Today was the CIBC Run For The Cure and I went with my sister and a co-worker. Thanks for coming with me guys 🙂 I’ve added a couple of pictures.
There was a lot of people there, but not more than I expected. Parts of it were boring, the expected corporate speeches especially but most of it was interesting. I learned that I’m glad I live in BC and had breast cancer. BC has the highest survival rate of Canada. I walked the full 1K. I expected I would. It was another marker for me that I needed to make. One step closer to my normal, new or otherwise. Yes, my knees really hurt but that’s why I’ve been going on the treatmill a few days a week, and why I will keep going.
The breast cancer survivors, me included, wore pink t-shirts (made from that material that wicks the moisture away from your body. Someone was thinking, thank you!), volunteers wore grey and everyone else had white. I know this day is about survivors but I still felt really self-conscious about standing out in a crowd, getting stuff handed to me because I’m ‘one of them’.
Waiting for the Survivor’s Walk, I was talking to some of the other survivors. Mostly newbies like me who haven’t been out of treatment for a year yet. We shared complaints, and timelines and made comparisons of our treatments and the effects. Most of them had the ‘cancer baby’ as my aunt calls the pot belly we all seem to have aquired. They loved my hair and it made a couple of them look forward to the day their hair would be longer.
Even though everyone there was happy and smiling, there was still an undercurrent of sadness that I felt the most when I did the Survivor’s Walk. All the survivors do a curcuit through the crowd while everyone else watches. I know it is meant as proof that we can get through it and we are seen as fighters who overcame sometihng horrible but I still don’t feel brave or courageous. It wasn’t a large group, maybe 1 in 10 or 20 people there was a survivor. And that was sad. There should be more. And we shouldn’t have to be there in the first place. And that made me cry.
I will go again next year. And the year after that.

I’m finding that when I hear people describe me as courageous or strong or amazing for having gone through breast cancer I get upset. I’m not sure what kind of upset, but it always makes me want to cry. I don’t see myself as any of those things.
I’m not courageous. I was terrified going through all this. I didn’t draw on courage to get through it, I relied on knowing there would be an end to it and knowing I was increasing my chances for a longer life.
I don’t see myself as strong. Many days were spent in pain and tears. I felt like a baby and needed my hand held. Often. I felt helpless and very needy. I had to have help feeding myself and even getting dressed some times and to me that isn’t strong. I tried as hard as I could on the days I went out to act like there was nothing wrong. I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me. I just wanted be be treated like everyone else. When I lost my hair I was devastated. There wasn’t going to be a way to hide what was going on then and for a time I did revert back to my old, shy self. It wasn’t strength that finally made me lift my chin up. It was knowing I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t choose to lose my hair.
I don’t think I’m amazing. I’m not the only one who has been through this and I unfortunately will not be the last. I just put one foot in front of the other, day after day, with end dates as markers. My last surgery, my last chemo treatment, my last radiation treatment. What was always on the horizon was the day I could go back to work. Amazing is the child with leukemia who can go through all the agonies of chemo with a smile on their face.
I see me as someone who just did what they had to do. No more, no less. I didn’t ‘fight’ cancer, I just did all that I was told to do to get it out of my system.
Maybe I get upset when people call me courageous or strong or amazing because I just want them to see me, not what I’ve been through. I know that cancer is now and will always be part of my life but I wish it wasn’t part of my identity. It attacked my body, not my mind. I hope that if ‘you’ ever have to go through something like this you’ll know you can because I did.
If I can do it anyone can.

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.

I’m participating in the CIBC Run for the Cure this year. You can see my personal page (or donate) here: Connie’s Run for the Cure page. I’m not sure what has possessed me to do this really. As anyone knows who knows me, knows I don’t run. I never have and probably never will. But I can walk. And I plan on walking the 5k.
Doing this is a gauge for me. One of the side effects from chemo that hasn’t really gone away is my ability to walk without pain. I’ve been going to the gym and using a treadmill and it’s been helping and I hope by Sept 30th it will have helped enough for me to make the 5k trek. If I make it then I can kiss this side effect from chemo goodbye! Not only that but it is for a good cause.
I’ll be walking with a girl from work and anyone else who wants to go with me 🙂 Wish me luck!

Pink has always been one of my favorite colours. Not necessarily the baby pink that represents breast cancer, but it is pink. For a while, going through treatment I hated it. Every where I turned some company was selling something pink and donating portions of the proceeds to breast cancer research. It almost made me feel guilty when I didn’t buy the pink garbage bags or toilet paper. To top it off, I found out that the first breast cancer ribbon was actually peach. If you want you can read a little about it here: Think Before You Pink. I’ve come to terms with that and got back to liking pink again without feeling the need to pick everything pink just because it represents breast cancer.
Lately I’ve been feeling the need to make a difference, to somehow pay back the people that helped me through all this, both professional and personal, and to somehow pay it forward. I know that I’ll be contacted in March and will go through training to be a volunteer for the CancerConnection and their peer support system, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll be enough.
Out there somewhere is something that will make me feel like I didn’t go through all this for nothing. It can’t be for nothing. There has to be a purpose for it.

Every day I try not to think about having had breast cancer. I try to act as if my life is ‘normal’, at least to the people around me and I think I do a pretty good job. I keep hoping I’ll wake up one day and not even remember what it was all like, the surgeries, the chemo, the radiation. But that wasn’t today. I have so many reminders, no boobs, sore joints, hot flashes, my screwed up shoulder and no hair. I can’t look into the mirror without remembering.
I guess my big question is I wonder if people are getting tired of hearing me talk about it or will they still listen to me and understand that this breast cancer was and still is a major part of my life? Am I allowed to still mourn my losses and feel crappy and depressed? Or am I expected to get on with my life, put it all behind me?

