I saw this on another cancer site and thought how relevant it is.
Cancer is a word that splits your life into two parts… before and after.
Before cancer, I measured my days in plans, goals, school pickups, work schedules, normal stress. After cancer, I measured time in scans, bloodwork, infusion dates, and “what ifs.”
Cancer is loud at first. It crashes into your life with appointments and treatment plans and fear that sits in your chest like a weight you can’t move. But what people don’t always talk about is how quiet it becomes later. How it lingers in the background of ordinary moments.
It shows up when you’re folding laundry and catch a glimpse of your scars.
It shows up at follow-up appointments when your heart races before the doctor even walks in.
It shows up at night when the house is quiet and your mind is not.
Cancer changes your body.
It changes your energy.
It changes your priorities.
But the hardest part? It changes how safe you feel in your own skin.
There’s a grief that comes with it grieving the version of you that didn’t know fear this intimately. Grieving the body that felt predictable. Grieving the ease of making plans without wondering if your health will interrupt them.
And yet… in the middle of all that loss, there is something else.
There is strength you didn’t know you had.
There is perspective you can’t unlearn.
There is gratitude that runs deeper than surface-level positivity.
Cancer stripped me down to the core. It forced me to face my mortality, my identity, my worth especially on the days I couldn’t contribute the way I used to. It humbled me. It broke me open. And slowly, it rebuilt me.
I am not the same person I was before.
I am softer in some ways.
Stronger in others.
More aware of time.
Less tolerant of what doesn’t matter.
Cancer taught me that survival is not weakness. Rest is not laziness. Needing help is not failure.
If you’re in it right now in treatment, in recovery, in that strange in-between space where everyone thinks you’re “fine” but you don’t feel fine please hear this…
You are not dramatic.
You are not ungrateful.
You are not broken.
You are navigating something that changes a person at their core.
Whether you rang the bell yesterday, years ago, or you’re still counting down treatments your story matters. Your scars matter. Your fear matters. Your strength matters.
Cancer may be part of my story. But it is not the whole story.
And if you’re walking this road too, I’m standing with you.
A little too poetic for me but it works awfully well for a lot of people. We are all unfamiliar with death and avoid facing it. I remember as a child us youngsters were used to seeing dead people laid out before a funeral.
I took my 11 year old daughter to say goodbye to her dead father in hospital. It was a closure.
Cancer though was a hidden thing, a death to be ashamed of. Now that all of us are touched one way or another we are more open about it with social media and help groups like this one, a replacement for the families many of us don’t have.
I always knew something would kill me. It was a bit if a shock that it might be a particularly nasty cancer but I’m still rather hoping it might be old age in my sleep.
Dani
Base of tongue cancer. T2N0M0 6 weeks Radiotherapy finished January 2019
