A toe in the water

I'm posting something for the first time. I've read through some of the survivor threads just now and I enjoyed the sense of recognition I felt on reading those perspectives. I too get silently huffy about people thinking it's all gone away now, people thinking I've been brave, people thinking (including a lot of survivors) that it's a fight to be won.

My most vivid memory of my early days of diagnosis with multiple myeloma is standing in my hospital room (gown, drip bag, nothing else - is there anything else in life at that stage?) thinking to myself "Holy shit, what the hell just happened to my life?" And the very next thought was "OK, I start now learning to live with this".

And that's what I've done for more than two years now. At no stage did I decide to 'beat cancer', 'fight the good fight', 'win (or lose) my battle with cancer'. I cannot relate to any of that language at all.

I still have the vivid memory of deciding to live with a medical condition. I'm very proud of that decision. More and more so as time goes on.

When I was told I was in remission I was pleased, of course, but mainly because I knew it would free me from being the recipient of everyone else's solution. And I was very sick of that.

For me, though, it sounds strange, I know, but being told I was in remission didn't make much difference at all. I was already well down the track of 'living with cancer' and being told I was in remission seemed irrelevant.

Isn't life strange!