Wade Mortenson
The first step is to quit listening to anyone who puts a number on the years you have left in your body. One of the most important things anyone, who has been diagnosed with a life threatening disease, can do is to maintain a positive attitude! It never ceases to amaze me how crippling a person’s attitude can be to their health and well being! I have experienced financial stress developing into low back pain and I’ve watched grief over someone else’s illness turn into an allergy and asthma attack. My own experience of developing thyroid cancer is one of the most obvious examples of disease caused by not addressing the root issue.
Back in the 90′s I was a police officer in Anaheim, California. I had a number of experiences necessitating the development of mechanisms that would allow me to repress my emotions and still be able to fulfill my duties during my ten year career. Unfortunately it becomes difficult to shut these repressive mechanisms off. For example my father suffered from bipolar disorder all of his adult life. After numerous cycles of getting on medication, which helped him greatly, and then going off the medication he eventually hung himself on July, 1st 2000. I was able to fly from California to Wisconsin, clean out his house, arrange and attend his funeral and be back to work on July 6th all without shedding a single tear. It didn’t take long for my inability to express myself to literally come bubbling up to the surface. In July of the following year, I was scheduled to have a biopsy of a lump I found on the front of my throat. Continue reading
