LIFE (After Cancer)

Here's a bit of a "Cancer ramble" so if this makes you uncomfortable come back when I am posting party pics in a blue wig.

Lately I have been living my "life after cancer", a term that bothers me but also makes sense now.

Life after cancer is a lot of things.

Wonderful

Horrible

Simpler

Same

Complicated

Frightening

Exciting

Different

Confusing

Clear

These are just some words that describe how I feel about life right now.

Wonderful is first because I love and appreciate deeply everyone and everything around me.

Life is truly wonderful, and to be alive and be able to create, destroy, build or breakdown is ours. When you have life you have everything already. It is amazing all the things we miss being wound up in shit that doesn't matter, and I really see life now for living the way I want with my loved ones first in my life, always. It is a wonderful life.

Horrible is second because there is something new and scary in the back of your closet after cancer that wasn't there before. It isn't like the other skeletons. It can come back to life with much more power and and fury than ever before. 

The good thing about it being "horrible" is that it brings a new awareness of your health and body to life, which is like a coat of armour protecting you from this "skeleton" in your closet, so constant monitoring brings piece of mind.

Simpler because it is. Life is so much more simple to navigate.

It's simple.

Tell the truth, no matter how horrible or disgusting others see you, it's the truth.

Be kind to others.

Others have hearts just like me and you, and hearts shouldn't be broken.

Simple.

Love those around you and important to you. Show those people you appreciate them and the things they do for you, and make sure they know how much you love them. Everyday.

Simple.

COMPLICATED....

When you are in your 20's, you have this sense of immortality, and with cancer, that sense completely goes away. It is like having to turn 80 over night, in a sense, sure you could live the next 20 years or even more, or two, or five, who knows, six, seven years, it is uncertain, ALWAYS.

This complicates everything.

Life can be frightening after cancer. 

I found that during chemo I had days where I was paralyzed with fear about the cancer, reading up on all these statistics of survival of stage 3 disease. 

Finding myself having heart stopping moments whenever a pain would start anywhere on my body, I remembered BEFORE cancer, if I had a headache for 3 days, I started thinking I must have a brain tumour. We all experience this. Cancer is what is feared over any other disease. 

It's good to talk about it with others and if it bothers you that much you can go get anything checked out, if you have your Alberta Health card that is.

Life is exciting after cancer. Fun things become even funner.

Going down a waterside brings a greater fear and excitement than every before. 

Little things for me, like two animals playing is more fascinating and fun for me to watch than ever before.

That kinda makes me sound loony, k, I just feel that renewed appreciation for life everyone talks about in 

LIFE AFTER CANCER.

Same.

Life is the same no matter how different it becomes. 

Life goes on.

It's so true- life doesn't care if your year has been hard.

Life doesn't care if you don't get to live like everyone else.

Life is the same after cancer,

but different...

K now I sound like a crazy hippie, I hate crazy hippies.

Different why?

Everything I just listed above.

Everything shifts a little and you go back to your old job with fresh eyes, the way I did.

I used to always not so much look forward to work as much as I enjoyed my job, like, I'd dread going to work always, just because it was work and I'd rather get paid to eat Chinese food and drink lattes or perhaps ciders and play with my cats and ride watersides for a living.. but that's the dream though isn't it.

Now I actually look forward to work.

I get excited to go in and do what I enjoy and GET PAID TO DO IT!

I love it.

That is one way that life is completely different for me. I appreciate the fact that I can work and have a full time career. That is actually something to fully appreciate and love.

Life after cancer can be CONFUSING, especially with everyone you encounter who finds out about your cancer putting their goddamm doctors coats on, which you know I hate, and try and tell you (without actually having experience with cancer, themselves or their loved ones, maybe sometimes their Grampas)

PUTTING ON THE FUCKING DOCTORS COAT

ugh, I really hate that.

I actually have had to tell some people, ok, I have a doctor, you can save your "beliefs" in what I should be doing right now, or ever, or what I should have done, GO FUCK YOURSELF.

There are very few people who have gone there, judging me on my decisions regarding my cancer treatment, but there are a few. It really blew my mind after a while of listening to people tell me I shouldn't have chosen chemo, or that they would NEVER do that to themselves, which is pretty much like saying, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU WHY WOULD YOU CHOOSE CHEMO FOR A YEAR?

Well, to these people I would first off gently tell them that until they have cancer, they really don't have any idea what they would choose, and to kindly shut the fuck up.

Some did, others persisted.

I have a doctor so YOU don't have to put on a doctors coat and preach what you believe is best for me, when I have my own best interests at heart and again, until you have cancer, shut the fuck up.

Ah, that felt good.

So things can get confusing when you are told what is bad, what is good, what is this and that and the other thing, and then you read more and those who tried this or that are dead, or it extended their lives, in their own opinions really, because there is no real proof behind, this, that, and the other thing.

Things become so much more clear after cancer.

Who are your real friends.

What you are meant to do with your life.

Who you are.

Who you Love.

I enjoy the clarity.

It lets me know that "Life after Cancer" isn't the miserable waiting game some feel it is.

It is LIFE.

Clear and simple.

Ahh, "LIFE AFTER CANCER."

There are entire websites devoted to this, of course, any way to make money off of cancer is out there, even after your chemo treatments end and you go back to being "normal", they can still make a fucking buck off you.

I'd rather call it, LIFE.

It is up to you what you do with it, but it isn't up to you what will happen.

-E.