Anticipating the "New Normal"

I've been reading ahead lately. You know...I've read tons of stuff on how to get through chemo and radiation, so anticipating that I'll be done with radiation soon, I became more interested in the last chapters of these books...all of them talk about the "new normal"!

What they write about is that when treatment is over, everybody pretty much thinks you're cured of cancer (a lovely thought indeed!) and goes back to their lives and expects you to go back to yours. And you want to go back to yours...except for this one thing...the big "R" word looms somewhere out there in a cloud of uncertainty. Recurrence! Will it come back? When will it come back? How will it come back? How does a person cope with all that normal, natural "what if" junk that crowds a head when one has just come through treatment for cancer.

From what I'm reading..it take a lot of thought work...a lot of thought reconstruction if you will...to turn those fears into something manageable and to move on with life.

I read that the worst thing you can say to a person who has just finished treatment is "Well...now that's over!" One of the books had a great quote from a doctor whose patient had asked the question..."How will I know when I'm cured of cancer?" The doc wisely answered..."When you die of something else".

Because it's never really over in terms of thinking about if and when cancer might come back. Those thoughts need time to legitimately be there in full force...get more dim with time...and finally rest in their proper place somewhere in the background of a life once again full of life and anticipation and hope and love! Like our wise elders say to us...it just takes time!