Sunday, January 9, 2011

When Do You Stop Thinking That the Cancer Coming Back?

It's Sunday morning.  Time to relax from the busy week, I can't remember the last time I let myself just sit and relax.  I need a job, so I'm always thinking about that...  and one thing I've been thinking about lately:

Do cancer survivors ALWAYS worry that a pain in their body is the cancer coming back?  When does that stop?

I still have pain, after 4 years, from the radiation, particularly around the scar tissue, but sometimes in the other breast.  I try to tell myself that we are watching it, so it must just be some residual pain, but once in a while, if I'm feeling weak, it can be scary.

Pains in other parts of the body are scary too.  Breast cancer often recurs in the bones, so every time I have a pain in my chest (probably indigestion), it feels like cancer in my chest.  An ache in my leg will feel like a tumor.

What do I do?

I take a few deep breaths.

Amazing, but most of the time, I seem to be able to make this work.  The holidays were stressful.  If I stop, and rest, and let myself breathe a little, some nice long deep breaths, often the pain will subside.

The breathing seems to help me in two ways:

- oxygen in your blood is good for fighting cancer, deep breathing helps give your body what it needs to fight cancer

- if the pain goes away when I breath deep and let myself relax a little, then I begin to feel more confident that the pain is really stress-related, and NOT another tumor growing somewhere else.

I'm not young.  My body will get aches and pains.  That doesn't mean the cancer is going to return.

So this Sunday, I am going to relax, and enjoy my health.  Live this beautiful moment in time.

Life is Good :)

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