What is the difference between quitting and stopping?
As regular readers know, I’ve been on a health journey that started on March 3rd this year with a colon cancer diagnosis. Surgery was March 31st, then the first of four chemo cycles began May 19th. Today is day 8 of 14 of the final cycle of 10 tablets a day, but I stopped mid way through Day 6.
I’ve found it mentally interesting that I’m consciously putting toxic drugs into a healthy body to kill off any possible remaining cancer cells from the successful surgery I had in March. It has been interesting, but mentally I’ve been comfortable with this, but physically things have become worse with each cycle. This time around, by day 5 m body was screaming at me to stop, the toxicity I was feeling (impossible to explain if you haven’t done this) was too much. I had to stop, I couldn’t face the tablets anymore as I was alreay feeling toxic to the max and one more pill would have been too much.
This was an obvious call to make and I have taken 85% of the tablets (249g in total, 498 pills each of 500mg!) for the whole programme so can absolutely rationalise that I have made a real effort to do what it takes to reduce the risks of recurrence.
And yet…my internal dialogue is that “I am not a quitter”, so that was an internal monologue for a day or so. In sports and other areas of life, I have always pushed through then things get hard, Having played Basketball and then Squash to a high level, winning was often a matter of pushing harder at the end than your opponent.
This then reminds me that, after finishing competing at squash, I got into cycling and then got quite addicted to spin classes. I was really fit and used to drive myself really, really hard in those classes. One day, though, in the middle of a really tough ride (my heart rate averaged over 180bpm and I was in my mid-40s at the time), I just stopped. I then sat up, sat there, drank some water, then calmly got off my bike and walked out of the studio to walk around outside to cool off. This was so not like me that the instructor sought me out and asked if I was ok. I told them I was indeed ok, my body had simply told me to stop.
Now, as I thought this current situation through, I am clear that I am stopping as my body is telling me it is the right thing to do, which is not the same as quitting. Quitting to me, as it relates to one’s physical body, is a mental thing, stopping is a physical one.
Stopping is not the same as quitting. Yes, it felt to me when I stopped that I was quitting, ie giving up on a commitment to see something through to the end. Instead, I stopped, listened to my body and changed course. I am committed to doing what I can to lead a long and healthful life, and right now I chose to stop chemo.
For yourself, can you think of examples where you have stopped and also where you have quit something?