Life after cancer
June 17, 2013
By: Raymund Ong
Hello fellow FightClub members! I am hopping onto the bandwagon of writing up monthly posts; thank you CFC staff for letting me leave a bundle of thoughts on your Internet space!
I’ve come to learn that the idea of “life after cancer” is somewhat of a misconstrued mindset. For me personally, the concept led to a sense of self-doubt and a state of questioning what my life should be. Should I try to reclaim what cancer – also in my case paralysis – took from me? Should I build from scratch, find proverbial meaning in the terrible experience? What is life after cancer? Simply put, it’s still life. I’m living, breathing, sleeping and eating. I still see, hear, touch, feel and taste things. I’m still alive. When I was suffering in silent seclusion with my disease and disability that was all I really yearned for: validation that I was alive.
Personally, I first needed to feel that I was a part of society. In my bull-headed pride I had chosen to disconnect from people throughout my three years of medication and physiotherapy. Thanks to various cancer support organizations, programs and kindred spirits, I regained an unyielding sense of community. I felt grateful to be alive. Cancer and paralysis were but a means to an end for me. However, although I had come to appreciate community, there was still the task of existing within society after my cancer experience and having cut myself off. The friends I made post-illness see me completely differently than my friends before. Although the reception is mostly positive, there is an inkling feeling of comparing life before and after my transition. I find myself thinking: “If all this had not happened, where would I be?”
In one instance in particular, I was coming home from a long day, exhausted. I saw someone down the street whom I knew and wanted to greet. The other person, however, did not see me. With my sore body, I was not able to catch up to them. As I watched, less than twenty meters away, this person continued to saunter, and I began to consider: “Should I push myself to see this person? Is it worth risking hurting my body again? If my body wasn’t hurt/tired/recovering, could I have met them? I should just call out to them! But wait. You’re tired. Go to sleep. REST!” In that moment, I realized that my limitations were only my hesitations. By trapping myself in my head, I couldn’t act. When I realized this, I decided to take action by going to sleep and contacting that person to meet up another day.
It’s common for those of us who have been forced to bear the burden of cancer to wish it were not our weight. We wish for the life we had before our sickness, we wish for a life without it. I stopped wishing. Like I said above: I’m alive. I have hands to grab hold of things I reach for, I have feet to move me forward and I have my voice to say how I feel. There will always be regrets for the events that have passed us by, but we are capable of making do with what we have now. I’m still going to be tired, recovering and liable to get harmed, but I can keep breathing. My reply to the cancer jargon, “life after cancer” is that I’m alive. And to those individuals reading this, you are too.
