A new way of life?

Just received the highly reccomended book 'Anti Cancer, a new way of life' by David Servan.  It's heavy to read and scary 'in cancer's grip, the whole body is at war.  Cancer cells really do act like armed bandits, roving outside the law' and it's very proscriptive - lots of lists to make your new way of life so that cancer is less likely to come back, or won't knock on your door in the first place.  It's a bit like the Qu'ran in that it covers every part of your life, practical (cleaning, phones, clothes), dietary (organic, berries, tumeric, how many cups of green tea to drink) and spiritual (which is the right way of meditating?).  Actually it didn't touch on sex or how many wives I could have.

Apart from giving me the image of  miniature cowboys and pirates that are riding on their trusty steeds inside my breast, raping and pillaging, it also made me think about my way of life and a whole new way of life.

A new way of life - IF you want one.  I was quite enjoying my last way of living and I'm not sure if I'm ready and able to switch into this anti cancer mode.  Does that sound stupid, ignorant, shortsighted, even arrogant?  Maybe, you'd have thought this scare has been enough to shake me out of my liking for alcohol, cupcakes and crisps.  I wonder is it, really, in the long run?

I made a start anyway, buying brown granary bread, brown rice, deodorant without parabens, lipstick without all sorts of stuff (very limited range though, I guarantee this is where I will slip up first when I find myself guiltily popping a Chanel lippie in my basket one day in Sephora).

There are some changes I have always wanted to introduce into the family's lifestyle - more vegetable based dishes, granary bread all the time, brown rice, less meat, less chemicals.  But I have been seriously outvoted by dh and my kids and we are in the land of the baguette!  This is my chance to at least change some things for the better for good maybe.  I hope dh joins me and that I'm not campaigning all by myself with the children, it will be exhausting and will not last.

I can do the green tea thing myself, nobody has to join me  - apparently six cups a day is optimal in the fight against cancer.

If you believe it.

Well, I sort of believe him.  He's a scientist and he's examined many many studies in the light of his own brain tumor, so I'm inclined to believe him and try some of his suggestions.

I told my friend M yesterday about the cancer and she urged me, nay ordered me to go and see her therapist Anne.  She asked me if I had had a shock and that is what had caused the cancer.  I told her that I wasn't looking for the cause, just the remedy right now and I wasn't going to get guilty and agonise about what I had or hadn't done to cause this shit.  I may go and see Anne in any case mainly because I don't think M will let it lie and possibly because it might help now and in the future.  What I really wanted to ask M is if I could go to yoga classes with her!  I'll be doing that too.

So, dear readers, I do see that there should or could or that this is a possibility for a new way of life.  Am I ready to embrace it fully?  Not sure.  Should it be an integral part of my recovery out of this crap place I'm in right now.  Probably, maybe.  Will I enjoy this new way of life?  Hmmm, it doesn't fill me with joy,  it seems to be a life full of limits and do nots and fears - most of all it seems like a life based on fear - of the return of cancer.  Do I want to live in fear?  I most certainly do not.  I was having a great time before.

So will everything have to change now?