Five Years!

Five years ago today I rang the radiation bell that signaled the end of my treatments for breast cancer. It was an anti-climactic moment as, although I felt like I was “getting off the roller-coaster”,  I also knew that my days of dealing with cancer were not really over. 

During treatments all of my energy went to the fight: to staying positive; to making sure things stay as normal as possible for our kids; to not-worrying my family and friends with the way I looked, acted, or felt at any given moment. It was exhausting. 

When it was over, most everyone wanted to assume that things would go back to normal. But, I was learning how to deal with a new normal. And this, it turned out, was its own form of exhausting. 

I realized a lot later that I was depressed. To go from people rallying all around you, to people expecting you to just be-better-now was, quite literally, depressing. Add to that my own unanswered questions, and new-found fears of cancer returning, and it was just a lot to deal with. I slept a lot. I ate a lot. I cried a lot. 

And then I realized that if I thought there was still a chance I might die, why wouldn’t I take this “in-between” opportunity to really live??? I thought about what the number one thing I hadn’t done in my life that I really wanted to do was...and it turned out that the top of my bucket-list was going to England and Scotland. Over the course of the next year, I began to scheme and plot and plan and in September of 2015, one of my very best friends, Steph, her husband, Geno, Matt, and I, took flight over the ocean and had an amazing time seeing just about as much as you possibly can in two weeks on a really big island. I mean, we did the hell out of that island. 

But, I didn’t stop there. I had more plans and thanks to my wonderfully, supportive husband, I have spent the last five years doing things and seeing places and making memories with people I love. 

The five-year mark is momentous because all of the statistics say that for the type of cancer I had (TNBC - or Triple Negative), your chance of recurrence goes down super-significantly at this point - like to 5%. Considering the fact that all women have a lifetime risk of 12%, five-percent doesn’t seem that bad to me. (Yeah, I already lost that lottery once, and yeah that means I have the 5% PLUS the 12% chance of a new type of breast cancer, nonetheless, I still like the odds much better than what they were shortly before this.) So, it does, indeed, finally now feel like a day to celebrate, to me. 

But, as this day approached, I found myself getting a little down-hearted...without the excuse of CANCER looming over my head, do the adventures have to come to an end now? Is it time to stop living like I might die? 

The answer is very simply - No. No. No. No. No.

I wrote a blog post a long time ago about how “living like you’re dying” is such a farce, because who can do this unless they have the time and the money? No one can. Plus, it would be super-exhausting to constantly be jumping from one bucket-list item to the next. And that’s not living, either. 

So, instead, I have found myself watching for opportunities. Is there something a good friend has been “dying” to do? Let’s make that happen! Is there a place my family is inspired by? Well then, let’s go! Is there a show that everyone raves about? How can I get to it?! Is there an author, speaker, musician, movie star, that motivates me? I am there! Is there something I haven’t done with one of my kids that I just know we need to do? Let’s find a way to make it happen. 

It still takes time and money, and therefore it definitely has its challenges. But, I think we can watch for opportunities and always be asking ourselves, “How can I make that happen?” You might be surprised by the answer that appears. 

So, today I celebrate that I have made it to the five year mark...by couch shopping! Something I have never done before (we have all hand-me-down couches) and have always wanted to do. I did not purchase a couch - that was not the goal - I went shopping with my friend, Jenny, we found the perfect, beautiful, dream couch, and had a blast doing it. And today I look forward to the next five years. And the five after that. And the five after that. And...

I hope that you will watch for opportunities. You may even have the opportunity to help someone else achieve a goal on their list. Thanks, Jenny, for helping me to achieve this one!

(Meet "Clayton": The perfect couch.)