mental health awareness - life after cancer

Photo from “cathartic 27”

Hello,
How old are you?
You know what?! - it doesn’t really matter.
Cancer can come into your life whenever it fancies!

Four years ago, my doctor told me they found cancer in my body - and that’s certainly something you do not expect to happen to you, especially if you are a 25-year-old. “Come on, body! Wait a bit more, I have things to do here” I thought. What a demand, to think you will be invincible at leeeaaast until you are 40. Let’s say 50? Or 60? The choice depends on your future plans, of course.

Soon there’s a clear connection between your mind and your body. You can fight with your whole body, but you need to fight even more with your mind.
And this all, whilst sharing small smelly hospital rooms with strangers that become friends in less than 3 minutes and no matter how much they fight, it’s clearly not working for them. But after chemotherapy, surgery, again chemotherapy, all the rainbow of pills, you are one of the lucky ones – the treatment worked and you are to ready to jump into this “cancer free” category.

Your body is finally free from cancer, no bad cell left in there! Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

Ready to start your brand-new life, you realise the journey has just started. Unless you decide not to, treatment keeps going for another 5 to 10 years. Injections, other pills, mood swings, joints soreness, hot flashes, you gain weight, chemo brain is real, fear of reliving your journey anytime you want to plan something for the future, anxiety at every little lump… “Scans are like revolving doors, emotional roulette wheels that spin us around for a few days and spit us out the other side. Land on red, we're in for another trip to Cancerland; land on black, we have a few more months of freedom” said Bruce Feiler in Time Magazine.
But you can’t complain, I mean, you are a hero, you beat cancer and you are now cancer free!

So all the strength is now in your mind.
You realise it’s better not to fight alone, but to connect with people who’ve had a similar journey.
You realise how important it is to share your journey, to give a meaning to it.
To get help, to understand that there’s so much more.
To allow yourself to complain sometimes, to allow other people not to understand you.
To be nice, kind, respectful.
How important it is to be open and curious to whatever life has to offer you.
To have goals, to trust the process.
You realise how important it is to enjoy every single day, every single moment.

And if that’s the price to pay, I am so, so, so happy to be cancer (not really) free - because cancer makes you a fragile badass, but still a badass!