Survivorship
The stories and experiences are written by people after cancer treatments. These stories are written for those learning how to get back to work, college or just trying to be themselves again. Just getting past treatments isn’t enough, it is surviving and thriving that is key to being you again.
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How the Berating Surgeon Lost Her Power Over Me
Before the vaccine was available to the layperson, when the CDC was recommending double masking in public, in January of 2021, I attended my diagnostic breast biopsy alone. Double masked and still carrying the weight of my postpartum anxiety that caused a debilitating fear of germs, I entered the small, stuffy waiting room, forced to sit very close to my nervous comrades.
Read More...Year Three: Mentally I’m… I Don’t Know
Who could ever forget 2020? Certainly not me. It will go down in history as a catastrophic year full of loss, grief, anguish, and unpredictability. If it wasn’t you yourself, you knew someone directly affected by the COVID-19 fallout: illness, job loss, struggling to stay afloat, etc. 2020 was an inescapable year. And I was no different…but for a different reason.
Read More...Meeting Myself for the First Time
Boundaries—such a scary term and concept for someone like me who was raised without a solid understanding of healthy boundaries. I grew up being the perpetual “go-to” person in my family and in so many other areas of my life. I was always there for everyone else, regardless of my own needs. This was my way of life for 28 years, until cancer intervened, forcing me to reevaluate everything in my life.
Read More...A Way With Words
You never know what you’ll find out about yourself when you put it down in writing; you can learn so much. You can say things you wouldn’t dream of saying out loud. You can be frank with yourself in ways that you can’t be with your partner, your mother, your best friend. You can tell the truth.
Read More...The Language of Cancer: “Stay Strong” and Other Meaningless Platitudes
Navigating the language of cancer is one side effect of diagnosis that no doctor or checklist mentions. A cancer diagnosis becomes an exploration of identity, one that seems to evolve constantly. Survivor versus patient. Warrior versus, well, we’re still looking for an alternate care-forward word. That’s the crux of it.
Read More...Loneliness Creeps In But Can’t Stay
Have you ever felt as if you were surrounded by people but still felt like you were alone? I never would have thought that I would feel that way but I did when I was told I had cancer. Those who haven’t experienced a cancer diagnosis will never understand.
Read More...Sex and Relationships
How exactly do you tell someone, “Oh, by the way, my eggs got blasted from chemo therapy, and I will never be able to have my own kids”? And when exactly is the best time to bring this up? First date? Third date? Right before or in the middle of getting busy?
Read More...Cancer and A Broken Heart
I spent most of my life before cancer on the outside. I was an observer rather than a participant. Much of that was the severe anxiety I was drowning in, but that’s not all of it. All of the things I enjoy most could be easily considered documenting. I’m a writer. I’m a photographer. I am even something of a musician.
Read More...Cancer is Cancer
Cancer is cancer. It doesn’t matter whether it’s below the belt or above the belt. The toxicity around word usage related to it is a problem. People get, and too often die, following silence and embarrassment from lack of validation either from themselves, others, or both.
Read More...Reconstruction: A Never-Ending Story
My mastectomy scars started out as the midnight blue of my surgeon’s pen, deftly scrawling the path of his scalpel on the white canvas of my chest. After he came, drew, and left, I found myself in front of the mirror over the sink of the pre-op bathroom, staring at the roadmap he’d sketched. I was met with an array of curved and straight lines; dictating symmetry, outlining what would be kept and not kept, and measuring how long, how wide, and how far down.
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