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How Can This Be My Life?

by Shandell WrightSurvivor, Adenocarcinoma Cervical CancerOctober 7, 2024View more posts from Shandell Wright

Cancer is a thief in the night. Something you never think is really gonna happen to you till it does and it sends you whirling downward like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. And you just keep falling and falling. Sometimes I feel like I have been living an out of body experience trying to figure what I do now. How do I go on living with this Cancer looming over me? How do I move past this constant fear? Every ache or pain sends my mind whirling down the rabbit hole thinking, “Is it back?” How am I supposed to move on after fighting like hell to be where I am now? To always have the ghost of cancer hanging over me. Some days I just sit and miss me and my old life. 

Life before cancer was a little less stressful. I try to explain to my friends and family that I live life now 3 months at a time. and when it’s time to go for my next scan or check up, the anxiety that built up is almost unbearable—until I see my doctor and she gives me the, “Atta boy, keep doing what you are doing, see you in three months.” And after that appointment I am able to breathe again. The fear never really goes away; it’s always there. Living with this has changed me. I look in the mirror and I don’t even see me any more. I don’t recognize myself and it makes me sad to think that this is my life. I wonder as time goes on: will the fear of cancer be less or will I always feel this way? Cancer to me is like the boogie man that hides under your bed, and even if you don’t see it, you can feel it’s always there. It might come back out or it might never show up again, but it never leaves the back of your mind. I feel like even after you get cleared of cancer it never goes away. 

I wish I had the right words to tell you that after all the treatments and everything you go through, in the end you will wake up once you ring that bell that signals you have worked your butt off to kick cancer’s ass. And you are back to your old self. But if I told you that I would be lying to you and me. This is not just a bad dream we get to wake up from; this is the reality we get to live with—the ghost of cancer from this point on. Everyone’s experience in this journey is different and not one person’s is the same, but I do feel like we all forever are left scarred with fear of this terrible thing they call cancer.

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