How March Feels Like Cancer Survivorship

March is an interesting month.

On Monday I woke up to temperatures cold enough to freeze the moisture on my eyelashes when I stepped outside and it was hard to get warm.

The forecast for Wednesday is sunny and lighter coat weather.

On Friday I will need a raincoat and rubber boots.

Then next week, back to snow.

And I feel like that is a great representation of life after cancer.

Cancer doesn’t end when treatment does. There is lifelong monitoring, often years of maintenance medications and the ever-present fear of recurrence because you can never really “un-have” cancer again. You think that when treatment is done you can get off the roller coaster, but even if it slows down it usually glides right by the loading area just when you are reaching to unbuckle your seatbelt.

The cold days are the ones when there is an itch, or a pain, or a shortness of breath that before you had cancer you would have scratched, or taken a remedy for, or thought you had a virus coming on. After cancer the chill that you feel you when you have what you now have been warned could be signs of recurrence penetrates straight to your core. It’s hard to get warm. It’s hard to breathe. You’re looking for a safe place to rest while you wait for the cold to pass, and it can be hard to find sometimes.

The cold days are also the ones leading up to and right after a scan or test to check to see if treatment is working or to find out if the beast is back. It’s easy to feel frozen when your mind is flooded with a type of anxiety that only those who have played that particular waiting game can truly understand.

Then comes the results appointment, and you find out that it was just an itch after all. The warmth floods in and you feel lighter than you have in a while. It’s like walking outside in a spring coat raising your face to the sun and feeling it heal your spirit one more time.

But once the cold that had been hardening your tears goes away, the ice in your veins melts and the tears start to flow like rain. There are tears of relief that the pain was just a pain after all and you’re not facing more treatment. There are tears of grief that this is your existence now, a life lived in two or three- or six-months increments until the next check comes around. But there are also tears of joy that you get to see a child graduate, or a friend married, or take that bucket list trip. And there are tears of exhaustion from surviving the waiting game once again.

As a side note, it can be very hard to explain to someone on the outside why you don’t cry when you are going through the testing phase, but you need rubber boots for the waterworks when the results are good. It really can.

Life stabilizes a little after the cycle of cold and melt, and there is time to relax into it, but cancer patients know that the forecast is always going to have a little more snow in the future. They go to work, to dinner with loved ones, to little ones’ school concerts all the while knowing that despite the warm temperatures outside, they need to be prepared to have the snot freeze in their nostrils at any time.

March may come in like a lion and go out like a lamb for some, but for cancer patients the lion is always waiting to pounce.

Always…

This piece reflects the author’s personal experience and perspective. For medical advice, please consult your health care provider.

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