The Glasgow GP opened up about how she had hit ‘rock bottom’ when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
BBC’s Morning Live doctor Punam Krishan has given an emotional update about what she has learned in the six months after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Having been “shaken” by the life changing news at first, she bravely underwent treatment in January.
The Glasgow-born GP has since gone back to work following the treatment as she shared with her followers on social media she is on the mend. In a new update on what the diagnosis has taught her, Dr Krishan shared that finding out she had cancer made her feel like she was being “hit by a bus”.
Taking to Instagram, the 42-year-old is seen to be sitting in her car after her shift. In the caption of the video, she wrote: “Six months ago, I learned something I wish Iād known earlier. Control is mostly an illusion. Today is not.”
Reflecting on her journey with cancer, she said: “I’ve just finished clinic for the day and I wanted to share something with you. I’m going to take you back to the moment I was told I had cancer, because I think that there is something in that moment that could be helpful to us all.
“And it’s something that I really wish I had known before that day. Something that maybe we can practise now so that we don’t have to wait for something awful to teach it to us.”
Opening up about the moment she received the diagnosis, Dr Krishan described it as the “worst day” of her life, reports the Mirror. She added: “Like literally rock bottom. It felt like being hit by a bus and I still fully can’t describe it. But in that second, every ounce of control I ever thought I had, it just disappeared.
“All the plans ahead, the job titles, the roles I carried-the things that I thought mattered so much suddenly, everything felt completely irrelevant. It genuinely felt like my heart had stopped.
“And in a moment like that, when everything feels frozen, the only thing that you’re actually left in control of is your next breath. That’s it. Just the next breath.”
The Strictly star, who describes herself as a “huge control freak”, shared that she struggled to grasp the idea that she doesn’t have complete control of her future. However, she realised that this doesn’t stop life from continuing to move along.
She said: “But then tomorrow came, and then there was another tomorrow. And although those days were so unbelievably hard, we got through them by focusing only on the next breath and the next step. Not the whole week, not the next six months or year-just the next thing.”
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Opening up about how she lives now, she said: “Six months on, hand on heart, I don’t live the same way that I used to. I don’t plan too far ahead anymore. I don’t try to micromanage everything because the real truth is that we don’t actually know what is round the corner for us.
“And yet, we live, we schedule, and we stress as if we do. All you really have here is today, and then the next thing that you can do within that. And strangely, that has been incredibly liberating for me. It didn’t come easily, but it’s become my philosophy now, my way of life.”
While daily routines such as work and showing up for your friends and family are things you can control, Dr Krishan urged her followers to loosen their grip on the bigger things.
She concluded: “I mean, take it from me. Don’t wait until something stops you in your tracks to realise that we don’t have as much control as we think we do.
“So, with that in mind, just do today. Enjoy today. Rinse it for all that it is giving you, especially all the wee ordinary bits. And just let go of all the rest.”
