Life after Cancer

I feel really strange writing this and have avoided doing anything like this for a while. But, I guess this means I’m coping with my life and have accepted that this is my new normal. And a new normal is what I am about to talk about.

A few years ago, through the wonders of the interwebs, I found a fantastic blog post about moving on and re-assimilating back into your life after cancer treatment. It was articulate and it perfectly spelled out everything I was feeling and had been living with during remission. And, the author’s medical experiences were shockingly similar to my own, which made it all the more relatable. After talking with a close family member about his own experience with cancer and finishing his first round of treatment, I went looking for this wonderful post to show him but I came up empty handed. In my research I found hundreds of similar stories and experiences, none of which hit home as much as the original though (probably because, while we all share similar emotional reactions, the variation of our physical and mental changes can be great).

So, Now I’m going to paraphrase and plagiarize the hell out of that post as well as my memory of it serves, using my own experiences to flesh out what many years of painkillers and chemo-brain has lost. Hopefully by the end, you will get a clear picture of what to expect from life after treatment.

The hardest thing about cancer is that life continues to move on, despite this massive burden and change. Don’t get me wrong, fear, sickness and the physical transformation you go through are all very, very rough. But, cancer isn’t the flu. It doesn’t run its course and then you brush yourself off and get back to normal. It is a long battle that, even well after chemotherapy and radiation and surgery and whatever else you go through is seemingly done for the time being, you will never be the same person you were before the diagnosis. In fact, here is some great advice to all the friends and family of anyone fighting this battle – never, ever, ever say something like “It’s over now, right? You can get back to normal?” Salt in the wounds. Finishing treatment and the months, even years that follow can be the scariest part of dealing with this disease.

Finishing treatment should be a day to celebrate. But, what I found in my own experience and what I have heard from countless others is that finishing treatment comes with an overwhelming sense of fear and frustration. One day, you are fighting your disease, fixing the problem, hammering away and being proactive in every way possible to ensure your survival. Until the day you are not. Now, you are just supposed to wait and hope. This goes against every fiber of my being, and now I know I’m not the only one. It gets so deep into your head that recently I went in for a follow-up scan for a new type of cancer and was thinking I would rather have a bad diagnosis that involved treatment than one that is vague and involves waiting and watching and more scans down the road. Like Schrödinger hoping for a dead cat instead of the anticipation and hope that can come from not knowing. I know this is hard to believe for anyone that hasn’t experienced this.

And I am not unsympathetic to the loved ones of the patient in question. I know it is very, very hard and stressful for them as well. One of the things that, while going through treatment, I was hyper aware of is a growing frustration in the people around me because the illness eclipses everything that is going on in their lives and seemed to diminish their own personal struggles. I remember having a long conversation with a good friend where she was telling me about all her stress in school and her recent guy trouble and everything that should have been hugely important to a 21 year old at the time. Then, after a few tears, she clammed up and realized who she was talking to and proceeded to apologize and feel even worse, as though those stresses didn’t count or matter by comparison. But, we all have our battles and it is all relative. One person’s pain and struggles in life do not void out another’s.

Some people will not be able to deal with this. There will be people in your life that won’t even be able to make eye contact with you (personally, I’ll take this over the ones that will stare at you when they think you can’t see them). Some people will not pass the test on your friendship. And, speaking for this side of the table, we know you get sick of it and want things back to normal. Trust us, so do we. But, looking back, that was never on the table to begin with.

Back to life moving on in spite of your cross to bear. I will spare you my thoughts on healthcare and the financial burden that comes with any medical condition. That is an uphill fight against stupid best left for another day. Our lives are amazingly structured from a young age until retirement. Any hiccup or comma that breaks up the steady march forward is crippling. We don’t want to think about that side of treatment, especially when we are in the middle of it and our whole purpose and goal in life is survival. But, when you come out the other end of that sewage tunnel, with no eyebrows, puffy and green tinted, weak and delirious (but breathing), now you have all that normal stress put back on your plate. And, like a heroin addict, the draw of a singular goal and worry, that next fix that is life, is overwhelming. In all the hundreds of articles and personal posts about surviving treatment, this sentiment is always the same. You are abruptly put back amongst the general population and expected to pick up where you left off. But, along with a completely new sense of mortality and priorities, you will also be facing a world that expects the same from you as your neighbor whether it be school, a career or whatever your responsibilities are now that you are “back to normal”. Oh yeah, you will also be doing this while juggling constant doctors’ appointments with your PCP, oncologists, specialists in your particular field of cancer, scans, blood work and follow-ups, probably some therapists along the way, all the while you are attempting to wean yourself off of the drugs and medication that lessened your pain, nausea and anxiety over that last few months and years, not to mention the crippling fear of a relapse or other forms of cancer caused by the treatment. I will say, as rough as my own treatment went, I think the two years after I finished radiation were worse than my one year of treatment. And, looking at the stories so many cancer veterans have shared, I am in the majority. Things did get a little better, but mostly, I just got used to my new life. Other forms of cancer and consequences have popped up and you deal with them. This is your life.

I know this is going to read as a major downer for anyone in the last few stages of treatment, but the point of writing this is simple – Don’t waste your time and energy expecting life to pick up where you were so rudely interrupted. The best you can hope for is a new normal. You may lose some friends in the process but the bonds with those really closest to you will be stronger and you will even make new friends. Life continues to move on. Always be happy and grateful that you are here to see it.

I hope I have conveyed this point in a way that can be helpful to both patients and the people that support them in their fight. Whether I have or not, please look at some of the posts and blogs and articles online that cover the subject. Life after cancer is, thankfully, becoming a constant reality as treatments evolve and survival rates increase.

Thanks as always for reading,

 

Ryan Black