I got a call from my insurance company today. They’re closing my claim. How do I feel about it? Great actually. It’s another step towards a normal life. I know that I’ll be feeling the effects of everything for a while. My frozen shoulder that is getting better with each chiropractor visit, My scars hardly ever bother me, my knees are way better. Some things will take longer to go away. The radiation burn that I still have, the numbness across my chest from the surgeries, the brain fog I still get occasionally and my hair is growing. All in all, I think I’ve come out the other side of this relatively ok. I don’t know that it has changed me on the inside all that much, other people would be able to answer that better. I do notice that I don’t get worked up over things nearly as badly as I used to. I don’t suffer from ‘fight or flight’ at every turn.
I do wish I’d been given way more information than I was about some of the stuff I went through before I went through it. Maybe someday I’ll be able to get all the information I found helpful all into one place, easily accessible for the next person who has breast cancer and a ton of questions but aren’t sure who to ask or where to ask. Maybe that will be my ‘pay it forward’ with this experience of getting breast cancer.

I had my follow-up with the chemo oncologist today.  While waiting to see him I got into a conversation with another cancer patient who is in remission.  She didn’t have breast cancer but we still related to each other.  We had the same side-effects with chemo which, in a weird way was awesome.  She’s the first person I’ve talked to who could relate to the bone pain I had and hers still shows up on occasion like mine does and she’s a year and a half away from it. Oh, and I took my wig there so another person could use it since I don’t need it anymore.
The oncologist says the pain in my hands and feet is probably from the tamoxifen and it may go away, and it may not. If I can take it then I’m better off doing that than taking medication for it. I also asked him about an off the shelf medication for night sweats and he didn’t say I couldn’t take it but was concerned that there weren’t enough trials relating to breast cancer with it so that’s out too. He said anti-depressants are the only thing that have been proven to alleviate the symptoms of menopause and night sweats that are hormone free. No thanks, I’ll live with the night sweats and occasional bout with depression. On a good note, I don’t have to see him for another 6 months.
My shoulder is getting better. The chiropractor says I’ve improved about 25% since I started seeing her but she still wants me to see her twice a week. Usually I can see her after work which is a good thing but once in a while I have to leave work a little early which kinda makes me feel guilty.
To top it all off right now, there’s stuff happening in my apartment that is totally disruptive for me and my cat and I’m finding that my stress level is really high and with it, the hot flashes are happening more often. And here I thought I was over the drama and was coasting back to a normal life.

A year ago yesterday I had a mammogram, ultra-sound and needle biopsy. 1 year ago yesterday I knew even though it wasn’t official that I had breast cancer. 1 year ago today I had no idea what I was in for or how I would turn out. I was terrified, I know that. And I remember that I kept trying to minimize the seriousness of what was happening to me. If I’d known a year ago what I was in for I’m not sure I’d have gone through it all. If I’d known that today I’d lose all my hair and my confidence with it I don’t know if I’d have done it all.

People talk of cancer survivors as being brave and courageous. I’ve never thought of myself as being either of those and still can’t. I wasn’t in a position to decide to be brave. I did decide I had no choice but the treatment path offered to me. To me that’s not brave or courageous. That’s choosing life.
Today is my 49th birthday. Tonight I celebrated not only my birthday but the fact that I was here for it. It’s not bravery or courage that got me through the treatment I had in this past year. It was that I wanted to see my 50th birthday.

I’m having more good days than bad days lately. The bad days like today, I find it really hard to hold my composure. It seems to start as soon as I wake up the final time in the morning. I look in the mirror and don’t recognize the person looking back at me. I can’t seem to get used to this short hair. Sure, it’s coming in nice and thick and wavy and a major colour difference from what it was. Eventually I’m sure I’ll love it. Right now, today, I hate it. But I don’t want to go back to my wig. So I just hold my head up, and try and pretend my hair is long and try and forget every time I look in the mirror how I lost my hair in the first place.
My shoulder is getting better. It’s an incredibly slow process and you’d think I’d be used to chronic pain by now but I’m not. And it hurts most of the time. Sometimes worse than others. But It will get better too.
I haven’t been able to lose all the weight I gained. Yup, it’s really my fault because I don’t want to go on a diet. I was ‘good tasting food’ deprived for too many days to put myself through that right now. And apparently I look just fine the way I am with the extra 20 lbs anyway.
So I woke up this morning, looked in the mirror and saw this boobless, hairless, over-weight person staring back at me that wasn’t me. And for a minute my skin crawled. And I went on with my day trying to ignore this out of body feeling. I know it’ll be better, if not tomorrow then the next day but boy, days like today really suck.

One of the lingering nags of going through treatment for cancer is how much time is lost. Not just lost from my life, but from other people’s lives. 8 months of my life was spent killing cancer. Going through chemo and radiation and surgeries. The main thing on my mind during that time was getting to the next appointment, and then getting through that appointment to the next one. My only focus was getting to the end without losing my mind along with my boobs and my hair. I’m only now realizing how much time I’ve lost of other people’s lives. The little things that connect people. A joke, a story. The big things too, a wedding, a birth, a death.
All the things that connect human beings emotionally as friends, family, co-workers was, in a sense, killed along with the cancer. I sometimes feel like I’m never going to catch up.