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The 'Superpower' Helping Nigel Latta Deal With Incurable Cancer
Psychologist and TV presenter Nigel Latta is used to helping others. But the tables turned after an "incurable" gastric cancer diagnosis last year.
Latta, an author and documentary producer is known for his deep dives into the psyches of criminals, troubled teens and parents, and for tackling gnarly social issues like obesity, poverty, and child abuse.
He told Summer Times' host Anna Thomas he's doing well - although there's "a little bit of cancer, probably more than I'd like to be honest."
"If I could swap this thing for being bankrupt and flipping burgers somewhere for minimum wage, I'd do it … if I could do that and be guaranteed 30 more years with [my wife] Natalie, I'd do that in a second. And you know, if I said some dumb thing and I got cancelled, I don't care, like I'd find something else to do.
"Almost everything that we worry about doesn't matter. The stuff that matters is time with the people that you care about. And it's like, I know that's the most obvious advice and when you're not living under this, when you're not kind of faced with that being taken away, you just take it for granted … holding the hand of the person that you love - that's all I want to do."
Despite being told he has six to 12 months left to live, Latta remains optimistic, joking that at least he doesn't have to worry "if" he has cancer when he's in pain.
He says optimism is a "superpower" because research has shown it does affect survival rates and the immune system.
He revealed his diagnosis on social media in September last year and has undergone a range of therapies including chemotherapy (which he says he's "tolerated" pretty well), radiation, and drugs targeting the receptors. There have been bad days but it's the support of his wife, Natalie, that gets him back on track, he says.
"For people who are out there who are struggling, who've asked for a number [on their years left to live] and were given a scary number, there was a great paper by a guy called Stephen Jay Gould, called 'The Median Isn't the Message' where he talks about how he was given eight months to live because he had a particular type of cancer.
"When he started digging into the stats, what you find is that that 50 percent of the people will die within that first eight months, but the remaining 50 percent he called it the long tail. And so what that means is for the remaining 50 percent, they can live much longer because different things apply. The 50 percent who die may be older. They may have more [cancer] spread. They may have more this, more that.
"If you're on the other side of the coin, if you're optimistic, and if you're exercising, if you're younger, if you're doing all those sorts of things, then you can live for a long time. And so being in that long tail, that's where I am. That's where I want to be in, that golden glow."
People are incredibly resilient to crisis, but the overuse of trigger warnings is sending the opposite message, he says.
"What a flouncy, silly, stupid world that we live in.
"I remember at my step-daughter's school, a bunch of girls went to the principal and they wanted a book taken off the reading list … it was a novel about poverty, and they wanted it taken off the list because it was upsetting for people to read about poverty, and it's like, well, I think that was the point of the book, you know?
"Social media is the stupidest thing ever really, everyone jumps on everyone for everything, assumes offence on behalf of other people who aren't offended in the first place.
"I spent 30 years working with people who have been through all kinds of stuff, and sometimes resilience is being able to get out of bed in the morning and have some Weetbix, you know, and not be crushed by all of the things that have happened to you in your life up 'til then."
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