diagnosis date

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

Best wishes to you, Eileen. 

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

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...