3 Years Cancer-Free
Today, I celebrate 3 years cancer-free.
I am so so grateful to be here, to experience life after cancer, and to see the difference I have made in the lives of other women on their cervical cancer journeys. Yet I still carry a strange sense of guilt. I know I am technically a cancer survivor, but I don’t feel like I “beat” cancer. To me, that word implies a struggle. I see cancer calling the shots in so many people around me, yet I never had a single symptom.
I never lost my hair or felt the awful effects of chemo or radiation. In fact, I asked my doctor to show me the tumor on my PET/CT scan moments before surgery because I needed to see it with my own eyes before (potentially) signing my life away with shaking hands.
For me, the aftermath of my surgery was the biggest struggle. Of course, one could argue it is part of the journey. But it doesn’t feel like something that I overcame. More like something I eventually learned to deal with.
I haven’t lost the weight I gained from not being able to exercise for months and throwing off my gym routine for years.
The healthy meals I used to cook throughout my recovery now seem like a burden to prep because my body associates them with the worst moments of my life.
I don’t date as much because I’m afraid that choosing a partner incorrectly could start this process all over again.
Three years in, and I’m still finding my way back to these parts of my life, but there’s something that feels incorrect about claiming the title of “survivor.” As crazy as it sounds, I don’t feel like I earned that title.
The month between my diagnosis and staging, I wasn’t sure how much time I had left on this earth. My mind only jumped to worst-case-scenario. I thought about my family, all of the places in the world I hadn’t yet seen, what I should do with my money and assets, the children I hadn’t yet created. In that moment, I thought my life might be over. And my body still feels that trauma at times.
Even though I ended up being early stages, my life was still changed forever. I practically begged and pleaded with my doctor to let me keep my uterus because I had always envisioned myself as a mother.
My journey started with a routine pap smear. (My first ever, mind you.) I wasn’t bouncing from doctor to doctor with unexplained symptoms that eventually led to a diagnosis. I walked in, expecting routine and ended up with a phone call from the nurse saying “the good news is, it’s not currently cancer…but it is considered precancerous.” Great.
This was devastating to hear as someone from a conservative Christian family. My family wasn’t the type to talk about things like this, so I decided I would just handle it on my own and avoid a potential lecture or judgement.
So I kept my journey a secret for about 2 years. I finally spilled the beans when I was officially diagnosed with stage 1B1 squamous cell carcinoma in 2023. I will never forget that day. It was my mom’s birthday. I had gotten the call from my doctor’s office, and I was a wreck. I had moved to California and FaceTimed my mom just after I got up from blackout sobbing on the floor, and she answered the call expecting to hear a “happy birthday” message, but was instead greeted with a daughter in tears and a snot-covered vacation tee shirt.
The thing about journeys is that there is no end. So to say I “came out the other side” feels fraudulent. There is no end of a cancer tunnel to emerge from. Unless you count the day when you become “cancer-free” aka my surgery day. But even then, because I had no prior symptoms, that’s really when my journey began. So it’s hard to wrap my mind around the “end” when I can actually say I “beat” cancer. The battle now is with myself — emotionally, physically, spiritually. When did my cancer battle turn into a war within myself? That’s a question I’m working on in therapy.
So that begs the question…why do I feel like survivorship needs to be earned? Can’t going through something traumatic and finding an authentic smile again count as winning? Is that how I “beat” cancer? It tried to take my joy and optimism, and in some ways it did (ie. the ways in which I date and my now-blurry future vision as a wife and mother), but in other ways, I do feel like my inclination for finding something to be happy about has prevailed. But I still have my moments.
I don’t have a take-away for this post, but writing has always been a way for me to process my emotions. Similar to how I created a Tiktok account, blocked everyone I knew so I could privately process my emotions and slowly understand myself and my journey better through self-expression.
But if you’ve made it this far, I appreciate you. And I hope you find something to smile about today.
Xo Steph
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