By Krista C.
Today marks my graduation day from cancer — or at least I am choosing for it to be.
I received my stage 1 Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cancer diagnosis 12 days before my 33rd birthday, just eight months after giving birth to my beautiful twin babies. I am 38 years old now and am celebrating my fifth year of remission! According to what I have read, for those with my type and stage of cancer, the likelihood of it returning after five years goes down to approximately 10 per cent.
I realize I am one of the lucky ones to have been given this type of prognosis. Over the last five years of being in the cancer community, I have met the most extraordinary people, many of whom have a much worse prognosis than l. The majority of those I have met will never get remission and have no choice but to adapt to their chronic illness until the day they die. The imposter syndrome is real for me because while I can step out of the storm, others are still caught in the relentless rain and it is something I think about every single day.
Leading up to my five year check-up, my oncologist gave me the option to continue with ongoing care or never come back. She called it my “graduation.” Considering the trauma response I experience EVERY TIME I enter the cancer unit of the hospital, this option was extremely appealing to me.
To this day, despite my best efforts, I still can barely talk about my cancer experience without crying. There are so many doors to this journey still wide open and rooms filled with shadows on the other side. Perhaps closing this door will be the antidote I need to alleviate the PTSD that comes with regular hospital visits and make things on my mental load a little lighter. I certainly wouldn’t mind not having to circle the hospital parking lot several times a year looking for a free spot before allowing the parking meter to happily accept my credit card while I simultaneously evil eye the oncology doors that I must walk through only to find a waiting room full of people who are decades younger than me.
My immediate thought to my oncologist’s ultimatum was an image of me in a graduation gown with my hat thrown high up into the air as I ran as far away as I could from the cancer unit of the hospital. However, the fickle and dubiousness of the situation remained since the stone-cold reality is that remission doesn’t necessarily mean cancer free forever, so perhaps it would not be the smartest or the safest decision to avoid regular check-ups.
Typically, cancer survivors, such as myself, will continue with annual checkups for many years as part of their ongoing care, even after the five-year mark. I was truly torn, so I decided to consult the people who would know best: my fellow young adult cancer friends.
When I asked what they would do in this situation, one person in particular stood out to me. As someone who will never be in remission, they explained that if the option was given to them, they would take it. It was as simple as that. They went into detail about the healthcare system being non binary and how it can make cancer patients feel like it’s all or nothing, especially because forgoing the decision to continue screening could mean losing access to early detection. This got me thinking.
The fear and trauma I feel from my diagnosis wants me to make sure at every opportunity that there is no evidence of disease. But because I have been given the chance to stare cancer in the face as if it was my worst enemy and say, “No! You don’t get to tell me how to live my life anymore!”, I think I am going to take it!
I can say for certain that I have had enough cancer for a lifetime and so I will accept the uncertainty of recurrence over the certainty of illness, and remove the tether that cancer has strangled me with over the last five years. It’s my turn now to take on the full responsibility of ongoing post cancer care myself
