I used to wonder what I would do if I ever got breast cancer. The idea of getting it was always at the back of my mind ever since my mom was first diagnosed with it years ago. I went through all the scenarios, surgery, radiation, chemo. I’d considered having to lose a boob if it came to that.
The thing is, no matter how many times I played over the different scenarios in my mind, I don’t think I could have ever really prepared myself for what I’ve been through. I also thought I’d take it like my mom and aunts have, silently getting done what was needed, surgery, radiation, chemo to fight the cancer. Stoically going through it all with a quiet strength that I wish I had. Getting to the end of the treatment and on with life without a backward glance.
I wonder sometimes if that’s their outside voices. I wonder if like me, it’s something they never really get over, that it’s never far from their minds. Do they get as afraid sometimes as I do of a recurrence and having to make the tough decisions all over again? Are they reminded, like I am, every time they look in the mirror about what’s happened to their bodies?
I’ve come to the conclusion that this part of my life, getting cancer, going through the surgery(s) and the radiation and the chemotherapy and the Tamoxifen, that I will never ‘just get over it’. Every morning for the next 5 years I have to take a pill. So when my hair grows back and the radiation burn is gone and my scars don’t bother me anymore there’s still that daily pill to remind me that there’s a 20% chance I’ll get cancer again. Or, for you more positive people, an 80% chance I’ll not get it again.
No. I’m not going to get over this. Hopefully though, I’ll be able to wake up some morning and it won’t be the first thing I think of. And I’ll be able to go to sleep at night and it won’t be the last thing I think of.