Episode 011: Who Is Going To Stay With You Through Cancer
Apr 23, 2018•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
Who Is Going To Stay With You Through Cancer
Listen, I don’t know about you, but for me, honesty has become such a rare commodity these days because it’s so hard to accomplish - you have to set aside your ego, you have to put your worries aside about how other people see you, but it also gives you this incredible power of clarity. Honest - that is how I would describe Matt Featherstone, our guest today. Matt is for real. Matt doesn’t screw around. He takes his honesty and he turns it into insight, into how you can shift your focus during cancer, into how you can manage your energy. Who is going to stay with you through cancer? Matt is going to share some fantastic advice for dealing with cancer, including:
How some people in your life fall away just when you need them most
Why Matt's little c reframe can help put cancer in its place
How the modality of cancer scares people off
3 things that are inherently different about men facing cancer
Setting the rules up to deal with cancer as a family
The importance of peer support during these tough times
Matt's top lessons learned about dealing with cancer
Who is going to stay with you through cancer
Links
Cancer Connect
Men’s Psycho-social needs Webinar
Matt Featherstone (Cancer Council)
Episode 008: Staying Positive Despite Cancer
Full Transcript
Joe: Matt, thank you so much for doing this, and I’m really looking forward to this.
Matt: Yes, very happy to help. It’s a worthy cause.
Joe: Yes, absolutely. First, I want to ask, how did you react when you first found out that you had cancer?
Matt: Yes, I remember it distinctly, it’s one of those big life events, isn’t it? I suppose I was very similar to many blokes. We’ve got 19 things going on in our heads at once, and I got a call from my GP and I remember coming into the office and actually in the office with my wife, and saying, “Sweetie, I’ve got some bad news, we’d better put aside some time to talk.” I didn’t drop everything. I think it took me quite some time that evening before I even stopped work and went into the other office and said, “Look, we’ve got a problem that’s got nothing to do with the business, we’ve got a problem here.” I guess the short answer is, I was a bit numb, actually, I wasn’t expecting it. I think it was, as I say, quite some hours, then, of course, seeing her face really made a very big difference to my evening. We literally turned the entire office off and just went and sat down and had a cup of coffee and went, “Well, we weren’t expecting that, what are we going to do?” It was a bit of a shock.
Joe: Yes, exactly, like you said, I felt shocked, I felt numb, and I felt the whole world stopped and came to a close, like everything slowed down. The whole sound was muffled. It was just a really bizarre feeling because it’s unexpected, right.
Matt: It is, it’s a very unusual experience. I suppose one of the positive things is, Joe, that since then, I guess like most people, we’ve had other things that have happened out of left field, not expecting them. Sometimes it’s nothing to do with health but just things in the family. I must admit, we, as a family unit, now we’re better at taking unexpected bad news and doing something with it than we were before. There was an upside.
Joe: Yes, absolutely. That’s a positive take on it, Matt. I think that’s because you’re confronted with it, you’re forced to deal with it. You have to find a way.
Matt: Yes, that’s right. You’re exactly right, Joe. It’s almost like there’s a moment now that you can’t go back on. The die is cast, and you need to do something. You’re right. It’s a very specific type of life event that you’ve just got to deal with in a sense, yes, you’re right.
Joe: Absolutely. Your family, your friends,
