“How did you do it? Survive cancer?”….. My friends have said.
People have asked me how I did it. Many have said, “How did you fight cancer with such an upbeat attitude, a smile on your face for the majority of the time and continuing to enjoy life and laugh a lot through the truly awful process? I couldn’t do it.”
My answer is this: “Yes you could”.
I’m no more special than you are, I’m not stronger than you, I’m really not. But I chose to have the courage to keep going in the face of adversity, when I was given reasons to not keep going, and that’s the truth of it. You could do the same if you just made the choice to be brave and courageous.
Everything that I have been through, here’s the list. (This is for information purposes only and I would add it’s not as much as some have had to cope with in life):
- Lump found Dec 2019
- Given the all clear Feb 2020
- March-Sep 2020 lump still there getting bigger and bigger
- Return to Drs…..Grade 3 breast cancer diagnosis Dec 2020
- Chemotherapy and all its side effects (fatigue, mouth sores, throat problems (ongoing), bowel problems, breathlessness, sore fingertips (unable to open cans etc), nose bleeds, nausea and sickness, hair loss, nail loss, facial cellulitis)
- Single mastectomy and reconstruction surgery (overcoming the surgery itself, intense pain, physical changes in my body therefore emotional experiences learning to adjust)
- Finishing off with 3 weeks of intense radiotherapy every weekday
- Early induced menopause at age 45 still to come….
And still I kept going.
You see, all you have to do in the face of adversity is hold onto hope even when you could easily give up hope.
Life is hard, it’s true, but why say….”I’ll be happy when…..[fill in the blank]?”
People are afraid to be happy sometimes because life IS hard and there are a lot of reasons to be afraid, a lot of reasons to give up on life but, you see, there are also a lot of reasons to be thankful. Where would you rather put your focus?
Life can be very tough at times; my advice is to embrace both ends of the stick where life is concerned. Embrace that life is hard AND beautiful. Why do we feel like we have to choose one to focus on? Go with it and embrace the hard parts just as much as the easy parts, the sh*t bits just as much as the good bits. When we embrace the rollercoaster of life, that’s when life is harmonious and we feel alive.
And why be ashamed to say ‘my life is hard, I’m not coping’. (I have been saying that often over the last couple of weeks at the time of writing this). You CAN cope but it’s ok to think you can’t. It’s nothing to be ashamed about. It’s truth. Truth is real. And the reality is we don’t always cope and that’s entirely ok. Why deny that?
A quote I heard recently….”When we deny the pain of today, we deny the hope of the future” and I agree, why do that? Both are real feelings.
Life doesn’t get easier, life is not simple. What IS simple is your view of the life you lead if you choose to embrace both ends of the stick.
So that’s how I did it. That’s how I survived cancer. And that’s how I am still living my life now…..cancer free.
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