imported post
I don't want this to sound preachy or condescending or anything of the sort. It's just a story that I will relate.
A very good friend of mine, who I had worked with and travelled all over the world with, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Having worked in asbestos mines for a year as a teenager, and having been a smoker almost all his life, this really shouldn't have been a huge surprise.
In any case, he had a positive outlook. He was going to go through the treatment, beat it, and get on with his life. He had a wife and three kids to take care of, after all! He was a positive guy, full of energy, and had no doubt he would get through this, just like all the other adversities he had faced in life.
The doctors decided that the course of treatment would be to surgically remove part of one lung that was cancerous, and to follow that up with chemotherapy. However, when they opened him up, they found that the cancer had spread much further than they had expected. They ended up removing almost all of one lung, and part of the other. They started him on chemotherapy immediately. They told him that he needed to get his affairs in order, and told him he might have six months at the most.
The chemo broke him. After almost six weeks of chemo, he was horribly depressed. He lost almost 40 lbs (and he was thin to begin with). He looked like a walking skeleton. He was in constant pain from the surgery, constantly on morphine, and horribly ill from the chemo. I visited him, and he looked close to death. He shook my hand and I saw tears in his eyes. I knew this was going to be the last time I ever saw my friend.
Two weeks later, I got a phone call. It was his number, and I knew it was the call I was dreading. To my surprise - it was my friend on the line. He sounded happy! He invited me out to lunch. When I got to his house, I couldn't believe it. He not only was alive, he looked happy and well - still thin, but well.
Over lunch, he told me this: the doctors had told him that he might have six months to live, with the chemo therapy. He decided that if he had six months to live, he was not going to live it miserable, depressed, throwing up and sick from constantly injecting poison into his body. He was going to live his last days happy, spending time with his family. His outlook had changed. He had made peace with his nearing destiny, and decided to go out happy, instead of miserable. He was going to live for as long as he possibly could, with his family and friends.
Six months came and went. He was still in some pain, but he was still alive and doing well. Every time I talked to him, he told me of his plans for the future, planning a new business venture. He was living life. A year passed. He went on a vacation with his wife to his beloved Jamaica. Another six months. And another. He played golf incessantly.
It's now been four and a half years since he quit his chemo, since the doctors told him he had six months to live. The cancer is spreading relentlessly. It's now in a lot of his organs, and also in his brain, and it's affecting his personality - he is having bouts of schizophrenic episodes. But in between, he's still the happy, positive guy I've always known. He has no illusion about his impending death, he knows it's going to come soon. But he's going down fighting, and will spend every minute he has, doing things he loves, with the people he loves.
I'm not trying to say kick your doctors to the curb and stop your treatment. What I AM saying is that your attitude and outlook has an incredible effect on your body, in its ability to fight off disease. You can sit depressed, waiting to die, or you can do what you need to do in order to pull yourself from that depression (and that may include the assistance of your doctors), and spend every moment you have on this earth enjoying yourself and the lives of those you love.
Please God things will improve for you :clapper:I will keep you in my prayers every day 
