The Recurrence Nightmare
For the first year after I finished treatment, I felt invincible: a conqueror, a warrior princess. I had come through chemo, surgery, more chemo, and hormonal therapy with fewer side effects, less pain, less downtime, and more energy than anyone around me had ever seen before. My psyche, my marriage, my family, and my career were all still strong - each impacted in different ways by the long slog through my cancer treatment, but fundamentally sound and perhaps even strengthened by adversity. Cancer gradually faded from my thoughts, and, I felt, from my life. But as much as we survivors might wish to be done with breast cancer, breast cancer is never done with us. (Olivia Newton John recently announced her recurrence, 25 years after her initial diagnosis.) Of the fifty or so breast cancer patients and survivors I now know, the statistical reality is that five or six are likely to have a recurrence sometime in the future. I could be one of them. It's hard even to write, but it...