From the moment my oncologist, Dr. M, told me that I was now in remission, I expected my life to go back to go back to exactly how it was prior to facing cancer. However, as many cancer survivors will attest, this is no going back. It’s a new normal; a new beginning; a chapter two.
Even though I told Dr. M that I was ready to move on with my life and not worry about cancer anymore, he did advise me to seek counseling to help process everything and recommended a specific therapist. He said that oftentimes, cancer patients are more or less emotionally fine during treatment but face the mental struggles in the aftermath.
I didn’t quite understand it at first. From the outside, things looked pretty normal. I was back to work. My hair and beard were regrowing. My cancer was gone.
Remission is a good thing, and I was (and still am) happy about that. I remember people telling me congratulations (although I don’t feel like I did anything worthy of receiving this) and that I must be relieved. I was, but it’s a weird mix of happiness, anxiety about the possibility of recurrence, and built up stress from everything that has happened.
I had little time to react and process anything – I just had to act. My life had changed drastically since October. Things should be getting back to normal, but life has now just slowed down enough for me to begin processing everything that has happened.
From initial discovery to being in remission, it had been less than five months. That’s a lot for anyone to process and handle in an incredibly short time frame, let alone a 25-year-old whose biggest concern before this was if he could stay up late enough to watch a Marvel midnight showing.
As I thought on Dr. M’s words, it started to make a bit more sense. Emotionally, I didn’t feel quite normal. Yes, I had three months off of work, but that was no vacation. It was spent allowing my body to recover and dealing with side effects. I don’t really feel like my body betrayed me or wonder why this had to happen to me, but I had also not allowed myself time to reflect and process this whole ordeal. It’s really hard to put into words, and it’s the type of thing you can’t quite understand until you experience it for yourself (which I sincerely hope you never have to do).
I began investigating counseling and announced this on my testicular cancer awareness blog, A Ballsy Sense of Tumor, with the following message:
“Even though my body may be healed, my emotions are not recovering quite as quickly. The real work with that is only beginning, but I’m confident that with the support of those closest to me, I will truly be able to embrace the joy of being in remission.”
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