Hearing the words "You have cancer," can suddenly move an abstract inevitability to a very real possible outcome in the blink of an eye. For many women, such as myself, breast cancer is the first close brush with mortality. Suddenly, one's sense of safety, security and optimism about life and the future is shaken.
Uncertainty seems to dwell at the core of these feelings, and can persist for years to come. Even when there is no recurrence, the fear persists, affecting us in odd ways long after treatment is over. Many women live with the long lasting fear of breast cancer recurrence, the worry that awakens them in the middle of the night before a doctor's appointment, the misery of waiting for test results, fear of being diagnosed with metastatic disease, or when the friend she made during chemo dies of breast cancer.
When treatment ends, the sense of physical compromise that began with diagnosis can begin to resolve, at last. Gradually, the nausea fades and the energy returns. Hair begins to grow back and the surgical scars are beginning to fade. Radiation burns are starting to heal. Doctors start to tell you that it's now time to focus on family and work and getting back to normal now. If only it were that easy. The truth is, many of us find ourselves profoundly changed by our diagnosis and struggling to come to terms with what has happened to us.
We still have questions that remain unanswered, and fears that keep us up at night. Even after hair and fingernails grow back and reconstructive surgery has been completed, we may still be feeling emotionally fragile. Our bodies our psyches are different than they were, and we need time, sometimes lots of time, to make sense of the changes and what they mean to us.
It is the treatments, not the disease that make you sick so naturally an end to treatment can feel like a big step down the road toward feeling well again. Clearly, the end of treatment marks a transition not a closure. For many women, especially those with higher risks of recurrence, breast cancer remains an intimate and ongoing concern. It confronts us in the mirror daily, affects how we feel in our bodies, appears in our dreams and ambushes us as we approach our follow up oncology visits especially before each PET scan.
By far my strongest fear was, now that treatment was over, nothing stood between me and the threat of recurrence. With the end of treatment my family and friends found it to be a cause for celebration, while for me I had mixed feelings.
When we are diagnosed we are suddenly faced with our own mortality, which we might not have given much thought to until then. For a while we are cocooned in a surreal world of doctors
