I'm 51 and wondering when my cancer will return. My thyroid cancer was(is) very curable, statistics say as high as 99%. Its been seven years since treatment, but I think about cancer daily.
Another friend's mom has just been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. My closest friend's mom was diagnosed with the same three months ago. My first thought is how did it get to stage 4? What happened to stage 1, 2 and 3? Weren't there symptoms, coughing, shortness of breath? That's the thing about cancer, you don't know you have it sometimes. That's what happened to me. I went in to have my poorly functioning thyroid removed and woke up with, "you have cancer." Once you hear those words you are moved into a category of living that changes you forever, instantly.
You learn a lot when you have cancer. First and foremost I learned that you have to deal with it own your own. No one is going to take the tests, treatments, and handle the after effects except for you. Just you. And you have to get your game face on. You learn what you're made of. It's not fun, its not pretty and its scary. I remember sitting in the bowels of the hospital waiting for my radiation, looking around the waiting room at all the "cancer"...thriving, prospering.
I learned that I could completely depend on my husband. He rose to the occasion, defended me, had my back the whole way. That "sickness and in health thing" really matters to him. It only confirmed to me that I chose my true "life long partner" and for that I will forever be grateful. On the flip side, you also learn a lot about your friends during the experience. Like all people some of them just can't handle it. It's okay that people feel awkward and uncomfortable with your situation, but when your closest friends aren't there for you, recognize it for what it is. I know I was disappointed when one close friend couldn't come see me in the hospital or even when I was recuperating at home. She made excuses...she's not around much anymore.
I learned that cancer doesn't really ever leave you. It has staying power. It may leave you physically, but mentally its always there. Its burned into your brain and you're reminded of it when you read the news or you talk to a friend or you read facebook. Its everywhere. Someone close to you has got it. Reading some of Siddhartha Mukherjee's "Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" I learned that the earliest notations about cancer date back to the Egyptians and 1600 BC. So this disease has been thriving for a long, long time. It has staying power.
My mom was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma in 1992. During her four years of treatment it became clear to me that physicians, as great as they are, still have no real handle on cancer. They've made some headway, but cancer keeps changing you see. Its forever evolving into something else. They said to her..."well, we can try this next...but it's really up to you." They always leave it up to you, because physicians know all cancer treatment is a gamble and physicians don't like to take bets. So you're left with YOU deciding what's best for YOU. Like I said, you're really own your own.
My mom "chose" to have a bone marrow transplant. This was considered an "experimental" treatment back in 1994. I remember when we moved her to the seventh floor of the hospital for her treatment she was one of three patients on the floor for her type of cancer. The other 43 patients on the seventh floor were young women fighting breast cancer. A startling note for me being 36 at the time.
Her 63 days in the hospital was brutal. The treatment brought her to the brink of death. The chemo that ran through her killed every thing in its path, a mighty blow to the cancer that was in her body. She couldn't eat, barely swallow. The treatment literally burned her from the inside out. I saw a strength in her that I will always try to honor. To comfort her I read to her, I put on her makeup, painted her toenails, we made Christmas bows for other patient's doors. There were many times when I thought she would die. The actual transplant of cancer free blood took about 5 minutes, anticlimactic really. Then the miracle of the human body, good cancer free cells began dividing and multiplying. She was "cured", surely all of that pain and suffering was worth it. My mom died two years later at 59 in that same hospital on a different floor. It gave her two more years with her granddaughters. She loved them so much.
Later the same year my mom died, my husband's best friend was diagnosed with a super rare cancer. My husband and others went back and forth with him to the Mayo Clinic where he had to seek treatment for two years. It was completely devastating but in the end he died a different death than my mom did, one where the pain was controlled and we had a chance to say the things we needed to say. At 45 he left a young six year old son and his lovely wife to make their way own their own.
My lovely sister in law joined the ranks of the breast cancer survivors. She's battled her disease and more complications for over 5 years now. She and I often talk about the "other shoe dropping" and how you have to deal with the anxiety of the yearly follow up tests. I have a pain here doc...is it cancer?
This time last year, my husband was saying goodbye to his 34 year old employee. Diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer. From diagnosis to treatment to death took less than 60 days. So young, so brave. Never did he complain.
Like I said you learn a lot when you, a loved one, or a friend has cancer. Most of all you learn to live with it, the thought of it, knowing you could have it again. You learn that those closest to you can get it and die from it. You learn life is short and unpredictable. Don't waste it a moment of it. Loving others helps curb the hold it has on you. Master it.