If you know anything about me you will know that I am very upfront and open about my breast cancer. That is totally different than when I was first diagnosed. I did not want people to know that I had been diagnosed with breast cancer. I felt almost ashamed that my “girls” had betrayed me. When others told people that I had breast cancer I actually got upset. I think the reason I was so upset was that I could not come to terms that my “girls” had betrayed me, and now when people looked at my “girls” all they were going to see was the cancer.
When you do decide to share the diagnosis with your friend’s how do you do it? How do you call friends that you have known most of your life and go through the small chat about the kids, the weather and oh yeah by the way I have breast cancer. The whole tone of the conversation changes, their voices change and everything changes. The reality that someone their age had this terrible disease makes people re-evaluate their lives. Some people I had as friends disappeared after hearing this news. I don’t feel negatively towards them I just think they could not handle the reality that someone their age could die. Mortality is something people do not really think about in their mid-thirties, I did not even have extra life insurance to go with my work insurance. If you are reading this and are cancer free do buy life insurance it is much easier to get when you don’t have cancer. After you have the diagnosis you have to go at least 5 years before you can get some unless you want to pay sky high rates.
When you first hear the cancer diagnosis there are so many things that run through your head. With me hearing those words felt to me like I was being told that I was going to die. I know with all the treatments and research that the survival rates is higher than it was 20 years ago but the reality is that triple negative breast cancer has a 5 year survival rate of only 77% compared to other types of breast cancer which has a 93 % 5 year survival rate.
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