"It's said that chemotherapy is like skiing in front of an avalanche. You do one thing wrong, and the avalanche is going to get you." -- Harvey RushfeldtUsing the principles he learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, AA, helped Harvey Rushfeldt, 72, diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma last October, create a strategy for successfully living through the often grueling ordeal of chemotherapy. Rushfeldt sees both cancer and alcoholism as mortal threats and he approached his cancer treatments with the same 12 step attitude and perspectives alcoholics adopt on the one-day-at-a-time road to recovery.
It didn't start out that way. Rushfeldt said when he went through the first round of chemotherapy, he allowed himself to sink into a deep depression of self-pity. That was when he remembered AA. "When you get on the pity pot, you're given tough love. If you feel sorry for yourself in AA, you're kicked out of a meeting. Go drink and when you're ready to come back, come back."
HALT, an acronym for hungry, angry, lonely, and tired is a recovery tool of AA that warns alcoholics in recovery about the possible dangers of slipping off the wagon by allowing themselves to get too hungry, too angry, too lonely or too tired. When facing chemotherapy, Rushfeldt saw the same dangers negatively affecting his chemotherapy treatment experience -- and possibly a threat to his cancer recovery. He stopped feeling like a helpless victim and began to take care of himself. He ate right, got exercise, and enough sleep. He sought out social support and took classes at the San Diego Cancer Center.
Rushfeldt used a loose-leaf binder where he kept, among other information, treatment he went through -- drugs he was given -- classes for chemotherapy management he attended.
North County Times has published a Sunday edition column Fighting through chemotherapy: A survivor's tale featuring the story of Harvey Rushfeldt here. It is a inspired story shared by a recovering alcoholic and cancer survivor -- and certainly worth the read. The reporter states that today Rushfeldt is cancer-free, smiling and in the perfect picture of fitness and health, looking forward to getting back down to Baja California, where he likes to go fishing.
