Absolutely no one prepares you for what your life will be after cancer. You push through all of the treatments, appointments, stress, and chaos thinking that your life will return to normal.
What no one tells you is that there is no normal after cancer. You become a shadow of the person you once were. You're constantly stuck in a fog. You never truly feel better.
For me there is now constant pain. I was told that the pain would go away after treatment. Then I was told the pain would go away after losing weight. After losing 130 pounds the doctors listened and did a biopsy to see what was going on. Now, after that biopsy, I'm being told there is damage from radiation and the pain will never go away.
I am 30 years old and living in chronic pain from cancer. Of course, I have a baseline where the pain is like a normal person's bruise. I've come to accept that. However, there are many days where the pain far surpasses my baseline and the doctors have said to just go to the pain clinic. No one will listen that just popping another pill is far from what I want.
Not only was I trying to find my new "normal" after cancer, I also was trying to navigate being a new parent since I became pregnant during my cancer diagnosis journey. The "normal" I was striving to get back to would never exist again.
I honestly don't know how I have managed to make it this far. I guess it's probably the fact that I keep my head down and don't focus on much of anything. I have to push through every day because I have two kids that rely on me for everything and I seldom have help. I never take time to actually enjoy life. I feel like it's just an endless cycle of chaos and exhaustion everyday.
My goal this year is to break this toxic cycle. To find more holistic approaches to manage my well-being. I want to remember what it is like to live. I want to spend more time in nature and reconnect to the soul of a person I once was.
