I bought a book called Picking Up The Pieces-Moving Forward After Cancer by Sherri Magee and Kathy Scalzo.It’s helping me understand most of the feelings I’ve been having. I understood that I was going to be different, not only on the outside but mainly on the inside. I’d hoped that who I was wouldn’t change. I wanted to be like my mom who seemed to almost treat breast cancer like just an inconvenience in her life. She has since told me that it was hard for her too but I never saw that. I’m not going to be like her with this and to me that really sucks. I liked my life the way it was, and I liked who I was.
The book has been helping. I’m starting to notice little changes in myself, the way I feel about things and how it’s different from before cancer and how to deal with it all. In an odd way I feel calmer than I did before, outside of my meltdowm a couple of weeks ago. Almost like my mind has learned to relax and not go at breakneck speed all the time.
Going back to work has helped immensely like I knew it would. I’ve always had an obsessive mind but being at work takes the focus off of what has happened to me at the same time as it’s given me back some of my confidence. Not focusing on myself but on the clients for those hours every day has given me back a sense of normalcy and taken away a lot of the helplessness I was feeling. Having breast cancer and treatment is still at the forefront of my mind all the time but for a few hours every day it gets 2nd place.