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“Surviving” Life After Breast Cancer
Breast Cancer | Last Active: Sep 18, 2021 | Replies (60)Comment receiving replies
@sunflower012- Welcome to Connect. It sounds as if you have been having a terrible time. I am a lung cancer survivor and I can really relate to the mental fog and memory loss that surrounds us with chemo/immunotherapy. It took quite a long time for me to get as much back as I was going to. I don't think that it all came back, especially memories. When someone does remind me that I did something or was someplace my surprise is always accompanied by a pleasant surprised of experiencing it all again. lol
At first no one's use to dealing with cancer. Cancer is like a freight train. I comes at you with full speed and it tramples you, leaving you to scrape up what is left.
There are so many phases that we go through after our "treatments" that it's difficult to pin point, at least for me, which one was worse. I know that losing your breasts is much different than losing lung lobes. Mine are not visible, but the sense of loss is still there even if no one can see it. I felt myself pull back from everyone but family with each of my 4 cancers and I don't know if my self isolation helped my recovery or not. During that time I had a chance, like many cancer patients, to exam life's questions and where I fit in. To me the point of surviving was that I had survived and I owed it to live my best in honor and in memory of all those who didn't make it. I felt that I needed to give hope, just by my survival and to tell my story so that others might do the same.
I do not think that the point of surviving has to be a complicated secret. Keeping things as simple as can be when times are tough might help. Does any of this makes sense?
Replies to "@sunflower012- Welcome to Connect. It sounds as if you have been having a terrible time. I..."
@merpreb
I can so relate to your reaction of self-isolation but perhaps for different reasons. When going through chemo, I was focused on self-preservation -- driving to-and-from treatments, shopping, going to the gym, paying bills. Yes, people offered to drive me, but that would mean having to deal with their issues (infusions lasted 4 hours each week and they would not be so enthused about helping after their first experience with that). And I found that many of their questions and comments were anxiety-producing, especially the friends who had had cancer and only needed a round of radiation. They were totally clueless about hormone receptors and HER2. (This was true even for members of my local Cancer Community group.) Often they wanted to influence me with their minimal treatment choices or their friends' choices, as if one could compare diagnoses and treatments. I had done a lot of research on my diagnosis, and they had done none on theirs... and they wanted to tell me how they were now "cancer-free," and I knew that I could never make that claim under the circumstances.
The majority of my friends didn't want to acknowledge my cancer journey at all. The subject was terrifying to them and so I kept it to myself. They also made the assumption that, when the chemo was completed, that I should be able to jump right back into business-as-usual. (It's been nearly two years, and I'm still wrestling with chemo brain and the crippling after effects of chemo-induced neuropathy.) There was only one friend, living in a state about 800 miles away, who truly had a handle on it all because of her science background. God bless her.
So, yes... self-isolation can be a reasonable reaction to The Emperor of All Maladies.
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Merry, thank you for your sensitivity to each of us. You have certainly gone through much more than I have. My cancer was found and treated at an early stage 2 breast cancer. Because it was found early, I needed only radiation. I was spared Chemo. and am very grateful for that. However, regardless of ‘stage’ of severity, or chances of survival; just having cancer in one’s body is so intense and frightening. I’m weary of being told that ‘I’m so lucky’. I fully agree, Yes, I AM fortunate that it wasn’t worse. But how can a diagnosis of cancer, in any form, really ‘be lucky’. In reality, I feel like I’m just waiting for it to be found again somewhere else in my body. I feel like, if my immune system didn’t find and destroy the cancer cells in the early phase of breast cancer, why would I have confidence that cancer isn’t lurking, unknown, somewhere else in my body? I am finding that I just keep my mouth shut, I don’t talk about, or express those fears, because... after all... ‘I’m lucky’: And I should “just get over it”... I am soooooo grateful for this group of women here on this web site! Thank you to each of you for your understanding.