Survivorship Summer

Hey Warriors,

Long time, no talk. Considering where I could be with a stage 3 diagnosis (which is dead) things are good. But when death is where the bar is set at, it’s sort of hard to not be good when you’re still breathing. I guess things aren’t as easy as I had hoped for. In the cancer community, everyone warns that survivorship is harder than active treatment. But like most things, you can’t understand that until you’re in it.

New Nursing Gig

Let us back-track a bit. I finished off the school year strong as a nurse at a local high school. I’m really enjoying the work and learning the way of the land. Being a school nurse is a completely different type of nursing that deserves so much more respect than it’s been given.

I still miss ER nursing something terrible but, for me, that is such an unhealthy way to live. I now think of ER nursing as my drug, my dopamine-chasing drug. I’ll always pine for it, but will do what’s best for me and not go back anytime soon. I’d rather be alive, than chasing dopamine.

Therapy & Appointments

After school let out, I dove right into what I’ve deemed the summer of survivorship. I went back to going to lymphedema therapy and mental health therapy each once a week, and have added physical therapy twice a week. Between these three treatment modalities, I have an appointment 4 out of 5 days a week. A lot of weeks I have a fifth appointment between all the follow-ups and preventative surveillance I have to do. I’ve had my:

• Regular oncology follow-ups,
• Follow-ups with radiation oncology and psychiatric oncology,
• GI surveillance of my pancreas (because of my increased risk of pancreatic cancer due to BRCA 2 gene mutation), and 
• Dermatology surveillance of my skin due to BRCA 2 gene mutation (increasing my risk of melanoma).

And of course my regular old-boring-muggle yearly appointments that everyone does like primary care and gynecology. I’ve also started seeing  a dietician, because that pesky old-boring-muggle yearly appointment with primary care showed my cholesterol has slightly increased. And I’m not giving the cancer (or my body) any reason to excuse itself from this world any time soon. All that to say, I’m busy.

Survivorship = Struggle

Which is what makes survivorship so hard. Right when I thought things would slow down and get easier, I’d get back to “normal” life, I get hit by all of these… I don’t know… “things”—extra things, cancer things. At least things I think are cancer things. Is it “normal” to have appointments every day of the week? Does it even matter if everybody else is doing it? It’s my normal. It’s what I’m doing. My “new normal” as the cancer community calls it.

It’s not just appointments though. It’s hard work and new habits being formed. Physical therapy is extremely hard and I hardly do anything! At least it feels like I hardly do anything—my body on the other hand thinks I’ve run a marathon, and I’m so sore that night and the next day. I have to bust out all the ice, over-the-counter meds, massage gun, meditation and every other non-pharmaceutical pain management technique I have in my arsenal.

New Sense of Time

It gives me flashbacks to doing chemo and feeling so terrible then right when I felt better, I had to go back for another treatment. Just like with chemo, I often want to quit or back off but then I remember I have limited time to accomplish these goals. Right now I have the luxury of time; I don’t have work responsibilities and alarms to attend to. I can focus on me, a luxury I cherish and am so glad I have. I try to focus on that to keep my mind happy, because happiness is the ultimate goal here. 

But this warped luxury of time has come at a cost. A literal cost and lack of money. I went from making what I do in a week in the ER to making it in a month elsewhere. That—coupled with the way the world is today—things have been tight. But like everything else in survivorship, I’ve found a way to make it work.

Outside of Appts

In between appointments and follow ups, I’m pretty much home 24/7. If I’m not home, then Mitch most certainly is, so we started a little side hustle of watching dogs while their owners are gone. The dogs come to our home and it’s kind of a blast, yet kind of crazy. But most certainly it’s just one thing I get to have some control over in this survivorship JOURNEY.

Watching dogs brings me a lot of joy; joy that all us survivors have to search out and/or create for ourselves. It takes a bit of work (like my health does too), but in the end it’s so worth it and brings more happiness than I’ve had in a while. I guess I’ve learned that happiness requires work too, which is okay. Oftentimes in life (as cliché as it is) anything worth doing takes work. It’s worth it, I’m worth it. 

So I guess that’s it. That’s survivorship for me, at least right now: busy, a whirlwind, lack of control and finding control, losing control, acceptance, and… and …and… created happiness. I found joy in trying times—like my middle name, it’s hidden in there, you just have to find it.

Go find, or create, your joy today warriors.