Cancer doesn't have a holiday

If you have cancer and its Christmas, its not as fun. Holidays are supposed to be the time of families, friends, food, and celebrating, and depending on which holiday, gifts. But cancer doesn't take holidays. You can't take a day off from cancer. You can stick it in the back of your brain for a bit but it always comes out, some how.
If you are in treatment, you can try to participate in holidays. But chances are you won't have much fun. The year I was in treatment, I don't remember Thanksgiving as being that significant. But I don't think I did much cooking as usual because I felt like crap. Then Christmas wasn't much fun either because I had just had another lumpectomy because of a suspicious area.... I remember being tired and not doing much shopping or cooking. I don't even remember what I did for my birthday that year except I believe I had a Taxol infusion and none of the nurses noticed the date.

If you are post treatment, you can celebrate another year of being around to enjoy it but it may be more difficult to celebrate. Depression is common after cancer as is PTSD, so it just might not be as fun as it used to be. Financially you might be able to be as generous as you were before cancer - many cancer patients can't work after treatment or take a step back from their career during treatment. And then there are the medical bills that take a crimp out of their wallet. Physically you may not be able to travel as much or participate in as many activities because of limits to your mobility or stamina.

If you know someone who is coping with cancer, take a moment out of the holidays to reach out to them to say hello, give them a call, or send a message.

Me, how am I celebrating this year? A cancer friend is coming over this afternoon to enjoy a bottle of red wine which aged for a decade in her wine cabinet. Christmas Eve I will cook and then go out for Chinese food with my family. Christmas Day there will be eight of us for dinner - until I run out of steam and have to go to bed. Next week will be more family to enjoy. My diet will wait until then. And I will have to nap a lot.

In the meantime, I have to go for blood work tomorrow and get organized for a doctor appointment shortly after the new year. And I have to go get a copy of the receipt for my eye glasses so I can request a reimbursement from the insurance company. And I have a doctor appointment tomorrow.

See, cancer people don't get holidays. We squish them in between medical crap. But we are still here.

Things with a cure

The CDC recently warned of these new germs that are resistant to treatment - the superbugs as they are called. They are out there and killing more and more of us as they resist most treatments. While the pictures of them are pretty cool, the germs themselves are not.

There are other ailments with out a cure. I have a few:

Fibromyalgia
Rheumatoid
Degenerating disks

There are lots of others that I don't have for which I am grateful.

They have treatments to ease the symptoms but not cures. Medical research is needed for these nasty germs and the incurable ailments.

Perhaps I am feeling a little down this morning because when I got out of bed everything hurt. So I am going with plan B - stay in bed until the pain meds kick in. The cat is hanging out with me and the TV is on in the background so I am as comfy as I can get.

But if you don't have these you don't understand. Today I feel like crap. I have plans and will do my best to get through them. But the problem is I know that every day can be like this for the rest of my life. Its pretty damn depressing.

I may sneer at medical studies (because we always need more research) but we really do need the research. There are lots of ailments that do not have cures. And we have these new treatment resistant germs that pop up and kill people. Never mind the bird flus and all the other new ailments.

I think I need a vacation. Oh that's right I am on vacation.... Off to have fun and not be depressing....

A peek at life with cancer

It took a new study to confirm what all of us living with cancer know - its still scary years and decades later. The study said that for the first few years after a cancer diagnosis patients cope with depression but then it turns to a much longer bout with anxiety. Why you ask? Because there is no guarantee it won't come back.


This study also looked at anxiety in both patients and their caregivers. The caregivers also tend to cope with anxiety.

If you have some sort of other chronic illness such as rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia or many others, patients tend to deal with it as a chronic illness. Cancer patients also deal with it as a chronic illness but its also a chronic threat because there is no way to control or prevent it from coming back or showing up with a new cancer some place else.

How pleasant.

It took this fancy research study to tell me something I know well, 32 years later, that it still looms over me. In 2005, 24 years after my first diagnosis, I had millions of uterine fibroids that resulted in a hysterectomy. I expressed my concerns to the surgeon that I had had cancer before and was concerned about more cancer. Her reply 'fibroids usually are benign but to be sure we slice and dice them to make sure' left me feeling better about it. But I had been concerned enough to ask.

In 2007 with my breast cancer diagnosis, I started the roller coaster again. But full of little tips and reminders, that because it was my second cancer at such a young age (never say that to patients please), I got extra tests and exams as a special perk.

Years of going to doctors who say things like 'with your medical history, we need to be sure', while reassuring it does reinforce the possibility of cancer looming.

So now I shouldn't worry about depression but only the anxiety and wait for a guarantee.