How did re-decorating my living room help with my cancer recovery?

 

When I posted an update to my Facebook page the other day about re-decorating my living room and how much it has helped my recovery, I’m sure I had a few of you scratching your heads wondering “why/how??” … because I would’ve had the exact same thought myself. How on earth does re-decorating a living room help aid in the recovery of cancer???

As many of my fellow cancer warriors would know, and anyone who’s been touched by this disease in one way or another, know that cancer isn’t just a physical battle, but it’s just as much a mental battle too.

The human body can heal and it can bounce back from so much trauma, albeit not completely and many of us are left with permanent scars and other ong issues as a result of surgeries and treatments.

However, no one really speaks too much about mental recovery and how it is just as important and just as challenging as your physical recovery. I couldn’t tell you how many times this year my head wasn’t in the right space and that’s what stopped me from doing many things… it wasn’t always the physical restriction but the mental restriction. I couldn’t tell you not because I’m ashamed, I’m in no way ashamed to admit that I have struggled, I think anyone with two cancer diagnosis’ would struggle, but I couldn’t tell you because I simply lost count. I had lost count because the mind and the body constantly wanted different things and it was very damaging and incredibly frustrating not knowing which one to listen to. On one hand, my body wanted to get up and moving but my mind preferred the comfort of my bed, and at one point I was quite OK with being a recluse. But on the other hand, my mind grew sick and tired of being that recluse and I desperately wanted my life back, but my body and the cancer simply wouldn’t allow it. It was a constant battle between the two, and very rarely did they both align and want the same thing

So how did re-decorating my living space help both my mental AND physical recovery? I touched a little on this in one of my live videos on my Facebook page but I will go into a bit more detail here.

Back in September 2013, I purchased and moved into my very own home. I had been renting for several years and decided to take the leap and buy my first home.

Photo: when I just moved in, this is all I was really able to do. Boring.

 

 

Photo: Then Caroline got the ball rolling and brought in a new coffee table set, rug & bits & pieces to make it look more homely.

Unfortunately, just three months after moving in, my first diagnosis shook my world… Stage 3 Bowel Cancer. Things were bad, very bad, to the point where I required three major surgeries (one was an emergency operation on New Year’s Eve – great way to ring in the new year hey!) between December 2013 and March 2014. I hadn’t even fully recovered from one operation before I was being wheeled in for another. I was so unwell I had to move back in with mum and dad and live with them for at least six months. So I only got to enjoy my new home for three months before cancer kicked me out… what a jerk.

It did cross my mind that I may have to consider selling my beloved first home thanks to this insidious disease. I was unable to work, I knew I had a long recovery ahead of me and I knew I had intensive radiotherapy and chemotherapy “to look forward to*” (*sarcasm) in 2014. I was going to use up all my annual leave and all my sick leave pretty quickly, so how would I pay my mortgage? I had a couple friends offer to start up a “Go Fund Me” page, however still to this day, four years after my first diagnosis, I’ve never allowed one. Stubbornness is in my genes, I don’t like asking for or accepting help, especially financially.

To try and cut a long story short, I was able to keep my home and I moved back in shortly before my chemotherapy commenced in June 2014. I spent six months having weekly chemo infusions and I was sure the chemo would kill me before the cancer did. All I can remember is coming home from my chemo infusion every week, parking myself on my recliner and not moving until it was time for bed.

My chemo made me very ill. I think at one stage I had gotten down to a very unhealthy looking 48kg’s. At 167cm tall, I looked like a skeleton. I couldn’t eat, I was pale and lifeless, I felt sick all the time, I had this constant nausea that never went away, not even after taking the most expensive anti-nauseant wafer especially for cancer patients.

So for six long months, I lived on my recliner watching TV. That was all I could manage. The only memories of my living room were those: feeling sick 24/7, certain that I was slowly dying, nauseated, fatigued, lifeless, and just over it. Great memories to start with in a new home hey??

When I finished and recovered from treatment and returned to work, I carried on with my life the best way I knew how, and I was doing a damn good job of it if I do say so myself.

Then my second cancer diagnosis came along in 2016. I needed more surgery, which meant I had to go back to living at my parents place for several months. I returned to my own home again but it wasn’t until September/October 2017 that I really noticed a terrible shift in my wellbeing and thought “I have to do something about this… but what?”. I was still unwell and still in chronic pain so what was I supposed to do? From when I had surgery in November 2016 to October 2017 (yes, almost a year!!) I spent my days in bed. I’d say I was about 95% bed bound for 11-months, only really leaving the house to attend doctors and specialist appointments and my hyperbaric treatment.

When I started to slowly feel myself getting better, I knew I wanted to move out of my bed and into my living room. If not for the sake of my own sanity, but for the sake of my mobility and my neck, back and spine. My body had gotten so used to me laying down and not used to supporting my body weight, that even sitting upright was difficult.

So I decided to completely redecorate my living room and encourage myself to get out of bed and sit up in there and retrain my body to be upright again and not laying down. I wanted to bring in fresh memories, ones that I didn’t associate with cancer and chemo.

Photo: sold the leather suite for something completely different & added a new print. Modern with colour.

 

My best friend got the ball rolling and bought in a new coffee table, rug and other bits and pieces. Then I sold my barely used leather lounge suite to a lovely family, and with that money I purchased something completely different. It opened up my space so much and made it a lot more lighter and brighter. I hung a new print, added a fake plant, new cushions, some wall art and other bits and pieces and I was done… the re-vamp was complete and it looked nothing like how I remember it, and that’s exactly what I needed.

So the recovery here was removing old memories and creating a new space that was modern, had colour, and somewhere I actually wanted to sit in without always thinking about chemo. Four months ago I wouldn’t have been able to sit through a movie, now I can sit through a two hour dinner and a two hour movie back to back!

Recovery starts the moment you wake up and get out of bed. If you’re waking up and never getting out of bed, you’re not going to get anywhere. Yes, I was very ill for a long time and couldn’t physically get out of bed for the majority of 2017, but as soon as I felt I was ready and as soon as I knew I had a nice bright new living room to walk into each morning, my days no longer needed to be spent in bed, and that was the start of my recovery. Soon after that, my regular beach walks commenced, I saw an osteopath once a week for six weeks to realign my posture, and now I’m doing some gentle restorative yoga.

 

It may seem strange to some, that something as simple as a new living space has made such a positive impact on me, but hey it’s worked and that’s all that matters to me.