on top of fighting everything else, and removing that second fight mattered more than I expected it to.

Finishing on Schedule

I finished treatment on the original timeline. I don't know how much of that is the work I did on the emotional side and how much is just how my particular cancer responded to the protocol; I'm not a researcher, and I'm wary of anyone, myself included, drawing too straight a line between the two. What I can say is that I stopped dreading my own treatment, and that let me stay present for the rest of my life while it was happening: my kid's homework, the dinners with my husband, the version of myself that wasn't only "the patient" for those months.

If You're Early in Treatment

If you're early in treatment and the appointments themselves have started to feel unbearable in a way that's separate from the physical side effects, that's worth naming to someone, whether that's your care team, a therapist, or someone who works specifically with the emotional weight of cancer treatment. What I’ve learned is that you don't have to white-knuckle through all of it alone. The medicine was always going to do the heavy lifting. I just needed help getting out of my own way long enough to let it.

About the Author:

Avinoam Lerner is a cancer and trauma recovery specialist with 25 years of practice in Boston, MA. He is the author of The New Cancer Paradigm and Mindful Remission, and his work is grounded in psychoneuroimmunology and the science of mind-body healing. AvinoamLerner.com

To learn more or apply, visit avinoamlerner.com/rapid-trauma-solution.