For the first time in my life, I'm scared of dying. I've never said that before. I suppose having cancer will do that to a person.
There are basically two types of cancer scenarios. There's the one where the person beats the crap out of cancer, doesn't look back and lives to be a hundred. The other one is where the person beats the crap out of cancer, only to have cancer come back for a rematch, often again and again.
I'm sure every single person who's ever had any type of cancer must have the niggling thought in the back of their mind that it could come back. They may not dwell on it, but whether they think about it every day or once every ten years, the possibility of a recurrence is enough to scare anyone. I'm a worrier, so I know I will spend forever looking in my rearview mirror, wondering once I kick cancer's ass if my fight will truly be over. This has not been fun so far and I don't ever want to have to go through it again.
When I started this journey, my goal was to try to stay positive and live my life as normally as I could. Obviously once all of my treatments and surgeries are finished I will just have to find a new normal. Since I am BRCA+ (that means I carry the gene mutation for breast cancer), I will be closely screened for the rest of my life for a recurrence, as well as for other cancers that I am at a higher risk for developing. It looks like I will have a future full of appointments and scans in order to keep me cancer-free, but the key word is future. I love my life and I love my family, so I will endure whatever I have to, now and in the years to come, so that I can have that future.
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