With a cancer diagnosis, you’d assume that the doctors are going to know it all. You look to them for any ease that they can possibly give you so that you sleep at night. What no one will ever tell you, is that this thing, cancer, never ends; even when they tell you that you’re a survivor. You can break it down to statistics and those aren’t and will never be 0%.
Don’t get me wrong, hearing those words, “you’re cancer free” was one of the happiest days of my life. When I received my cancer diagnosis, I told myself that I was going to be a fighter. Not a day went by where I wasn’t fighting, but I am tired. It’s my time to rest.
I realize how dark this sounds, but it is my reality. I lived, breathed, thought, fought all things cancer for 7 months and then one day, I woke up a survivor because they told me that’s what I was. Im sorry, but my brain just doesn’t work like that. This sounds selfish, I understand that. Please, no judgement. No one can teach you how to shift your mind from the paranoia of having cancer to one day waking up and it just isn’t there anymore. But yet, I am walking around as living proof it was. Emotionally drained, physically drained, weakened immune system, scars that seem to be head to toe; the permanent scars that stare me in the face every time I am standing in the mirror.
All these things and more reiterate in my head that the end, continued. Cancer is never over. All this aside, I have never felt more like a survivor. The thing that changed is now I am an alert survivor. I am constantly expecting the unexpected, questioning statistics and wondering what the next adventure will be that I am an outlier on.
My life has changed. I’ve changed. I chose to look at this as a positive realization though. Cancer didn’t happen to me, it happened for me. It slowed me down during a time in my life where I was way over my head. Pushing myself to the absolute limit with little to no sleep. It obstructed my blinded eating habits and coffee addiction. It opened my heart to a greater love that I never knew existed.
Breast of all, cancer has opened the doors to a whole new BEAUTIFUL community. Amazing women that all come together to support each other through some of the hardest and most sensitive decisions we will ever have to make about our well-being. It is incredible.
As I continue to heal, I slowly start to mold this awareness and supportive foundation of what I can do to give back. My goal is to never let another (God forbid) 23 year old (any age for that matter) feel the way I did sitting in the breast center that day.
This is not the end, it is only the end, continued…
