4 Things cancer survivors want you to know
In honor of Sarcoma Awareness Month, I want to share some common threads found amongst those whose lives have been affected by cancer. If you know and love someone who has dealt with or is dealing with cancer, you may be surprised to learn that it’s the simple things that give us the support we need.
1. Treatment and recovery often make us feel like a different person: Cancer can seem to strip away one's sense of self rapidly, leaving behind a ravaged body and spirit that we hardly recognize in the mirror. While some experience hair loss, others may experience sudden weight loss or weight gain, and weakening of the muscles. Breast cancer patients often need mastectomies and osteosarcoma patients often need limb amputations. We notice more than you do how different we look. Sometimes we don't want to face the world as this shell of who we once were. How can you help us feel like ourselves again? Don't focus on these changes. Treat us like the person you know we are on the inside and gives us a few moments of the joy we once felt. There is nothing like those first few belly laughs post-treatment and that hang out session with your best friend that doesn't consist of any cancer talk.
2. We know this is hard for you too: we know that to love us is to feel with a heavy heart our struggles like they are your own. We know that when we are not around you let the tears flow openly and ask god why this is happening. Even through our own personal suffering, we are also hurt knowing that you are hurt. I will never forget the look on my Mother and husband's face as my biopsy results came in or the tone of my father's voice as I gave him the news. As much as they tried to keep their emotions together for me, they seeped through like grey watercolor. It brought me so much pain to see how contagious the emotional cost of this disease really was. But with their pain also came happiness and hope. There were tears of joy when my scans came back clean and cheers when I took my first step with a prosthetic. My ups and downs were their ups and downs and all I ever wanted was to keep bringing smiles to their faces. I wanted them to see me beat this monster and live to tell about it.
3. We really are a different person by the end of this: There is nothing like surviving something that aims to kill you to make you a new person. I never imagined my life would take this turn. I never dreamed I would have the strength to share my darkest and brightest moments with the world. Cancer is the threat that reminds us there is so much life out there waiting to be lived and if we are blessed enough to have the chance to live it, we won't let anything stop us. Some jump out of airplanes and others get on them to travel the world. Some change their careers and shift their goals in a way that may seem reckless to those who haven't walked in our shoes or "shoe". Once you have stared death in the face the only thing that scares you more is the thought of living one more day just going through the motions.
4. We want to help: we have been through fear and suffering that we wouldn't wish on our worst enemy. Our lives were spared but there are so many others still in the midst of this fight. We are the only ones who can connect with them on a level of true understanding and there is nothing more rewarding than being a part of their support system. At my pre-op appointment, I asked my surgeon if we could donate my tumor for research. Sure, I may only be one person but this cancer is RARE. Any tiny bit of help I could offer to help those working to find alternative treatments felt so rewarding. Maybe someday, someone out there wouldn't need to lose a limb or be treated with a form of chemotherapy or radiation that is rarely effective.
I want to thank everyone who has ever taken the time to read my posts, send me a message, or reach out in any way. I want to thank my parents, my husband, family, and friends for always providing a safe place for me to land from my darkest days to my sunniest ones. All of you mean so much more than you know to me and have given the courage to share my voice.
