Trying to get my head out of Cancerland

I totally hear you.  I am struggling with the same thoughts as you.  It is so wierd to think that I might not be here with my family in 10, 20, or 30 years.  You just never think it will be you and coming to terms with the thought that it might be, is very scary and unbelievable.  Then, you feel that you should be thinking "positive" and you feel that you don't want to share your thoughts with anyone.  This just makes you feel more alone and isolated.  I don't want to be so afraid of dying that I don't live, so I'm moving forward and trying to be positive. But, I still think about it every day.  I'm just hoping this gets better as time goes by.

You will find the farther out you get, the easier it is to live with.  My gf is over three years out, triple neg, pos nodes. and even though we both still talk about reccurance, its alot less than we used to.  There are sooo many people out there that survive breast cancer.  You will most likely be suprised how they pop out of the woodwork.  I didnt think I knew anyone that had it, and then when I got it I found out I was surrounded by survirvors!  A mom on my kids baseball team id known for a couple of years, three sets of older neighbors!!  To look at me now, you would never know I had breast cancer!  My hair is long again, and life does get back to a new normal  Hope this somewhat helps.

Rachel, what I did with the facing death thing was I asked the Good Shepherd to take that particular concern away from me for a while.  A similar way to do this is to put it away in a cupboard, on a shelf, in a drawer, and leave it there.  So, when I prayed for this, within minutes the pressure came off me.  Then, as I went along with treatment, little by little, pieces were given back to me to consider, resolve, and remove from my thoughts.  This continued until the last of it came to me shortly after my last treatment.  I told myself a couple things, too, to add to your list of phrases to cling to.  Now, I was rather overweight before I had chemo, and afterwards I had lost 30 pounds, just like that.  So, I now tell myself whenever the idea of recurrence hits me in the face, "Hey, bring it on, I want chemo, I need to lose another 30 pounds."  Another thing I told myself that even with recurrence and mets, people do make it for years and years, so it's not an automatic death sentence.  In fact, the IDC breast cancer you have is the most common one to have, it's slow-growing and highly curable.  While cancer has to be respected, I say when they finish with treatments, they've done everything they can to make you well, so you may declare yourself cured when your treatments are over.  You will be healed.  GG

rachelvk - I'm happy you are feeling better today.  I'm hoping going back to work will do the same for me.  Getting out of the house and feeling productive might be what I need to take my mind off things for a moment or two.

I'm glad you started this topic.   It helps to know that we aren't alone and the only one having these types of thoughts.  For what it is, that helps a little.

Rachelvk,

I just wanted to add my two cents here -- I feel like you're holding yourself to expectations that aren't really realistic.  Five weeks after a bmx is WAY too soon to be "over it."  I had the world's easiest time of it with my cancer, but that didn't mean that I was ready to forget the whole thing.  Someone on here said that the course of cancer treatment goes:

1. Surgery;

2. Radiation/chemo

3. Meltdown

That's exactly how it went for me.  I tried to tough it out and be upbeat and brave and non-complaining during the actual treatment, and then when treatment ended and I wasn't juggling time slots and making sure that my regular life went on as usual as well as cancer treatment, and I also wasn't getting lots of attention and positive reinforcement from my doctors, I kind of fell apart because I didn't know what to do next.  "Just go on living" seemed really difficult.

What I learned was:  Don't push yourself so hard.  I think all of us have good days and bad days, and the bad days often outnumber the good days (or moments) especially in the beginning while there are still lots of unknowns and such a short time of actually living with it.  

For me, it was and is really really important to acknowledge what emotions are there.  I'm glad you have these message boards to vent to and acknowledge that you have fear, and if you're not by a computer, and you need support, you can practice supporting yourself by letting yourself see what is there.  Emotions are really transient and they usually exist side by side with other emotions, so you can (as you note in your original post) have fear and also have appreciation for the weather, and you can have gratitude for the support you've received and still have the need for support.  And there are cracks in between all of these things where there's just spaciousness.

I know how to look for the spaciousness because I've been practicing it for a long time, but don't use that as another way to pressure yourself into an idea of how you "should" be responding.  One of my old teachers used to say, "All our lives, we've been 'should' upon." 

I'm rambling, and I don't mean to.  I just mean that cancer is a roller coaster of emotions, just the way grief is, so of *course* you have fear.  If you didn't fear recurrence, it would probably just mean that you're in denial about your own emotions.  It's okay to be fearful, or angry, and it's okay to forget it all in a moment when something makes you happy, and it's okay and normal to be fearful and angry again later.  I'm sending you lots of hugs and lots of good thoughts.  :-)