How I Kept My Spirits Up While Hospitalized for Cancer

Dealing with depression or being a caregiver for a depressed patient can be difficult and exhausting. When I visit depressed patients, I want to tell the person the cure: write a gratitude list! Take a walk! Watch an old favorite movie! But then I’d recall my time as a patient and remember that being told what to do was also exhausting, and some practiced suggestions were futile.

Before my second leukemia diagnosis, I went through a severe depression, most likely caused by my intense unhappiness with a new job after flourishing with one company for 20 years. I tried mediation, gratitude lists, exercise and yoga. I remained so depressed that I picked up drinking after 25 years of sobriety. I was let go from my job.

Unbelievably, that worked. I went to treatment and was happier living in a grungy halfway house than I was in a three-story brand-new townhome.

Then I got diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia again. I went into the hospital for a month-long induction regimen, and then later for another month when I received a bone marrow transplant.

Feeling physically ill increased the mental anxiety and creeping depression. But I remembered that depression subsided when I enacted an important change.

So, not only did I accept the time and ears of my doctors, nurses, social workers, chaplains and family, I also took it upon myself to do something that frees the mind.

If not for creativity, I might have emotionally suffered to the extent that there would be no fight.

For me, it was painting and writing.

Having never painted as an adult, I became obsessed with water coloring. Contented hours flew by each day.

I also started accumulating “word of the day” definitions. Contented hours flew by.

I started writing little stories using those words. Contented hours flew by.

I thought I would share this silly excerpt:

Eager for chapter two? Maybe not. I know it’s weird.

I then did some drawings of the socialite and painted a picture of an architecturally obscure and colorful theatre.

My time spent exploring creativity was not productive in the conventional sense; I was not checking things off a list, preparing myself for a job, or paying off bills or even attending to physical pains. Instead, it was productive in soothing my mind and experiencing freedom. The paintings would never be hung in a gallery. The writing would never be published (except this funny little excerpt here.) But my brain pleasantly shifted; I dulcified the depression and felt lighter. I got through tough days and eventually recovered. I then found a new path in life where I can be a little more creative in my job.

I’m happy!

Spoiler alert: The socialite tergiversates from the filmmaker. Malheureusement, she is murdered on a glacier by her lover while the auteur captures the moment on film.

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