An edited version of this was posted by Hair’s How on 8/16. The complete story is here…
I celebrated my cancer-versary marking the date of my diagnoses recently, and found myself marveling at the difference a year can make. A year since I was diagnosed – forget our trip to Greece, chemo, Big Hair Date Night and the Haircutting Party, losing my hair, 3 trips to the ER (Grace: 1, me: 2), a double mastectomy,6 weeks of radiation, returning to work, personally raising $4k dollars and walking Relay for Life, several awkward “pump up” visits to my plastic surgeon to fill my expanders, a wedding in San Diego and Grace’s 2nd birthday, and an appointment with my friend Michael at The Loft Salon to die my wonderful new chemo curls platinum blonde… all within a year?! After facing the biggest challenge of my life, I’m back at work, hair on my head, struggling with balancing the day to day just like everyone else… almost like nothing ever happened. I’m a survivor, but if I thought that survival was the end game with a cancer diagnosis I would miss the biggest lesson I took from the experience; that the real work begins after treatment is complete.
In the midst of the worst of my chemo treatments, I found myself looking back at the stresses of life “BC” (before cancer), thinking I hadn’t known stress until I was diagnosed with cancer. I spent the time during treatment focusing only on getting healthy. I had great support from my husband, friends, co-workers, and family, and was able to go through the process with a healthy attitude, if not a little bit of humor. I turned to writing to help me process the experience, and was again supported and encouraged, which led me to begin blogging for Hair’s How. Eventually, I began keeping my own blog, calling it View from Upside Down: Living Up to Second Chances (www.andron.com/tricia/).
You see – even in the midst of my singular goal to become healthy and beat cancer, I somehow knew that the real work would come after treatment. I named my blog in a not-so-subtle way as to remind myself that this is indeed a second chance; not an opportunity to be squandered.
So what do you do with that realization? I went back to work, brought Gracie to daycare, finished projects and reviews, painted a bedroom, and began living the “normal” life that I wished I could have while I was sick. Except now, I am so very aware of my second chance, and constantly struggle with asking myself – “am I living up to it?”
Some people survive cancer, only to be more depressed, more unhappy, with seemingly little regard for the miracle of medicine, time, effort, money, people, care and research that have contributed to their second chance at life. I’m determined not to be one of those people. I want to look back ten years from now with wonder at the positive change that began with a cancer diagnoses.
My cancer experience has made me realize that I want to become the person that I think I can be – a writer. Maybe I’m not writing as frequently as I’d like, but I’ve realized a passion and talent that I am beginning to cultivate, and am no longer ignoring the writer’s itch that I’ve always had. Because of cancer, I know at a young age (I argue ‘mid 30’s’ until your 38th birthday), that I have one chance at life. If I don’t embrace the writer in me, I’ll spend my life denying it, and doing fairly stupid things to avoid thinking about what could have been.
Hair’s How recently contacted me and asked that I begin blogging for them again, having fallen out of writing for them when I returned to work. I was delighted, incorporating this into my plan to continue writing and developing my craft – because it makes me happy and grateful to recongize that second chance I got. I’m now a sassy platinum blonde thanks to Michael at The Loft Salon in Boston, just another part of my amazing support group that kept me looking fabulous during treatment, and encouraged my writing by introducing me to the editor at Hair’s How. I’ll keep emptying the contents of my head on this page if people want to read it, and even if they don’t, because it’s what I’m meant to do.