I talk to lots of ladies who are at various stages in their breast cancer journeys.\u00a0 \u00a0I make no secret of the fact that my mission in life now is educating anyone who will listen to me on breast cancer diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.\u00a0 I have learned so much through my journey, how to navigate, how to research, and how many tips, tricks, and hacks are out there.\u00a0 I want to make this process more manageable for those who come after me.\u00a0 Sharing is the easiest thing in the world for me.<\/p>\n
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The area where I struggle is when to shut up.<\/p>\n
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Most of the time I think the advice or information is welcome.\u00a0 Sometimes it is just lending an ear to someone who has questions, and needs to talk it out.\u00a0 I could do that all day long (and I sometimes do).\u00a0 But there are times when I really have to hold back.\u00a0 When I know my advice or tough love will make things worse.<\/p>\n
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Such as:<\/p>\n
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My biopsy was so painful, nothing can be this bad<\/em> – I hate to break it to you, but that was the easy part.\u00a0 The good news is that you will get so used to needles, you’ll practically want to start sticking yourself to save time in the doctor’s office.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I just had my first chemo, and I feel great!<\/em> – So, yeah.\u00a0 I personally didn’t have this experience (I was horrendously sick from my first infusion), but I know others who have.\u00a0 The effects of chemo are cumulative.\u00a0 Meaning that each infusion will hit you a little (or a lot) harder than the one before.\u00a0 Just because you are still going to your spinning class after your first treatment, does not mean you will still be that energetic after the tenth.\u00a0 And please don’t judge those of us who had a harder time.\u00a0 You may be one of us in another month.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I can’t wait until I’m done with treatment so I can have my life back<\/em> – This is the cruelest lesson of cancer, which is why I try not to spoil the delusion.\u00a0 You need that dream to get you through the day sometimes.\u00a0 But the truth is you don’t really get your life back.\u00a0 You may go back to work, and get more involved with housekeeping or your kids again.\u00a0 But it will hurt.\u00a0 You will be tired, a tired I can’t describe and that I never believe existed in nature.\u00a0 You will still have constant doctor’s appointments, physical therapy, and tests.\u00a0 You may be seeing a therapist to make sense of it all, and to combat the anxiety and PTSD.\u00a0 You will have to make a spreadsheet of all your medications.\u00a0 Your side effects will have side effects.\u00a0 You will realize that the life you fought so hard to get back is gone.\u00a0 But you know what?\u00a0 You will have a new life, fresh perspectives, and maybe even a new mission.\u00a0 All you have to do is embrace it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n These are things I would like to say, but I don’t.\u00a0 Because you have to learn these things on your own, and sometimes you just need to believe that your experience will be different.\u00a0 \u00a0Sometimes the best way to help is to get out of the way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Or just shut up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Speaking of new missions, keep an eye out for our website, coming out later this week!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I talk to lots of ladies who are at various stages in their breast cancer journeys.\u00a0 \u00a0I make no secret of the fact that my mission in life now is educating anyone who will listen to me on breast cancer diagnosis, treatment, and recovery.\u00a0 I have learned so much through\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4],"tags":[29,16,10,63,51,59,73,52,39,20,61,17,28,32,8,44,15,37,56,19,34],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/pexels-photo-377909-1.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834"}],"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=834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":889,"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions\/889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driventosurvive.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}