It’s life Laura, but not as you know it

Posted on by lauraricecake

I’m celebrating my 31st birthday today, but in the world of cancer, I just turned 1. Give or take a month or two, it’s been a year since I entered remission. When I turned 30 last year, I assumed I could just throw myself back into life as normal – after all, I had just conquered a death sentence, right? Beating cancer by my 30th birthday felt like a victory, a ticket back to living my life. Little did I know that happily ever after takes a lot of work. With that in mind, here are some reflections on the past year of getting back to life, but not as I knew it.

During treatment, you assume the status of cancer patient. However much you resist it, this status affords certain privileges. Everyday stresses are alleviated by family and friends who want to help. Everyone is especially kind to you because, well, you’re going through cancer. There are no pressures or expectations on you, apart from those you place on yourself. Support groups, complimentary therapies, shielding and an army of friendly nurses create a cocoon around you. Despite the atrocities happening within, your treatment bubble is buoyed by love and support.

The diagnosis hit like a bombshell, yet there was a strange luxury in not having time to process what was happening. Amidst the shock, adrenaline and medications coursing through your veins, there’s a momentum carrying you towards the goal: remission, the promised land. You know that when you get there, you’ll be so grateful to be alive that you’ll effortlessly live your best life and never sweat the small stuff ever again.

It takes (vials and vials of) blood, sweat and tears, but you arrive.

Your status changes to cancer survivor.

The protective bubble promptly bursts.

It takes precisely 24 hours for the wheels to come off the throwing yourself back into life plan. Your first day back at work ends in a positive covid test and feeling incredibly unwell for a couple of weeks.  An immune system shot from 6 months of chemo is like Velcro to winter germs and bugs. You’re as exposed and vulnerable as a toddler thrown into high school. Life starts to feel scary.

But everyone is so happy that you’re better! You can live like a normal 30-year old again! Friends want to catch up, travel, plan trips. Work commitments ramp up. Follow-up appointments must now accommodate your actual life, not the other way round.

However, the weight of exhaustion settles deep into your bones. Everyday tasks become a Herculean effort; your brain feels like mush. It’s shocking, almost more shocking than the harsh realities of treatment, because nobody prepared you for this. Everyone focused on reaching the end of treatment and getting a clear scan, believing everything would be rosy afterwards.

But it’s not. The fatigue is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. Your body has endured six months of poison, and the recovery process can stretch for years. Meanwhile, your mind struggles to readjust after months of being under the influence of steroids. Far from feeling better than during treatment, you find yourself worse off, grappling with the challenges of post-cancer life.

Because it’s life Laura, but not as you know it.

Slowly, you start to realise that survival is not some kind of victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah. Some people would have given ANYTHING to survive the disease, yet here you are feeling utterly miserable. Then guilty for feeling miserable. Then miserable for feeling guilty. And finally, just really icky because you catch yourself feeling jealous of someone who died of cancer, envying their escape from the struggle of survival. How could you even think like that?

A counsellor explains that when people get a life-threatening illness, all they want to do is live. It’s common that on the other side, things feel so hard they want to die. You don’t want to die but her statement offers a strange kind of reassurance. Maybe it’s okay not to be a new person living your best life right now. Perhaps survival is going to be more of a slog.

You start to thaw out. But, like cold hands on a hot radiator, the stings of grief, anger and disbelief hurt immensely. There’s a lot of loss to process, even after a good outcome. Self, health, relationships, identity, hair, money, time: subtle layers of loss that add up to something heavy. No wonder cancer causes such immense emotional suffering on top of the physical suffering.

Now that you’re back in the real world, you wonder if you should worry about the things other 30-year-old women are worried about: houses, relationships, mortgages, kids, careers. Are those things even possible post cancer? Or should you just be grateful to be alive? You find yourself confused – really confused – about how you should be feeling.

You watch a friend’s one-year-old and see how tender and vulnerable he is. You feel like that too. But this time you’re not one, and people expect the Laura they’ve always known. Yet you feel different in an imperceptible way.

Because it’s life Laura, but not as you know it.

The transition from breezing through the first chemo session with a faint sense of optimism, to collapsing into uncontrollable sobs before the final session, declaring your inability to endure any more, didn’t happen overnight. It was a gradual descent, the cumulative toll of chemo quietly accumulating until one day the stark reality of cancer treatment slapped you in the face. You start to wonder if the reverse could be true too – whether consistent efforts towards health and recovery, no matter how small, might eventually culminate in restored health. The “good thing” about your immune system rebuilding is that the times where you feel good stand out. You’re forced to pay attention.

Nature feels like a healing balm, the chilly thrill of a cold dip, the smell of fresh dew, the rustle of leaves. You spend hours and hours sitting on a bench in the woods in dappled sunlight, thinking about how important your environment is. Especially for sensitive souls, toxins leach in from unhealthy ones, but you sense that nature has the power to cleanse and purify.

You start to question your long-held narrative that your body betrayed you when the diagnosis came. What if your body was trying to save you? Headless chickens run the way they do moments before their demise, and you start to question the way you were living before. Was it really making you happy?

You understand that food is medicine. It’s true that vegetables make you feel good. But you start to see health as so much more than what you eat, rather as something that encompasses every aspect of your life. You realise that healing is a privilege afforded to so few in a society designed to make us sick.

You realise your body is your only lifelong home, so maybe some strong boundaries might help it to stay healthy.

You recognise the immense pressure you’ve been putting on yourself to return to normal life and be grateful to have survived. You have a dream about emotions being people and realise that suppressed groups of people rise up and rebel. Maybe living your best life means embracing the full spectrum of emotions, not just joy. It’s okay to be grateful to have survived cancer and be annoyed at a parking ticket. The promised land still involves traffic jams, bills and heartache after all.

You learn that community is essential. Nothing good comes from sitting in your own head for too long.

You finish watching Sliding Doors and feel glad that you’ll never meet another version of yourself who didn’t get cancer. Your life as it is now with the things that have happened is the only one you’ve got. If your life is a science experiment, going through cancer (and being in your thirties) means you have a lot more data on what works for you and what doesn’t. You could beat yourself over the head with it, or you use it as wisdom to guide your life going forward.

You go round and round trying to work out why you got cancer, why cancer chose you, until you realise it’s a maddening question, because you’ll never truly know. You decide that what you’re going to do with your experience is a far more interesting question than why it happened.

You sense it’s good to talk about it all, especially the messy, complicated feelings that arise. Because 1 in 2 of us will get cancer. Even Kings aren’t immune. But many of us will also survive it and be thrown into a world where the sky is green and the grass is blue.

But maybe, like trees weathering a storm, the winds beat them up and eventually they become stronger. They shed what no longer serves them. Their roots grow deeper, anchoring them firmly in resilience and strength.  

Because it’s life Laura, but not as you know it.

And perhaps that could even be a good thing.

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