When I was diagnosed with breast cancer I was 40 years old. I have a history of breast cancer in my family. My grandmother was diagnosed in her early 70’s and my mom was diagnosed in her late 50’s. I always had a fear I would get it, but I had assumed it would be when I was older, just like them. When I turned 40 last January, I promptly scheduled my mammogram and also decided that I was ready to get genetic testing done. I had put off genetic testing because I did not feel I was mentally prepared to make such big decisions if they found a gene mutation. I have always been displeased with the medical side of genetic testing because they rarely focus on the mental health aspect, or at least in my personal and professional experience of counseling clients who were genetically positive for some genes. (A blog will be posted soon to explore this more in depth).
My mammogram was in July and that was the start of cancer journey. I never even got the opportunity to make it to my genetic testing appointment in August…. So fast forward to now and I am 41 years old, having done a lumpectomy, a sentinel lymph node biopsy, completed radiation, and taking estrogen blockers for the next five years at minimum. But now what…. How do I digest this past year? How do I decide to look at what just happened? I could be mad and resentful that this happened at such a young age…. I could be happy that I am alive and survived…. I could be scared of what could potentially come next….
I have mainly traveled two of the three roads: happy I am alive and petrified of what could come. Being cancer free is a weird thing because numbers are attached to it. Numbers that are basically different percentages of the probability of cancer returning locally or at the worst case cancer returning at a distance and being considered metastatic cancer. The numbers are what makes the one road filled with anxiety..
As a counselor, I believe in and mainly practice Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It is all about thoughts and perspectives and how these thoughts affect our behavior. So, I had choices to make and thoughts to evaluate. If I choose the road of anxiety and fear what kind of life would I be living? When you really sit back and think about death (a fear many of us how) you actually cannot pinpoint when or how. I could be living a life scared of cancer returning and dying in a tragic car accident the next day (something that was never even on my radar).
Then there is the other road. The positive road. Getting diagnosed with cancer was one of the scariest times of my life. At first, you only know you have cancer. You do not know what stage, if it has metastasized, what kind of treatment you need, and of course what your prognosis is. When death is on the table, it can change perspectives, or at least it did for me. But, I will admit, it did not at first. My first road was anxiety. But once things settled and I knew my prognosis, I began to look at life differently. I had a deeper appreciation for life. I thought about how I am living my life. Was I making each day count? Was I truly happy? Was I truly fulfilled? We only get one chance at this and that diagnosis made that very evident, more evident than it has ever been. This road can look different for everyone because we are all different but one thing all of our roads will have in common is positivity. This road helps me to sleep better at night. This road helps me to stay in the present more. This road helps me to truly enjoy time with loved ones and my German Shepherd. When you have the weight of anxiety on top of your shoulders, it weighs you down, it takes the spark out of happiness and joy, and it never really allows you to be fully present.
Now, I will be honest. It was hard to jump from the road of anxiety to the road of positivity. Why? Because cancer is scary, or at least it was for me. It took work for me to jump roads. Journaling, therapy, long talks with other cancer survivors are a few things that helped me to transition to the positive road. Now, at times, anxiety will pop back in. I can be triggered by an article I read about someone dying from breast cancer or a story I hear about someone getting breast cancer for a second time. But, I refuse to stay in that anxious state. I move on from it as quickly as I can because I know the anxiety is doing nothing good for me.
To the women suffering from breast cancer or who have survived breast cancer that are reading this blog, I hope it has given you some inspiration and comfort knowing that you are not alone.
Tara Amanna, M.Ed., LPC