There are times when cancer has a way of occupying far too much space in your head.
Even when you’re getting on with life, doing the things you enjoy and trying to stay positive, there can be that background noise — appointments, treatment, side effects, blood tests and, of course, the dreaded scans.
And then there’s scanxiety.
You can distract yourself from it. You can try to rationalise it. You can tell yourself that worrying won’t change the result.
But when you’re waiting for that phone call or appointment to find out what the latest scan has shown, it’s incredibly difficult to switch your brain off.
I’m certainly not going to claim that stargazing can make that disappear.
It can’t.
But I’ve discovered that having something you can completely immerse yourself in can make a remarkable difference to the rest of the time.
Looking up instead of looking in
Recently I’ve become increasingly fascinated by astrophotography.
I’ve been using a DWARFLAB 3, a clever little digital telescope that has opened up a completely different world — quite literally.
Instead of needing a huge telescope, complicated equipment and years of experience, I can point the Dwarf 3 towards the night sky and start exploring.
And suddenly, I’m not thinking about melanoma.
I’m thinking about where M31, the Andromeda Galaxy is in the sky.
I’m trying to find M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, more than 20 million light-years away.
I’m looking at the Heart and Soul Nebulae, thousands of light-years away.
And the scale of it all is extraordinary.
When you realise that the light you’re collecting has been travelling for thousands, millions or even tens of millions of years before finally reaching your little telescope, it has a strange way of putting your own worries into perspective.
Not removing them.
Just putting them somewhere else for a while.
A different kind of escape
I’ve also recently visited Smithsonian Starstruck Experience in Manchester, and experiences like that have reinforced just how much I enjoy learning, discovering and understanding the world around me.
There’s something incredibly powerful about having a hobby that demands your attention.
A hobby where you’re concentrating on something completely outside yourself.
For me, astronomy does exactly that – as indeed does Lego!
I’m checking the weather, watching the clouds and finding targets to capture next.
I’m working out where something will appear in the sky.
I’m experimenting with exposure times and framing.
I’m waiting for the telescope to collect enough light.
Then the image starts to appear.
And for those moments, I’m not a cancer patient waiting for a scan result.
I’m just a bloke standing outside looking at the stars.
And that’s important.
Cancer gives you plenty of things you can’t control
One of the hardest things about cancer isn’t always the treatment itself.
Sometimes it’s the uncertainty.
You can do everything you’re supposed to do and still find yourself waiting for somebody else to tell you what is happening inside your own body.
You can’t control the scan result.
You can’t control what the next appointment will bring.
You can’t control every side effect.
And you certainly can’t control the thoughts that arrive at 3am.
But you can sometimes control where you put your attention.
That’s where hobbies can become much more than hobbies.
They can become a little sanctuary – a place to disappear into for an hour or more.
Photography, walking, music, gardening, painting, model making, cooking, fishing, astronomy — it doesn’t really matter what it is.
The important thing is finding something that makes you lose yourself in the moment.
Don’t confuse distraction with denial
There’s an important difference.
I’m not suggesting that we should ignore cancer or pretend everything is fine.
We have to deal with it.
- We have to go to the appointments.
- We have to go for the scans.
- We have to ask the questions.
- We have to deal with whatever comes next.
But we don’t have to spend every minute between those moments thinking about cancer.
Sometimes it’s perfectly healthy to give your brain permission to think about something completely different.
And that’s what my DWARF 3 has become for me.
- A distraction.
- A challenge.
- A fascination.
And, occasionally, a reason to get outside when I might otherwise have stayed indoors.
And then there’s the scan…
Of course, there’s a slight problem with all this.
Astronomy is a fantastic distraction from cancer.
Except when you’re waiting for the scan results.
Then absolutely nothing seems quite capable of stopping the brain from doing what it does.
You can point the telescope at Andromeda.
You can photograph M101.
You can spend two hours trying to capture the Heart and Soul Nebulae.
You can visit museums, go walking, listen to music or find a hundred other things to occupy yourself.
And somehow the brain still finds its way back to:
“I wonder what the scan will show?”
That’s scanxiety.
And I suspect anyone who has lived with cancer for long enough knows exactly what I’m talking about.
But perhaps the answer isn’t to try to eliminate the anxiety completely.
Perhaps it’s about making sure that cancer doesn’t get every minute of our lives while we’re waiting.
So I’ll keep looking up.
Because there is an entire universe out there waiting to be explored.
And for a little while, at least, it’s a wonderful place to escape to.
One life. LOVE IT. LIVE IT!
