fear

There is an interesting, yet horrifying phenomenon that occurs that no one tells you about after you've been given a no-more-cancer-bill-of-health.  You think everything afterwards is cancer.

Every pain, every ache, every twinge is cancer.  And even the nothingness, the no symptom days, it's cancer.  Part of you knows that this thinking is crazy and the other part knows that it's not because before you never thought about cancer.  In fact, for me I didn't ever feel the cancer.  It was just there, so why can't it be just there somewhere else?

It's a thought that invades my head at least 165 hours out of the week.

And I think about how my cancer wasn't really cancer.  There was no real feelings of illness, no chemotherapy, no radiation, no drugs of any sort.  I didn't lose weight, lose my hair, lose my strength.  I look at what some friends have or are going through and I feel guilty.  That survivor's sort of guilt.  I can't possibly ever feel sorry for myself or complain about what I went through because it was nothing compared to what I have seen.

So I don't complain.  I don't think back on it because really, in the grand scheme of cancer situations, mine was cake.  But I fear.

I fear that it is something that I have now passed onto my daughters.  Now, when they fill out health history forms they will have to check the box that says there is a history of cancer. 

I fear that it will come back.  In some other form, in some other way, it will come back and I will truly appreciate how easy I had it before.

I fear that because it was in me that maybe it is somewhere in my mom, in my sister, in my aunties.  I fear more that I will lose someone I love than I will lose myself.

Although, what I fear the most is that in losing myself I will lose this precious life with my husband and with my daughters.

But it is what it is.  And for now I'll watch how Emma always makes Olivia laugh giant, belly laughs while she looks at her sister with such love and adoration and be happy.