The Impossibility of Moving On

I know it has been months since I have written and for that I am sorry. The blog has little interaction so it is easy for me to rationalize that no one is reading it, therefor it is fine to step away. However, it would seem that is not the case since I have received quite a few emails asking if I am okay. For those of you that reached out, thank you, but more importantly I appreciate hearing that this blog has helped people navigate their own diagnosis or that of a loved one.

One of the biggest reasons I have been quiet is that I have had a hard time navigating life after cancer. I had hoped that once I got a clean scan showing no evidence of disease that my life would go back to normal (normal defined as life before the first cancer diagnosis). Rationally I know that my life before cancer is something that I will never get back. I am not that person any longer and those that have stuck by me through all of this are changed too. There is a spontaneity that I can’t seem to recapture. I feel like I have lost my innocence.

Getting cancer miraculously qualifies you to join a select group of people. No one wants to be in the group, but once there, you never want to leave it because the women you meet are amazing. Since April I have lost two friends from this horrific disease and had two others have reoccurrences that are stage IV. Each time has set me back a bit in trying to move forward. I question, why them and not me, or why them and not someone else? There is no answer to this question, I am not sure there will ever be. This is something that we, as people living after cancer, have to get strong enough to handle. Each time I think it is going to be easier, less traumatizing, but isn’t. As I said before, the innocence is lost, I now know that this can happen to any one of us, at any time. That knowledge is hard to accept and live with.

There is also a pretty significant election taking place in USA. For someone that is pretty unpolitical (I hate them, so much) I have suddenly become very passionate about them. Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act, allows me to not be turned away from my health insurance. Right now our President is trying to remove this. I watch a lot of news because of this one issue. No matter which party you stand with the bottom line is that this will be voted on by the Supreme Court in a matter of weeks. That means I could possibly be denied life saving medication. This also means that those GoFund me accounts, are going to be jamming our newsfeeds because us cancer patients are not going to be able to afford the medicine we need. More than anything this is big reason why I have not posted. I am scared for my life about this one issue. My husband, God bless him, swears that no politician would ever allow this to happen because there are millions of American’s that have pre-existing conditions, but I seriously can’t sleep at night over this. I really, really hope that my husband is right.

I will end this with a short update on myself. It has taken 5 scans (PET and CT) to finally get a confirmed “no evidence of disease” result. I know I should be reassured by this but my doctor’s do not think it is a good idea to remove my port yet. That makes me hesitant to go crazy with excitement. My new philosophy is to just “roll with it”. If it comes back, okay, we will deal with it. If I get another clean scan, okay we will just keep moving forward. I am trying to be realistic. There is almost no research on breast cancer cases that show up a third time….that is depressing because I know why there is not research available….I say when people ask me that I am doing well and grateful to be alive for another 5 months, 5 years, or hopefully 50 years. But come on peeps, I am holding out for another 50!!

Oh one other fun medical development is that I have a hernia. I thought this was cancer in my stomach because it was painful (fun side effect of cancer is that anything in your body that feels “off” you immediately believe is cancer). My breast surgeon is the best, I love her, and she is going to do the surgery for me to fix it next week. Well after I get back my COVID results. So if I take a bit to get back on here I am just recovering from that.