November 8, 2023
Dai Henwood was diagnosed with metastatic bowel cancer (bowel cancer that has spread to other places in the body) in 2020. After coming to terms with the diagnosis privately, Dai went public with it early in 2023
Last month, Dai spoke bravely and openly about the emotional rollercoaster of his diagnosis and chemo to Angelina Grey on the ‘Mental as Anything’ podcast.
Dai explains he felt so much anger in the beginning, especially since he had been sober for years.
“I was so angry when I was diagnosed… I’d given up alcohol; I’d got my sh*t together.”
He often felt resentment towards other people for their lifestyle choices, questioning, “Why am I dealing with this?” but after self-reflection, that changed. “Then I realised, I don’t know what they are going through; they might be going through things. I had to dial that back and deal with the anger.”
When asked by Angelina how he navigates his mental health during his chemo, Dai said, “It’s like trying to get a weed out of a garden path with a sledgehammer; you kill the weed, but you do heaps of damage to the path.”
Over time, he has learnt to be more kind to himself, which he admits is not easy and built up an emotional toolbox.“It is like…the worst hangover of your life for five days, which is so hard to deal with. Learning to be kind to myself during that is the hard thing…I try to talk to myself like I am talking to a friend.”
It has taken Dai a long time to process those negative feelings. “Realising anger is just an emotion, and it is just as valid as happiness; don’t hide from it, just accept it.” He now focuses on meditation and mindfulness and imagines the negative thoughts are clouds, removing himself from it. “You are not your thoughts; they are just electrical impulses… Each thought comes and goes; sometimes it’s going to be really cloudy, and sometimes it’s going to be blue sky. Those are just clouds; they are not me.”
Dai talks about how up and down the journey is saying, “The whole cancer journey is such a mental trip, mindfulness is such a buzzword, and [my] cancer journey has forced me to live in the moment.
“When I first got diagnosed with cancer, I went for a walk, and I was crying, and then I looked up, and everything was so colourful, it was like the diagnosis had crystallised how beautiful the world actually was… That set me on the path of going; actually, nature is my calm place.”
“Now, for me, it is leaning into the happy times.”
Dai has even timed his surgeries around the rugby league schedule so he could have a game to watch after it. Focusing on something to look forward to, for him, was the games. Angelina adds, “It’s like you’ve found a new lease on life.”
“My mantra from the get-go is optimism won’t cure me, but pessimism will kill me.
“I think about it [death] every day, I meditate on death, and I don’t have any fear around it; it is such a hard thing to think about…you can’t live in fear of it.”