It is one year ago today that I had my first surgery for breast cancer. I’ve been thinking about what’s changed for me in that time and what I expected to change.
I did expect to lose both boobs but thought I’d have 2 new ones in their place. I never expected to be boobless. It’s been an adjustment, both physically and mentally but I have to say, losing my hair is still the thing I focus on. I sometimes wonder if it’s because I can hide the fact that the boobs are gone but the hair? Not so much.
I expected my body to change. I did think I’d gain more weight than I have. I did not expect my legs to be the big issue for me. Once I knew I was in menopause I expected the hot flashes, but don’t think I’ll ever get used to them. I’m glad the majority of them happen at night.
I’ve joined a gym rather than just visiting it. I came to the realization that my legs and body are not going to fix themselves. They need help. 4 or 5 days a week I go on a treadmill for a half hour. It’s only been a few weeks but I’m starting to notice the difference. When I started it was at a slow crawl for 15 or 20 minutes and I was done. So it is helping. (thanks my friend :))
Having cancer has also made me closer to my mom and my sister. They were there for me when I needed, and my sister, who I know didn’t feel like it, was my strength. She may have been more afraid of what was happening to me than I was but she never showed that to me, she showed me humour instead. My friend did more for me than a friend normally would, and still is pushing me to get better. These may be the only things I’m grateful for from this journey. I hope they know if they ever need me I’ll be there for them like they were for me.
Having cancer has changed other things for me too. I find that where stress used to sit like lumps in the pit of my stomach for days only makes me tired now. And I’m going to try flying again next year. Something I’ve been too afraid to do for a while now.
I do still get scared of recurrence. Since I’m not 100% clear, only 80%, I wonder if the cancer will come back. If it came back within the next couple of years I don’t know if I could go through this again. I haven’t come to any conclusions on that only to know I’d have to do some serious thinking on it. I am now part of a very large, and still growing cancer ‘family’. Like most families, you don’t get to choose them, you just learn to live with them and see the best in them.

I was asked this week if (and I’m sure I got it worded wrong here, but this is the gist) I felt like I had to cheat death more. You know, sky-diving, bundgy jumping, that sort of thing. The answer is no. I never wanted to do those things before I got cancer and I still don’t want to do them.
I’m not sure what the outside looks like but the changes I see in me are all internal. I don’t feel stress the same way, my whole day isn’t ruined by it. I feel it for a few minutes then do what I gotta do and get over it. I don’t feel out of control. I don’t feel panicky where I used to, in crowds, thinking of flying in an airplane, not being in control of situations where I didn’t have control in the first place.
Has having cancer made me value life more? I hate to say it but I don’t think so. I still don’t have a bucket list, I don’t feel the need to go out and do things because who knows where I’ll be next year. I still don’t have all my ducks in a row. I still view having had breast cancer as a huge inconvenience that disrupted 8 months of my life. I don’t see it as a wake-up call to be a better person for what remains of this life. I don’t feel the need to make any changes to who I am or what I do.
Yes, having cancer, and beating it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do but not to the point where I’ve had a life altering epiphany. I am still me. I may be self-conscious of having short hair and no boobs. But I am still me.

It’s been hard for me to lose the extra weight I’ve gained and hard for me to feel even remotely healthy on the back side of having cancer. It’s hard to go shopping even. Altho it isn’t one of my favorite pastimes but it would be nice to be able to go through the store without my legs killing me, from my hips on down to my heels. It would even be nice to not have a hot flash every time I exert even a little energy.
So I started going to a gym tonight at the urging of a friend. I’m not doing much, just using the treadmill but I’ve read that one of the best things you can do is walk. So I walked for 20 minutes tonight. At this point, I don’t even care if I lose the weight, I just want my body to feel healthy again. Hopefully in a month or so I’ll be able to walk for an hour without my legs feeling like they’re going to give out on me. And maybe, if I’m really lucky, I can minimize these hot flashes and night sweats.

I’m almost 4 months into recovery. That’s almost half the time I spent off work because of cancer. For the most part I’m feeling good. I can go through my days feeling like I’m normal and nothing bad happened to me. On the outside I look fine. My colour is back, my short hair has become part of my new look, the fatigue is almost all gone and I can make it to bedtime, although it’s 2 hours earlier than it was before cancer, without a nap.
Most days I try not to talk about having had cancer unless someone brings it up. I guess I’m afraid people either don’t want to hear about it anymore, they think I should be over it by now or never understood it in the first place or the symptoms I feel are related to menopause and or getting old.
But rarely does an hour go by without some reminder of it having been the controller of my life for 8 months. I still struggle occasionally with finding the words I need, I still sleep lots on weekends, I still can’t walk as far as I used to without my knees hurting like crazy and I still lose my balance (with and without the foobs). As much as I’d like to think these are because of menopause or aging, I know that they’re because of cancer and treatment.
I still have days where I’m just tired and I just want to cry some more. Days where I get scared of cancer coming back. Days I’m not sure if I can deal with it all or not. On those days I spend a lot of time telling myself I did it-I got through cancer and treatment. I’m ok and getting better every day. Cancer will soon be a distant memory.
The thing is, cancer and the treatment of it has become my Siamese twin. It’s with me every waking minute, it wakes me in the middle of the night, it walks with me where ever I go and it doesn’t wash off with soap and water. But it’s invisible to everyone else so I try not to mention it anymore.