[2023-01-04] The first 100 days
I wasn't obligated to undergo radiation therapy after surgery for perianal skin cancer, but after receiving the results of my surgical pathology report and the information provided by the radiation oncologist to whom I was referred, I decided that radiation was right for me. It would allow me to proactively deal with the precancerous cells that remained after surgery rather than wait for those cells to become cancerous and potentially do additional damage, requiring even more severe interventions.
When I made the decision to undergo radiation therapy, I didn't fully understand the treatment's side effects—how painful they would be and how long they would last. Still, even knowing what I know now, I would have made the same decision. I don't like sitting around waiting for a potentially worse outcome when I have a viable option in front of me. I believe in preventive medicine.
Significant decisions often lead to a period that is more difficult than the status quo. A simple analogy for this is cleaning out a closet. When I decide that I can't live one more day with a messy storage area, I pull everything out of the closet and start to inventory, discard and organize its remaining contents. Many times, I have stopped in the middle of this process and asked myself, "What have I done?" Sometimes, it takes more than a day to finish the job. But little by little, the chaos gives way to order, and I'm left with a space that is better than it was before I started.
I have a term for those first few moments, days or—in the case of big adjustments—weeks: I call it the messy middle. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, speaks about the first 100 days. In a recent social media post, Clear wrote:
Major life changes—moving to a new city, starting a new job, ending a relationship, getting married, having kids, etc—will often make life harder for the first 100 days before improving.
Not always true, but it's a reminder that early struggle doesn't mean it was a bad choice.
This was true for radiation. Some 100 days after my radiation treatment began, I was still experiencing discomfort, but it was much less than it had been during and just after my therapy concluded.
Tomorrow will be the one-year anniversary of the start of radiation. I've improved immensely since then, which includes experiencing greater peace of mind, knowing that I did what I could to protect my health.
Someone asked me recently, "Will this get better?" I reassured them that it would, pointing out past challenges they had faced and surmounted. I didn't diminish what they were feeling or push them to ignore negative emotions to focus on the future.
It's always OK to feel down in the messy middle. However, even in those moments, it can be helpful to remind ourselves that most personal challenges get better with time—sometimes much better than they were before the change.
