A day in the life of a breast cancer survivor - nearly three years out from diagnosis

It's been that long, nearly three years since a surgical oncologist said these words, "You have a little breast cancer." That day, everything changed. I can go into all the clichéd descriptions about doors closing, parts of me being put to rest and all that, but the simple fact is that time became palpable. One day, I was a 38-year-old wife and mother of two in the throws of a rigorous graduate writing program thinking I had all the time in the world to achieve my dreams. The next day, I was facing the reality that there is a very real end to things and that mine might come sooner than I'd anticipated. It's not like I didn't know that already. It's just that I didn't really think about it all that much.

The further away I get from that day, the less I dwell on that anymore. I'm still well aware that it's there and count myself lucky to be here. This morning when I woke up, though, my first thoughts weren't, "Am I going to get through this?" or "Am I going to be around to see my kids graduate?" My first thought was, "Is it really morning already?" My second thought would normally have been, "Well then, I need some coffee," but I've cut the caffeine out in an effort to regain my natural body rhythms and salvage some of the energy I lost during chemo. So, my second thought, sans caffeine, was, "It's time to get in the shower." In fact, I had many thoughts of ordinary things that had nothing to do with cancer, or the fear that that word carries, and didn't really think about the fact that I've had cancer until I heard one of the millions of commercials I've heard all month advertising "Pink" events or "Pink" sales for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

In essence, it's just another October. I do see pink, and I do know I am a survivor, but life has moved on for now. Now, my life is about living, not even surviving. Maybe I should be called a cancer thriver, not a cancer survivor, or a cancer flourisher. I don't feel like I'm in survival mode anymore. I feel like...well, I feel like it's October and October means cider and donuts and crisp mornings and warm blankets and crunching leaves. That's what I feel like.