AFTER CANCER: WHAT IF I AM RELUCTANT TO TAKE PRESCRIBED MEDICATION?
It is common for people who have finished cancer treatment to be reluctant to take any more medications. You may find yourself declining your doctor’s offered prescriptions for the control of symptoms: you would rather deal with symptoms than take any more medications. Or you may forget to take your medicines even though you never forgot during your cancer treatment. After you did so much to get well, it seems inconsistent for you to turn down an opportunity for symptom control, enhanced recovery, or improved chance for durable remission. There are a number of possible explanations for this reluctance to take medicines.
Taking medicine is a crucial part of cancer therapy. It is perhaps the first time you took so many or such potent medications. If you want to create distance from your patienthood, you may avoid, consciously or subconsciously, anything that reminds you of being a cancer patient. This reluctance to take medication can work to your disadvantage, delaying your healing, prolonging side effects, allowing preventable problems to occur or progress. Instead of seeing your medicines as signs of being sick, see them as tools for speeding your recovery from patienthood.
Reluctance to take medication is often one aspect of the bigger issue of control. During cancer treatment you had little or no control over the type, timing, dosing, or administration of your medications, let alone whether you could skip a dose. After cancer treatment you can regain a sense of control by refusing medication or forgetting to take doses. You can afford to refuse or forget because it is not life threatening. This way of achieving a sense of control is often self-defeating. The little control you gain in determining what medications you take is offset by the loss of control of your symptoms or by a possible delay in your recuperation. It may help to see your choosing to take offered prescriptions as an act of control over your recovery.
See taking medicines as one way to regain control over your health.
It is also common to fear the short- or long-term effects of medications and treatments. These fears and anxieties must be suppressed during treatment for active cancer, in order to get through the treatment. After cancer treatment any additional medicine may be seen as just too much for your body and may trigger undue anxiety related to overall anxiety about the toxicity of your prior treatments. Discuss with your doctor or nurse the risks of your medications. Knowledge will help you put the risks in perspective and make a wise decision, balancing risks and benefits.
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