When the big day finally arrived, the day I could say I’d been in breast cancer remission for five years, I wasn’t as ecstatic as I thought I’d be.
It turned out to be a regular Tuesday, and I had to take my kids to school and go to work. There was no fanfare. I was here, I was healthy, and I had to get on with my daily life.
The reality is that breast cancer fighters and survivors are often labeled as inspirational warriors. We fight the battle “like a girl,” with pink boxing gloves on, our heads bald, but our grins wide. However, the reality is that there are so many hard things about surviving cancer that no one warned me about.
You never “get over” having cancer
After my first breast cancer battle, I wound up choosing to do EMDR, a specialized type of trauma therapy. I wasn’t officially diagnosed, but was strongly suspected to have PTSD as a result of my initial diagnosis. After several sessions of EMDR, I started to feel safer, more confident, and less like a cancer patient..
Though I fared better mentally the second time around, about three years after my first breast cancer diagnosis, the cancer shadow is always lurking in the background, sometimes popping up when I least expect it.
One day, I pulled up to my favorite coffee shop to grab a coffee via the drive-thru. As I waited, one of the coffee timers started going off, and I immediately started panicking. This is because the timer sounded eerily similar to the timers on the IV poles at my chemo infusion center.
I don’t know when these fears or memories may pop up, but it’s always a possibility lurking in the background. I sometimes wonder if this is something I’ll eventually get over, but for now, I know I have to live with it.
Cancer continues to be expensive
Fighting cancer is financially draining, even with excellent health insurance.
I had dozens of lab, surgery, exam, chemo, heart scan, and radiation appointments in the span of about 18 months. Even after hitting my out-of-pocket max, we had to pay for the gas (and wear and tear on our car) to travel to all those appointments. Additionally, I didn’t work for about six months while I was in chemo, and then proceeded with thirty-three rounds of radiation.
Even after active treatment days are over, there are still all the follow-up scans, exams, and labs, and those add up.
My greatest fear is recurrence
Every survivor knows that our greatest fear, one that’s a reality for some, is that the cancer can come back. Every time I have basic labs drawn or go for my yearly CT scan, all my old fears come rushing back, and my brain begins to play the what-if game.
Likewise, I worry about how we will pay for more treatment, how another battle would impact my children, and what I would do for work.
Survivor’s guilt is real
Five years is a major milestone in surviving cancer, and I am certainly very grateful to have made it this far. However, the longer I’ve been a survivor, the more thrivers, fighters, and survivors I’ve chosen to follow on social media, as well as the more women I’ve befriended in real life.
The reality is, the cancer does come back for some. Is there some secret relief that this time, it’s not me? Yes. But it’s also heartbreaking to watch the battles of others, including those whose souls leave the world from this terrible disease.
Society wants me to wear pink and continue to be a beacon of light and hope as someone who “won” the battle. I am certainly happy that the day I prayed for is here, an anniversary that seemed unattainable years ago. Yet, I continue to understand that two things can be true at the same time. I can be thankful for survivorship and simultaneously heartbroken at all cancer took and still takes from me.
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