It's Sunday morning. Time to relax from the busy week, I can't remember the last time I let myself just sit and relax. I need a job, so I'm always thinking about that... and one thing I've been thinking about lately:
Do cancer survivors ALWAYS worry that a pain in their body is the cancer coming back? When does that stop?
I still have pain, after 4 years, from the radiation, particularly around the scar tissue, but sometimes in the other breast. I try to tell myself that we are watching it, so it must just be some residual pain, but once in a while, if I'm feeling weak, it can be scary.
Pains in other parts of the body are scary too. Breast cancer often recurs in the bones, so every time I have a pain in my chest (probably indigestion), it feels like cancer in my chest. An ache in my leg will feel like a tumor.
What do I do?
I take a few deep breaths.
Amazing, but most of the time, I seem to be able to make this work. The holidays were stressful. If I stop, and rest, and let myself breathe a little, some nice long deep breaths, often the pain will subside.
The breathing seems to help me in two ways:
- oxygen in your blood is good for fighting cancer, deep breathing helps give your body what it needs to fight cancer
- if the pain goes away when I breath deep and let myself relax a little, then I begin to feel more confident that the pain is really stress-related, and NOT another tumor growing somewhere else.
I'm not young. My body will get aches and pains. That doesn't mean the cancer is going to return.
So this Sunday, I am going to relax, and enjoy my health. Live this beautiful moment in time.
Life is Good :)
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