My last chemo was on May 8th 2018. I expected to walk out of the infusion center elated and feeling complete after going through six months of grueling chemotherapy.
Instead I almost threw up in the parking garage.
When I had my lumpectomy on May 23rd I was sure I was done with cancer. I still had residual effects from six months of chemo, but, hey, that was in the rear view mirror. Instead I got the phone call four days later that my margins were not clear and I would have to have another surgery.
When I walked out of the last of my 15 radiation treatments on August 8th, the world was at my feet and I could move on with life. Instead I would end up in the emergency room with a four-day Pain Level of 10 in my radiated breast that narcotics could not ease.
When I had the last of my targeted chemos on December 26th I saw a blank January grid on the calendar with no doctor appointments for the first time in 14 months. Instead I would be back in on December 27th getting my port removed.
Following removal of that port I was ready to be done with Cancer. When Andrew the scheduler at the oncologist’s office wanted me to come back in three weeks, smack in the middle of my clear-calendar-January, I politely but firmly said No Thank You (which sounded more like Hell to The NO when the words tumbled off my tongue). I needed a break. I needed to stop. I needed to heal.
I needed to find out what was next.
In all honesty, it was quite scary. When I felt a pain twinge, I wasn’t headed in to the cancer schedule every three weeks anymore. I would actually have to call and make an appointment. I had to re-learn what my body was telling me, and it was telling me A LOT after all those months and jabs and infusions and rays and scalpels.
I was cranky (my husband would say Bitch, but not to my face for obvious reasons).
I felt like I lost my identity. I wasn’t the Cancer Person at work anymore (which meant all the meal donations dried up, leaving my husband to figure out what to cook for dinner). I wasn’t the nurse-charmer who would come at me to access my (hopefully lidocained) port. No one was holding me and patting me on the back while I ugly-cried when the doctor would walk into the room (or pretty much anyone – I was a total tear faucet during all my cancer months). I wasn’t going to Costco every time we went to the Cancer center, walking around, stoned on anesthesia, with an ice pack in my bra, giving everyone there the I-know-something-you-don’t-know look.
My Cancer Patient identity was gone.
Even though I relished the idea of no longer having cancer, of being in active treatment, I wasn’t sure who I was. Was I the person who would have a recurrence in a year, four years, ten years, twenty years? Was I the person who would live forever with no recurrence? Was I a Cancer Teacher? Was I a Closet Cancer Survivor? Do I share my story or will it piss off, guilt or encourage another Cancer Person?
Eight ways I coped with After Cancer Treatment:
- Humor
- Yoga/Movement/Walks
- Physical Therapy
- Nutrition
- Patience with Myself
- Patience with Others
- Writing
- Time
It took a full year to get back to being comfortable in my own skin. To know who I am. I am not necessarily who I was before I felt the lump and was later called back to the imaging center on November 30th, confirming my suspicions. I am a different version of me.
And that’s okay.
