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<\/p>\nI am two days late (as always), but Sunday was National Cancer Survivors’ Day.\u00a0 Yay, I think.\u00a0 I am definitely lucky.\u00a0 I get to call myself a survivor.\u00a0 My cancer held at stage 3 (meaning it didn’t spread to other parts of my body, despite being present in a large number of lymph nodes).\u00a0 I have “no evidence of cancer”, known as NED.\u00a0 Note that I don’t use the words remission or cancer-free.\u00a0 They imply that I have beat this disease, and there is no indication that is the case.\u00a0 I can have a local occurrence at any time, or a distant recurrence elsewhere in my body (known as metastasis).\u00a0 I don’t get to feel complacent, but I do have hope that I will stay in this limbo for a long time, maybe forever.\u00a0 As I said… I’m one of the lucky ones.<\/p>\n
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But I got to thinking about what it means to be a survivor.\u00a0 I came across this picture this morning.\u00a0 It was taken a few days after I finished radiation (four years ago today).\u00a0 You can see the radiation burns across my collarbone.<\/p>\n
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Here is the thing.\u00a0 That radiation burn was the tip of the iceberg.\u00a0 I had burns covering the majority of that breast.\u00a0 They hurt.\u00a0 In some cases, they itched.\u00a0 It was a full-time task keeping them slathered in a variety of ointments to control the pain and help them heal.\u00a0 And they eventually did heal, although the scar tissue the burns left behind cause pain even today.\u00a0 No one sees that, because for the most part that is all invisible.\u00a0 The burn on my collarbone was the only hint to the world that I was suffering, for a few weeks at least.<\/p>\n
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And that is indicative of so much of my life now.\u00a0 The long term effects of chemo and radiation, as well as the on-going side effects from hormone inhibition have only minimal noticeable effects.\u00a0 You may notice I get tired easy.\u00a0 You may see me limp, or wince when I stand up, or grimace when I bend or twist, or gingerly try to pop my knuckles.\u00a0 You may not even see any of this.\u00a0 But every joint in my body hurts.\u00a0 I have days I can barely get out of bed.\u00a0 But all you see is the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n
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I have struggled with anxiety and depression since treatment.\u00a0 You may see me snap at someone (maybe even you).\u00a0 I might seem quiet and concentrate hard on a task.\u00a0 You may see me sit back and breathe carefully.\u00a0 I might go off by myself for a few minutes.\u00a0 What you don’t see is when I get home or go somewhere alone and have a meltdown.\u00a0 The uncontrollable crying or just quietly rocking back and forth in a fetal position.\u00a0 It’s the iceberg, you only saw the tip.<\/p>\n
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I am working on all of the above.\u00a0 I have gone to therapy, I practice coping mechanisms, I experiment with different pain control to see what works best.\u00a0 But I have accepted that there is probably no end to any of this.\u00a0 All I can do is try to make sure that all anyone sees is the tip of the iceberg.\u00a0 Not because I’m ashamed of anything that I experience, but because I need to maintain normalcy.\u00a0 That means that sometimes I do the best I can until I can get to a place where I can take care of myself.<\/p>\n
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So the next time you notice something seems off with a cancer survivor friend, keep in mind that it may be the tip of the iceberg.\u00a0 Ask what you can do to help in that moment.\u00a0 And understand that they are doing the best that they can.<\/p>\n
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For more information for your breast cancer journey, please see our website www.driventosurvive.org<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am two days late (as always), but Sunday was National Cancer Survivors’ Day.\u00a0 Yay, I think.\u00a0 I am definitely lucky.\u00a0 I get to call myself a survivor.\u00a0 My cancer held at stage 3 (meaning it didn’t spread to other parts of my body, despite being present in a large\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4,49,1],"tags":[29,140,70,16,10,72,137,138,141,105,21,46,28,18,15,19,139,125,34],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/iceberg.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1233"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1236,"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions\/1236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}