Mental Health and MBC - Living with Anxiety and Depression

Anxiety. Mental health. Depression.

Am I exempt from stress, anxiety or any other type of mental health issues? No -- I wish, but no.

I grew up surrounded by people struggling with their mental health. My brother Tim was diagnosed with schizophrenia at a young age. Honestly, I didn’t understand the illness, and so was often annoyed that my older brother was doing older brother things like stealing my diary or crashing my date nights. My list of examples of Tim being Tim could go on and on.

I have also have had friends who came back from war with PTSD (and some could say I have PTSD too).

It doesn’t matter how positive you try to be, or how much faith you have. Dealing with a terminal illness can present several mental health issues and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. People ask me all the time how I stay positive. The answer -- is I don’t know. Yes, I keep my head up, I keep moving forward, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have moments where I feel like I’m drowning in a sea I can’t escape. It doesn’t mean I don’t need to take something to help me calm down. It doesn’t mean I figured out a magical pill that makes me feel better. I have found my own natural remedies that help me, but I’m not superwoman.

When you learn you have breast cancer, followed by appointments with tons of doctors followed by more and more bad news, it’s a wonder you don’t see more posts about mental health issues running rampant in our cancer communities. But just because people aren’t talking or writing about it doesn’t mean that’s not the case. In those first months, when you’re reeling in shock, trying to deal with the news that you have cancer and what it’s going to take to treat it, you lose a piece of yourself to constant fear. When you wait hours or days for your scan results – which dictate what the next three months of your life will be like (will you be able to relax or will you have to suffer a more aggressive treatment?) -- you might experience symptoms of PTSD. You are overwhelmed by fear and the vivid memories of your first experience hearing life-shattering news.

Growing up I kept a journal that my brother Tim would repeatedly steal. I was told it would be therapeutic to journal, and it definitely is, especially now that I don’t have to fill up my journal with “Tim, if you’re reading this … ” lol. Living with cancer is extremely mind-blowing and hearing people urge you to be positive becomes overwhelming in itself. We need our support system to support our down moments too. If you see I’m on the edge of a mental breakdown, maybe say, “Hey, want to yell at me? I won’t take it personally,” or “Want to go find a punching bag and punch out your frustrations?” Or “Look, I can’t imagine what you’re going through, and I can’t begin to understand, but if you want to lay it on me from wherever in your mind you are, I’ll keep my ears open.” (We might not want to start from Day 1 of cancer, especially in the metastatic world.)

We don’t expect everyone to understand where we are coming from. Maybe we want time to be normal and not think about cancer. But just because we look like we are fed up with treatments or side effects doesn’t mean we have thrown in the towel. It could just mean we are tired, and saying “Be positive” can feel like you are saying to us, “You aren’t trying hard enough.” Trust me, living with metastatic breast cancer is hard work, even if I make it look easy.

by Larissa Gionfriddo Podermanski, Metastatically Speaking, February 2018

States and Rebates

If you run a small business in Florida, are self-employed in Texas, or work for a large corporation in New Jersey ( see an update below ), then your state insurance regulators probably haven't been working for you. The news that 15.8 million people can expect $1.3 billion in rebates from insurers this year because of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) underscores how weak health insurance regulation has been in states across the country. It may come as no surprise that Florida and Texas, two leaders in the fight against ACA, have been exposed as anti-consumer. But they are not the only states with an anti-consumer bias. First, the good news: last week, the federal government announced that three-quarters of us will get letters beginning on July 1 telling us that our insurance plans paid out at least 80 to 85 cents in benefits for every premium dollar they collected. This means that under ACA they met the minimum standard for a reasonable benefit payout (which i...

The Ten Best and Ten Worst States for Your Mental Health

Connecticut spends four times more per capita on state mental health services than Texas. In Florida, 25 percent fewer people report having mental illnesses than in Washington. Across the nation, there are significant differences in the amounts states spend on mental health services. Connecticut spends $189 per capita, while Texas spends only $39. But there are also significant differences in the reported prevalence of mental illnesses. For example, fewer than 18 percent of Floridians report having a mental illness during the past year, but in Washington almost 24 percent do. But what happens when you put spending and prevalence together? Some new rankings emerge that give you a measure of each state’s real commitment to protecting mental health – and treating mental illness – in their population. This week, I have ranked all fifty states using both spending and prevalence data. I have taken per capita m...

Why the Republicans Have No Health Care Plan

There's a simple reason why (after more than a decade) Donald Trump and the Republicans have no plan to replace Obamacare. I'll explain in a few minutes. But first, some background. When the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) was passed in 2010, it was an effort to expand health care coverage to a lot of people who needed it, while controlling their costs. It had certain key provisions, not the least of which were that people couldn't be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, that all chronic diseases needed to be covered fairly, and lifetime coverage caps had to be lifted. The problem was that if you left matters to insurers to set insurance premiums based on what this would cost, the price of insurance would rise dramatically. So the government took a look at three different programs and ultimately put them together into one system. For people whose income was so low that they couldn't afford any real cost-sharing, the government expanded Medicaid. For elders...

Our Health Policy Matters

Search This Blog