Breast Kept Secrets: The Truth About Surviving Cancer
By: Rachel Peterson
Tags: Survival, PTSD, Cancer, Breast Cancer, Cancer Survival

I haven’t written as much about post-cancer life and survivorship. And it’s not because I don’t have anything to write about. It’s the exact opposite actually. I have a lot of life to write about. But it’s not as concrete as cancer life. It’s not as prescribed and literal as going through treatment. Post-cancer life is the unpeeling of the trauma while new trauma is occurring. It’s the reckoning of how much of a toll chemo and cancer has taken on your body and soul while realizing that it will continue to still steal moments from you. It’s not visible, being a cancer survivor. It’s a secret that you carry with you, day in and day out; all the while trying to move on with the normalcy of life.

And maybe that’s the crux of the problem. Because I am more than cancer and being a cancer survivor. I’m young. I’m hot. I’m a business owner. A runner. A friend. A writer. A plant owner. A baker…the list goes on and on. But I’m also a cancer survivor. And I struggle with how to ration out my survivorship with the rest of my labels. It’s important. God knows I don’t hide it. I post topless photos of myself because of it. But in survivorship, I’ve rediscovered how important these other parts of me are. And so I try to bring those to the forefront. But being a cancer survivor is intrinsically tied to all of these labels. Because it still feels like I’m a runner, yet I had cancer. I’m a business owner, but I had cancer. They’re all mutually exclusive.

Post-cancer life

And then there’s the fact that cancer doesn’t go away. I’m not healed from cancer. I don’t know if that day will ever come. Every morning I wake up and spend two minutes reminding myself that I am still alive, cancer has not reoccurred, and that niggling pain in my hip is from a workout, not bone cancer. When a stress headache comes on, I spend the rest of my evening Googling signs of metastatic brain cancer instead of popping a Tylenol. I look healthy. I look healed. My exterior is shiny and resilient. My interior is duct taped together with anti-depressants, blind hope, and a little too much red wine.

Also post-cancer life

And writing about post-cancer life is a double edged sword. It means that I have to unpack the trauma. It means that I have to reconcile the various parts of me. The part that is taking life by storm and living for every moment. And the part that wishes cancer would have just taken me. And the part that forecasts my life will be drastically cut short by this disease. These all twisted together in a mangled, cobbled, cracked, and beautiful way to form my current state. How the fuck do you talk about that? How do you untangle it in a way that makes sense? I’m grateful for this new lease on life but I also wish it just had broken me when it had the chance. This isn’t a death wish or a cry for help. No, it’s the reality of walking on the razor’s edge. It’s the tightrope of the fragility of life. When you get so close to losing it, you live the rest of your life waiting for the end.

I told my oncologist at my most recent check up about my struggles with post-cancer life. I had high hopes of him giving me an easy solution; a fix he could write on a prescription pad. His response was instead that he didn’t think about me when he went home after work. He no longer worried about me after our appointments. He said that during active treatment, he worried about me a lot. I was one of his patients that was always on his mind because the outlook was bleak. But I beat the odds and here I am, just another patient in his waiting room every three months.

His words are an abstract comfort. They are a boon for me to hold onto as I remind myself that I am here, I am healthy, and I am safe. They’re a talisman of the journey we went on together. But these words are not science. They aren’t a literal defense against cancer cells that may silently lurk in my system. They’re a gut feeling at best. And just like post-cancer life, they pose a juxtaposition. I look great, and I think I feel great…but what does that actually mean?

And so for now, I will form survivorship day by day, emotion by emotion. I will continue to collect stories of trying to date in a global pandemic as a cancer survivor. I will continue to run as many miles as my body allows. I will FaceTime my nephew and feel his love across hundreds of miles. I will throw myself into my business because I have a beautiful brain that craves creativity. And I will also dry heave after watching The Family Stone because Diane Keaton dies of breast cancer. I will scroll through photos of life before cancer and write novels of what that Rachel would be doing. I will feel for the breasts that aimed to kill me and still forget that they are no longer there. That, my friends, is life after cancer. It’s a blessing and a curse; a miracle and a disaster. And maybe that’s what life actually is when we boil it down. It’s a string of miracles knotted and twisted with near-misses and disasters. We make it through by slowly untangling it all; finding solace, happiness and comfort in the fact that we’re still here, still moving, still breathing.