mm66ny wrote:Anyway, I seem to have let cancer get the best of me, my marriage and my family. After I finished treatments I felt like a champ: still going to work, still coaching little league, still playing guitar, still laughing with my wife. Mainly had bathroom issues--not the worst in the world. But something about "ok, now go back to your life" has been difficult.
I dunno - when I hear phrases like "let cancer get the best of me," I want to ask at what point does this stop being a contest? Cancer is cancer...it's not personal, it's not a vendatta, and despite the popular metaphors, it's not a war - at least not in my world. If I declared war on cancer, I'd be going to war against my own body - and that can't possibly end well.
If there's no war, then there's no contest and no victory dance and no winner who gets the best of one or the other opponent. So I'm not sure that, from the frame of mind that I can't be at war against my own body, I can ever "let cancer get the best of me." I refuse to let cancer turn this into some kind of a contest.
I'm not sure why we expect to experience a life changing event and then just "go back" to our lives. I mean, when you think about it, we don't get a return to how it was before after any other life changer like having a kid or getting married or losing something major (a family member, a job.) I mean, newlyweds or new parents may *think* for a wee brief moment that once married or once parents, everything will be the same as it was before those things changed their lives. And then it isn't - and never will be again - and they have to either adjust or drown, fast. Why is it that we have different expectations after a dangerous life-changer like a major loss or illness?
It's almost like we expect time to stop, like we're treating cancer as some sort of defined and temporary vacation in hell, after which we can return home and pick up our lives exactly where we left off. Well...um...no - especially not if we had surgery, chemo, radiation. Our bodies are changed. Our minds and our perspectives are often changed, too. And while we were on our little vacations in cancer hell for six months or a year or longer, the rest of the world kept spinning and everyone else's lives moved on in different directions. And our lives didn't stop - they kept moving as they were being irrevocably changed. Like it or admit it or not, we ARE different people now, if for no other reasons than that we all have a new dimension of experience. Each of us was/is changed, to some personal extent, and some of us far more so than others. But we are still all different from the people we were before cancer.
So why do we cling to the expectation that at some point we can pick up right where we left off and have our old lives back as if nothing had happened?
mm66ny wrote:I have been trying so hard to recapture the old me, and in the process heavily grieving the loss of the old me.
And there's the problem. You can't recapture something and accept/mourn its loss at the same time. What you're trying to "recapture" doesn't exist any longer.
mm66ny wrote:I should be happy I'm here, standing, working, mobile, but I'm more serious, too deep, I think too much. I see pictures of my life from before cancer and get a palpable ache, and I'm bringing everyone down.
So - cancer made you stop and catch your breath, stop and think - and that's a bad thing?
There's nothing wrong with being more serious for a period after a cancer dx, or thinking about what's going on, or even recognizing that some things about yourself and your life have changed, and you're not the same person you were a year ago.
Another way to look at this is that even if you hadn't had cancer, you likely wouldn't be exactly the same person today that you were a year ago. We grow, we change, we form new opinions, we develop as people every day longer that we live. If I were exactly the same as I was on April 29 before I was diagnosed, then I wouldn't have grown very much as a person, would I?
It's ok to recognize that you've changed. It's okay to grieve for what you've lost - and celebrate what you've gained. But don't ever beat yourself up for recognizing that you've changed.
I think that shrinks call that "growth."