I gamified cancer and survived, now I’m building an app so others can do the same.
It was almost exactly the same size as a Dunlop Pro High Altitude Competition Squash Ball, just uglier and more menacing.
So I started playing with it, from the get go.
‘Mickey’, the name I gave my tumor, had been delivering sharp, excruciating headaches to the back of my neck for months and more reshently gifted me a shlight Shaun Connery shlur and the inability to write common digits and numerals no matter how hard I tried.
The glitches, as I called them, eventually led me to a clever Neurologist, an MRI scan and the disturbing phrase, “Emergency Surgery!”
It was then, within 72 chaotic hours that I came face to face with the World’s Most Terrifying Form. Seriously? Blindness. Loss of Speech. Straight up Death. Holy Shit!
I realised that I needed to start playing, harder than I’ve ever played before in my life.
This is the moment that I believe was a turning point in my survival from Cancer. I realised right then, I had to do something. I couldn’t lose my sight, my speech, my hearing, or my life (number 13 on the WMTF list). I, needed to deal with this thing.
I believe in the mind body connection and I love solving scary problems with creative solutions: It was my job as a creative director, and my talent, to overcome obstacles using creativity, humor and playful thinking.
So surely I could solve this one, using the same techniques I had learned as a creative director and surfer of large waves. And that, was the moment I dove in, speedoless, from the top of the high board, directly into my own healing from cancer. Using simple creative tools, techniques and a playful mindset, I began the greatest ride of my life: Starting with the most urgent: Impending micro brain surgeries and introduction of ‘The Bouncy Brain.’
I began fervently scribbling, freeing my emotions onto the page to prepare my brain for ultimate flexibility, bouncy’ness and Bruce Lee agility. I even had a sound for it: “Gwoinnngg,” it made, as it bounced back into shape, avoiding any damage through it’s newly found innate flexibility. My Bouncy Brain and I were going to work together to get through this thing in one piece, the Mickster unluckily, was on his way out.
I wasn’t supposed to die during surgery, but flexibility demands the embrace of fresh challenges, no matter how unexpected. So although I was urgently woken from being dead on the surgeons table, I think I was the most relaxed person in the room. The surgeons however, seemed to forget that although they were wearing masks, I could still plainly see the panic in their eyes.
‘Gwooooinnnnggg!” I mumbled, before going back under.
I woke up again, this time in ICU. The surgeries were successful. They had removed most of the tumor out of my head and I wasn’t dead, could see, hear and speak.
Awesome!
However, what was left in my head, was malignant.
Pause….
I had brain cancer.
Holy shit.
And so began my creative journey with what remained of Mickey…
Over the years of multiple treatments; traditional and complimentary, I continued to wrap this creative, playful approach over my life with cancer.
I gamified chemo, radiation, the effects on my body, the foods, the fears, the depression, the nausea, the loneliness, my work, my streets. I surfed it, paddled it, ran it, jumped it, scribbled it on walls, boats, bridges and a hapless police vehicle or two. I turned the world around me into a cancer thwarting game.
And I was the director, the designer and the author, of this story.
I didn’t know it at the time, but doctors and psychologists have confirmed that what I was doing was tapping into the science of Psychoneuroimmunology, which is how what you think can affect how your body behaves.
Because I had given myself a role, a job, a range of positive tasks to do, I had shifted myself from just being a helpless patient, into being an active engaged participant in my own healing. Thereby affecting my immune system for the better. My game, was making me stronger… and harder for my cancer to kill.
I liked that. A lot.
I explored this further, researching and looking at how creativity and visual stimulus could support me more and more during this mad intense journey.
It was amazing, science tells us that how and what we think and who we surround ourselves with, are key to our health and happiness. The happier humans are, the stronger their immune systems.
I began exploring a different view of cancer. I wanted patients to overcome their fears and get involved; to start imagining their survival creatively and visually.
I went back to work, but things were changing.
I was now officially in remission from my cancer, but for how long?
I was worried. I felt this whole cancer thing was affecting me as a human. I seemed fearful and anxious a lot the time.
So I did something to help get me out of the funk that comes with the fear that your cancer may come back and drag everyone down again, into chaos.
My Secret Club had a huge effect on me, I was better than before, more engaged with life and vibrant to the max. I was pushing the boundaries somehow. Thanks to cancer, this club existed and newspapers starting contacting me for articles and exhibitions.
Fired up, I started researching how supportive communities can positively affect the human immune system - and then began workshopping how I could harness this insight for cancer patients, in a user friendly way.
When in 2013 I beat cancer, I realised that my life was fundamentally changed. Within two years, I had resigned from my job as creative director of Africa’s largest digital agency, with the express purpose of launching a social enterprise that would gamify cancer and make patients harder to kill.
I called it Cancer Dojo. An entity that would mash creativity, technology, medicine, gaming psychology and psychoneuroimmunology in a purposeful user-friendly way, with the aim of turning helpless patients into active cancer warriors, with purpose.
As soon as I shared my thinking, I was amazed by the response from some of the top doctors, oncologists and professors of science who came out to urge me on with the initiative, inviting me to open the largest Oncology conference in South Africa with my dojo thinking approach.
Spurred by their amazing response, I formalised Cancer Dojo as a social enterprise aimed at increasing the cancer survival rate and began building an app that I could get into the hands of every cancer patient in the world. At no cost to them.
Since then we’ve won numerous awards and I’ve been invited to share my thinking in France, Italy, Spain, Germay, Belgium, Greece, London and New York.
Now our prototype App is in the works and I need the millions of cancer supporters, survivors and their loved-ones around the world to help me raise the funds, to make it a reality.
If my story resonates with you, hit the upvote button and share it with anyone you know!
You can also see more at http://cancerdojo.org/ and contact me at [email protected].
Whoooop, let’s do this!
Note: This article was originally written by Conn Bertish, founder of Cancer Dojo NPO.