What is breast cancer to me - part 2

I don’t get the “I will kick this cancer’s ass mentality” so many of us have.

Don’t get me wrong here – I think we all need to go into this as a WAR BUT if you only have fight on your heart all the time, you will miss a lot…a lot that needs to be learned from this fight.

I feel like with this mentality running all over the place – especially with young women, we forget a lot – we forget to learn to be easy on ourselves…we look at getting chemo, radiation, surgeries, etc. as more on our to do lists.

These are NOT normal things to add to a to-do list.

It seems we just add this “stuff” to our lists, but we don’t stop, think and feel what is happening…I didn’t until after it was over…the first time.

My first time through chemo, I pushed through trying to keep up the image I was fine – I was in control – it was no big deal to get chemo 8 chemos in 16 weeks.

Then a lumpectomy right after.

Oh yeah, add a cruise on to that list – that will be good…it was good, but it was hard. 

My body was tired and depression started to set in….but why depression now – I was CLEAN?!?!

Radiation – 37 treatments.

People say radiation is a breeze….it sure wasn’t for me.

It completely zapped my energy, and I felt guilty for this – because it was “supposed” to be easy.
All through this whole process, I kept that thought, “but I will kick this cancer’s ass.”

I felt if I wasn’t in constant fight mode, I wasn’t doing what needed to be done.

But what I didn’t realize was, one can’t survivor in fight mode ALL the time.

Once I started to crack the exterior of fight/hard edge/I am bad ass mode, I realized fight mode wasn’t/isn’t for me…all the time.

When you are going through treatment just know you don’t have to be superwomen. 

You don’t have to keep up your “old life” and just add treatment to your to-do list…it isn’t just a to-do…it is a life changing point and you should embrace it as so.