The passage of time can be a tricky thing when it comes to one’s cancer risk reduction journey.
How can we acknowledge our own growth and triumph without being stuck in the past? On any path to reducing one’s cancer risk, the milestones are many, yet if given the choice, we might not want to bring each memory along for the ride.
Joy, But Also Suffering
Anniversaries can remind us of joy, but also of suffering. As I work through deciding which events to bring with me and which to leave behind, I struggle. Which are worthy of becoming an official anniversary, and which are simply part of the larger mosaic of what has become my journey through life?
It’s truly complicated. There are so many. My first prophylactic surgery? Or my fourth?
Definitely surgery number three—the “big one”—where I was under for eight and half hours, while three surgeons removed, then reconstructed breasts from my own belly tissue.
The day I learned I was a carrier of BRCA 2, like my dad?
Or the day his sister, my aunt, passed away. After her initial diagnosis and single mastectomy, she’d lived five years in remission, only to then have cancer reemerge in its metastatic form.
Small Steps, But Also Giant
With fourteen years of making choices to reduce my own cancer risk, there are dozens of milestones worthy of recognition.
But, I often find it’s the small ones that are most important to me. They mark my growth on this journey, my aliveness. The day I passed on my mastectomy pillow to another patient, trusting (err…hoping) I’d never need one again. The day I could fully parent with my entire body and carry my forty-pound sleeping child up a flight of stairs. The day I finally bared my reconstructed breasts without a bra during intimacy.
All small steps, but also giant.
Embrace What You Feel
The advice I can offer to anyone approaching their first anniversary related to their Breastie journey is to feel all your feels. Lean into them, even if they change hourly. Don’t try to make yourself feel a certain way. Embrace what you’re feeling, it just is. There are no “shoulds” when it comes to these tricky and messy moments.
For me, the tangle of emotions that each anniversary evokes are complex.
Frustration: Why is this the card I’d been dealt?
Awe: My courage in showing up day after day for difficult things overwhelms me.
Anger: That this is my reality.
Gratitude: This knowledge gave me autonomy and better odds than my aunt.
Grief: For all I’ve lost while not being present while worrying about scans and biopsy results.
And Fear: The stickiest emotion of all.
As each significant day approaches, I try to make space for each feeling, and trust they will pass. On many anniversaries, I ceremoniously write in my journal, and remind myself that emotions are temporary, just like the physical pain after a major surgery.
Fear Staying Along for the Ride
Will this anniversary someday be dwarfed by the event I’m trying to avoid? I can’t remove every body part with an elevated risk for cancer. Even though my breast and fallopian tubes are gone, risk-reducing surgery is not a 100 percent guarantee. And what if I don’t remove my ovaries in time? I’m only forty and not ready for surgical menopause, yet.
What has helped me is the perspective gained after taking actions within my control combined with the passage of time. This combination has been healing. Even after removing healthy body parts, fear will be along for the ride, perhaps forever. With time, I have grown to accept what feels like my stow-away baggage. And yes, sometimes I can hold awareness that the fear which once felt crippling has softened into acknowledgment of my impermanence, and gratitude for being alive with options.
Knowing my high-risk status now acts as a lens through which I view and experience the world. It’s part of me, integrated into my reality, just as every medical experience shapes the people we become.
Ultimately, whatever anniversary arises, my hope is to be able to make the same wish I made this year on my birthday: May I make it to the next year with my health and the people I love. Because if there is one thing us Breasties understand at a visceral level: there are no guarantees in life.
On all our journeys, may we all find purpose and peace in the mundane, and beauty in the boring moments that compose life, our life—our lives.
