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What do you wish people better understood about living with breast cancer?
Having to explain your breast cancer experience can be daunting, taxing, frustrating and feel just downright impossible. No one really "gets it" than those who've walked this path.
If you could share just one thing with those around you about what it's like to live with breast cancer, what would you say? Share with us below.
Resources:
Talking to Family and Friends About Breast Cancer
Talking to Family and Friends About Metastatic Breast Cancer
Comments
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I tell them I know its a battle and not a sprint and to keep good thoughts for me as it helps. Some don't really understand how I can be so positive about living with the reality of this having become my life but I tell them that I took my late maternal grandmother's words to heart that God only gives me what he thinks I can handle. Plus I tell them it does no good for people to be so down about my health, I'm in it for the long haul and thriving.
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Choose your care team wisely, it will make all the difference! My first care team really demonstrated they did not care. My new care team is great - they care, they answer questions and they are up to date on treatment modalities. Breast cancer is both a physical and an emotional illness. Be sure to take care of both!
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I hope I live to see the day when prevention for cancer takes as high importance as treatment. I’ve had thyroid & breast cancer and NO conventional medical staff addresses diet etc only naturopathic which is to some extent dismissed by many in the medical field. Its way past time they all should be sharing info and working together for this dreaded disease to throw everything we have at it and tackle it with anything that shows promise.
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That the term "survivor" is misleading and doesn't mean that you are cured and everything is great. I really wish that part of this annoying Oct. Breast Cancer Awareness month included making people aware of what it is like to deal with the side-effects of the surgeries, treatments, medications, and the mental impact. Just because someone looks ok doesn't mean they don't still have physical and mental pain. I really wish the medical professionals we have deal with understood this and didn't just dismiss our feelings.
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Hello! I was talking with a friend this morning who had her last round of chemo three weeks ago. She was so mad with herself because she does not have any energy by the afternoons. She said, "I just lay around, sleep a lot and don't want to do anything. I'm so lazy!"
Sounds familiar, does it not? You are NOT lazy! Today, I am 78 days off my two years of targeted drug therapy with Verzenio, and my husband, David, still has to remind me that I am not lazy. I told my friend, "Our bodies have been through Hell and back while lying on a railroad track being run over multiple times a day in the middle of an earthquake during a baseball size hail storm pounding on us with aliens beaming us up! 😬😳🤯😱👽 When I told David my response to her, he wondered where I came up with that analogy. I laughed and told him that it was the first thing that came to my mind. My friend's response was, "Exactly!"
Whatever stage you are in of your breast cancer journey, please have grace with yourself. This generation's catch phrase, "Be Kind" is for us, for you. We know our bodies more than anyone and if you are worn out, rest. If you cannot take another step, rest. If you are beyond overwhelmed, rest. Even if you do not want to, rest.
I woke up today exhausted. At first, the tears began, again. I let them fall. Then I got out of bed and took that first step, again. I stepped outside, lifted my face to the warmth of the sun, took a deep breath of the clean fresh air, and thanked God for being able to breath. During the past 3 1/2 years of my breast cancer journey, breathing was not always possible. You and I have today. Breath. Rest. Be kind to yourself. You deserve it. You are worth it and I believe in you! 🤓🤟🩷
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The beginning of the breast cancer diagnosis was presented as an easy-breezy process that has a positive, quick outcome. At least getting started was off to face cancer with less apprehension. This doesn’t go as planned. A delayed by a year diagnosis has a hurry up and wait quality when doctors scamper away at taking on a challenge.Hearing that the results are in and you do have cancer but no doctor the bumps in the road begin. Having someone say ‘I am your person,’your surgeon then have them beg you to get second opinions once your adjuvant treatment is complete and the plastics cannot agree on an approach and no one will treat you you lose that dependency and become self reliant again as exasperated and abandoned as ever with the encouragement of PRG reminding you no one goes this journey alone. To have a physical therapist tell you there is a scheduling conflict and unfortunately there is no longer a space for you just as you get some momentum going to regain some balance and give your heart a lift, that heart you are counting on to get you through this all , is quite disconcerting not person to person but patient to time slot. To have a resolution to the surgery conflict be compromise on your part at last bringing a sigh of relief and a momentary calm that excites and makes happiness seem possible then have the plastics back out and leave you lied to and desolate as if it is all your fault and you deserve the suffering they are presenting to you. Having no preparation for the after pain of radiation as it wasn’t mentioned in advance was a deep shock. Having to travel and burden relatives with your distress finding alternate doctors when all others turn you away is not how I want to be seen or felt. And the mirror doesn’t lie. This is aging you and it isn’t over yet, or scheduled yet or accepted yet. You don’t have s team but broken parts and you are the common member to their disagreements and you can’t excuse yourself and let the problems work themselves out. You uncomfortably tolerate the disease and stand apart but not alone. Thank you for listening.
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Hearing “but you look fine, it’s like you haven’t had cancer” feels like no one understands the struggle with side effects and the aftermath when basic needs sometimes hard to get to f.e sleeping after mastectomy is difficult. Everything hurts, nothing is comfortable, the worry about what comes next and what has been destroyed in our bodies by the chemo. When my hair will grow back as I don’t look how I used to. Dealing with all these mentally drains us even if the treatment worked. I still consider myself lucky that I was getting the best treatment, however this is definitely life changing and people just don’t know how to react or what to say. We know that they are just trying to be nice, but to me it just goes in one ear and leaves the other as they can never understand how this new existence feels like.
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