Cancer is like….

1. Having Kids

Before you even have the kid, you look in the mirror and are amazed and horrified at what pregnancy has done to your body. It has altered it in ways you never thought possible and you continuously wonder if it will ever go back to the way it looked before. At times you are unrecognizable to yourself and ask if it will all be worth it in the long run. Kids require a lot of money and time in order to properly care for them. All of a sudden your time, dreams, and future are not just yours and are put on someone else’s schedule. You now worry about caring for them, making it better, and hoping they turn out okay. Cancer is like that too. Just like your kids when they come in yet again to bother you about how they don’t feel well and need to be taken care of, this disease does the same.   As if that wasn’t annoying enough, you are reminded of how sick you are, it is very similar to when your children wake you at night when they have bad dreams and decide to make it there mission to come and poke and prod you until you are awake multiple times throughout the night, just like nurses, doctors and parents do to the sick patient.

2. Having a hangover

The morning after a drunken night out can be a rough one. After standing up and feeling as if a trunk hit you, you look down and notice multiple bruises all over your body that have come with no explanation as to how they got there. You decide to ignore the pain and walk into the next room to down a giant glass of orange juice and find the Advil your head so desperately needs. While popping pills to make your headache go away you look down at your phone and see an abundance of text messages from your friends asking, “How you are feeling this morning?” You quickly respond with a short text, walk back to your bed to nap, and pass out for the next few hours until you feel well enough to start your day. Switch out the alcohol for chemo, and the Advil for seventeen different side-effect medicines and it is pretty much the same scenario, except there are two hundred texts and you do not have the energy, and the neuropathy in your fingers make it very hard to respond like you would like to your friends.

3. Going to war

You’re trying to win so you have to look at all the options of weapons in front of you to decide which will be a better fit for you in battle. Your body is constantly at battle. Even when you are resting and feeling fine your body is doing overtime to metabolize all the medicines and kill the cancer in your body. Just like war, it is not a quick battle or one single battle. It is many battles for months and years at a time with many battles going on at the same time, taxing your body and mental toughness everyday. It feels like it will never end. However, you have to continue and stay positive because you want to be able to combine all of the support available to be able to fight a good fight. They tell you the war will be over one day and things will be normal again and you continue to fight and try to believe what they tell you.

Finally it’s time for you to go home, the war has been won and you find yourself exhausted and ready for a much-needed vacation. However, you are walking out of this war as a new person. You realize how much stronger you have become and how you have gained a new perspective on the things around you. I assume it will not be much different from a soldier coming back from battle with some form of PTSD. You try to keep a good perspective and stay positive to move on and accept the new person you have become after the war.

4. Going to the first day of a new school 

You wake up and immediately are nervous about the school day ahead. You have butterflies in your belly and you are not sure what to expect the new school year. Every time I enter the hospital and begin a new phase of treatment I get the same feeling. I get anxious on what they will give me and then what side effects I will be prone to during this round. You hope the treatment will go smoothly and there will be no surprises, but you never know. Unfortunately, the first day passes and you find yourself thinking the hospital and all that comes with that phase is “normal” just like when the school year progresses…until you have to start the next round and you start all over again. Hopefully, you will meet a friend or two along the way that will help you get through that round and hold you up when the next “first” comes along, and maybe it won’t be quite as scary.

5. Losing someone close to you 

Most people know what it is like to lose someone they are close to. Maybe it was an old friend you drifted apart from, or maybe you lost a friend or family member to death, or maybe you just lost track of someone who use to be special in your life. When you have cancer and have to go through the toughest battle in your life you lose yourself…or at least what you use to be. You look at things differently and the little things that mattered don’t seem to matter like they use to before. You miss the little problems you thought were so big and you find you took many of the important things in your life for granted before cancer. You realize you will never be the person you were before all this cancer shit happened. Sometimes that is a good thing. You cherish your real friends more and look at everything more carefully and notice the beauty in it all. You access what is good in your life and use it to help you through the bad days. But you also lose your ability to move forward and plan because the unknown is too big, other peoples problems don’t seem big and you hope you will have empathy again one day. You grieve and miss all that has been taken away from you and find you have more cynicism and regret than you did before. Because you have so much time to think you realize this has changed you and you miss the person you were allowed to be before cancer.

6. Becoming friends with your enemy and someone new too

Along this crappy trip with cancer you at some point have to find acceptance that this is the card you have been given and there is no other option but to deal with it.   Just like a person who gives you a terrible first impression and you decide you don’t like them, sometimes you have to give them a chance. You are not saying you and cancer are best buddies, but you learn to understand each other. You accept you have it. You accept you have to feel super shitty to get rid of it. You know you will get rid of it and one day understand what part this chapter will play in your life. Cancer is learning it can’t mess with me. We just have to finish this ride together and move on.

Just like you have to learn to accept an enemy, you need to learn to get to know the new you through all this. You hope after this you will become a better person and someone you will be proud of. Luckily, you learn you have great friends and family and are greatly loved. Through them and this journey you hope to be someone who loves more deeply, gives more fully, and appreciates all the wonder this life has to offer. You know you are imperfect and life will still throw you curves along the way, but your wish is you will handle them with grace, and maybe even find a way to inspire others and make someone else’s life better along the way. You hope I like yourself after cancer. It will be nice to see what she is like.