Beating cancer is great.
It's like winning a prize fight. Mohammad Ali VS Smokin' Joe Frazier. At the end, when the doctor says to you "the scan revealed no indication of cancer in your body", you want to leap out of your chair and cheer (and probably will). It feels like you've been handed a golden trophy.
Then, later, as you go to put it on your shelf, you realise, "hold on, whafuck ? This thing's .. *sticky*"
You look more closely. There are brown smudges on the rim of the trophy (and now on your hands). "Ew, is that chocolate ?"
You smell your hands. Nope. It's not chocolate.
Grimacing, you lift the lid on the trophy, and yes. Yes, I'm afraid so. It's filled with shit.
There are people who don't win the fight against their cancer. They die. May they rest in peace.
But if you do survive the cancer, either by having it removed, or managed / in remission - you've probably got a laundry list of side effects ... but more likely than not, you also have a dark cloud hanging over you - a fear that will never go away.
I get face spasms. Yep, cramps in my face. They suck, but I'm grateful to have them. I have three young kids, and my deal with any sentient creator was simple - "don't make my little children face the grief of losing a father, and I will slay many goats in your name"
OK, no goats were killed in the writing of this post.
But yeah, I have face spasms, a laundry-list of chemoradiation side effects, and, any time I get sick, my neck lymph nodes swell up. They create a hard lump that often feels *EXACTLY* like the lump/node swelling that I had when the cancer was first diagnosed.
Yep. Every little cough, every feeling of fatigue, your thoughts will probably be shadowed with "has the cancer come back ?"
That's the grim reality of living with cancer.
My advice (and my personal goal) is to develop the tools and strategies that allow me to overcome (or at least ignore) these feelings of anxiety. Yes, we are all going to die.
But today, I am alive. Thank you, God, Allah, Fonzie, Batman. I am alive.
If you've got this same, crippling fear that I sometimes have .. I feel you. It's awful. But how about we try and park it to one side and celebrate the fact that we're still here ?
