diagnosis date

neeliecar

Now that I am about one year out from my diagnosis.  Is the survival date based on day of diagnosis or day of surgery to remove cancer?  I don't know how long I am considered a survivor and that is very important to me.  Thanks to anyone who can help me with this.  eileen

dalycity

I seem to remember that we count from the date of our DIAGNOSIS, not surgery date.

Best wishes to you, Eileen. 

Lynn12

I think American Cancer Society suggests date of diagnosis.

nash

Funny, I've heard a lot of women say that it's surgery date. Hmm. I always thought diagnosis date made more sense, though.

Rovergirl

I'm going w/ diagnosis date as I will have been in treatment 7 months before my actual surgery date.

Kleenex

From what I read about cancer - and I've become a voracious reader of cancer books over the last couple of months! - it seems there is a tendency to use the word "survivor" to describe "someone with cancer." It's like this pink fluffy coating on it to encourage positivity. We don't "suffer from" cancer, we're not "victims" of a cancer attack on our bodies - we are empowered survivors, seemingly from the moment we find out it's in our bodies. So perhaps we are termed survivors from diagnosis.

Intuitively, for me, I will hopefully feel more "survivor-like" once I have completed local treatment to eradicate known physical cancer in my body. I will do things after that to prevent recurrence or a new cancer, but to the extent that we can ever really know for certain, the "original" cancer will be "gone" and I will be a survivor. I don't feel very survivor-like just yet, having had a lumpectomy with snb but not radiation yet (or chemo, if I will be "offered" that option).

Still, it seems to me that a good date might be the date when you start doing something about it when you know you have it - whether that's surgery, neoadjuvant chemo, or palliative chemo... Survivorship is dealing with it, living with it...

Anonymous

Ive always counted from the day the cancer was removed via surgery.....if the cancer were still in me I couldnt feel like a survivor because the meaning of the word to me is that you have made it through a bad experience......and what a BAD experience breast cancer is!!!!!!!!!!