Scanxiety and the Fear of Recurrence: Living With Uncertainty After Cancer
Everyone told you the hard part would be over when treatment ended. The scans were clear, the team said the words you had been waiting to hear, and the people around you exhaled and moved on, certain that you would too. Instead you found yourself somewhere you did not expect: officially well, and quietly terrified. […]
Losing Yourself in Treatment: Body Image, Identity, and Cancer
Cancer treatment asks you to hand your body over. You consent to surgeries that remove parts of you, to drugs that change how you look and feel from the inside out, to a schedule that belongs to the disease rather than to you. Somewhere in that process, many people look in the mirror and find […]
The First Weeks After a Cancer Diagnosis: When Your World Shifts Overnight
There is a particular kind of silence that follows the words “you have cancer.” The doctor keeps talking, and you can see their mouth moving, but the sound has gone strange and far away. Later you will not remember half of what was said. What you will remember is the feeling that the floor of […]