I dont have experience with your exact class of cancer, but I can speak to managing the terror. In the immediate short-term you need to compartmentalise. (My advice anyhow) Don't let the mortality stuff, the I'm scared stuff, get too much bandwidth, you can't control what you can't control and the absolute key now is getting through the process. You have to surrender to that, lean into whatever aggressive treatment is available, and roll your dice. To manage your daily living, compliance with your treatments, medicine, whatnot - the better you are at doing that 'knuckle down and get through' thing, the better. You need to get further down the road. You can deal with the existential stuff later. That to be said - don't ignore it. If they say there's only a 30% chance of treatment, then you spend time with the people you love, you write up a will, do all the practical stuff you need to do ... but the UNKNOWN is the worst part of the early phase of dealing with cancer, and my advice is to tackle that head on, and the way to do that is accept it .. you dont know, can't know and just have to push through until you do. As to wider stuff .. I had a six months to live 40% chance at treatment, and that was six years ago. After cancer, I slipped into an existential hole, then I dressed up as the boofhead superhero Captain Australia and walked from Brisbane to Melbourne, raising $165,000 for paediatric cancer research. It's not over. You still have some time up your sleeve, and maybe more than you think. You can still do beautiful things, celebrate kindness, make laughter. You just have to get through the tunnel.
... View more