It doesn’t take long before cancer begins to challenge your normal behavior. There will be internal changes only you will detect and external changes that become noticeably apparent.

Halfway through my first chemo treatment, I began to lose my hair. I look terrible in hats. My goal was to find a really cool hat. I settled on a newsboy cap, which is the coolest hat I’ve ever worn.

That hat became a milestone. It was a constant reminder I had cancer. However, it also gave me a small victory in conquering the consequences of my hair loss. Ironically, my hair grew back and I don’t need to wear that hat anymore. I consider that a battle won.

Cancer likes to make its presence known by the way it affects the body in which it dwells. It hurts, it’s ugly and what it does to you physically is an assault on your dignity. It will strip away one layer of your defenses after another in its relentless quest to consume you.

It stymies you. Simple tasks are not so simple anymore. Unscrewing a bottle cap or even tearing a wrapper off a piece of candy is laborious at best — if you can accomplish it at all.

The external changes are wired into how you process those changes internally. Cancer doesn’t fight fair. It uses your physical weakness to attack both your emotional and intellectual points of balance. If you begin to weaken and feel sorry for yourself, you will be joined with the usual characters that love pity parties. You know them well.

Misery and agony are cancer’s messengers, constantly reminding you of the pain. Anger is there; he likes to remind you how you should feel because you are sick. The “woe is me” and “why me?” twins are always there to remind you how unfair life is.

You have dealt with these emotions before, but beware of the one who just crashed the party.

Remorse creeps ever so slowly into this equation. It festers and grows unnoticed as you experience every other emotion before you. It is the most insidious and self-harming emotion that can afflict a human being.

Webster’s defines remorse as “a gnawing distress arising from a sense of guilt for past wrongs.”

When you are bombarded with uncertainty because of what is happening to you; when you are being attacked by this formidable foe whose mere presence plays havoc not only with your body but equally your mind, you are in danger of free-falling into the abyss with a dreaded sense of despair surrounding you. It is then that all thoughts are now focused on you.

It is this moment when you come to the realization that you may have wronged others, that you are treating others poorly. That your life didn’t go the way you intended it because you harbor guilt for transgressions you committed in the past. This is your “life flashing before your eyes” moment.

This is what cancer does to you. It wants you to lose hope. It wants you to feel remorse, because remorse is defeat.

It wants to guilt you into thinking you deserve this disease. Well, you don’t. No one does.   

If remorse is plaguing you, it has to be unraveled. Identify who you wronged. Determine whether an apology is viable or if you can do something to set the matter right. Can you begin to work through whatever guilt is preventing you from peace?

Luke 17:19: “And He said to him, ‘Stand up and go: your faith has made you well.’”

Whether you are a believer or not, the brevity of this verse tells us to deal with what we need to deal with. Stand up to the situation and resolve it. If your faith is not in God, put faith in yourself that you can stand up to cancer and not be consumed by remorseful thoughts that siphon the strength you need to survive.   

Come to peaceful terms with the balance of your life. Now is the time for you to reach out to those who need to be touched. Now is the time for you to allow others to reach out to you as well. Embrace them, let their love enrich your life and dwell not in remorse, but in the kindness and power of forgiveness.

Tony Verdini is president of Old Saratoga Inc. and a cancer patient. This is the ninth installment in a series of columns detailing his experience with cancer to offer hope and practical advice to patients and their loved ones.