As my one-year anniversary of my final chemotherapy approaches, I choose to celebrate my “Cancerversary.” It was the end of a season, a really hard one, and foolishly I thought that was the end marked by five months of actively counting down. Only now a year out, can I look back and see that ringing the bell may have been one battle, but I was nowhere near winning that war.
I spend my mornings and evenings walking my cornfield; it’s the place that helped me heal and find my way back to myself. I picture the corn always watching as I transitioned from a walker to my own two legs – often pausing in the beginning to catch my breath or regain my strength. Now I can speed through two laps even after I have gone to the gym or spent the day chasing kids – and it is not lost on me how far I have come in just 365 days. Laps around the cornfield is where I do my best thinking; it has become my solace and last night I spent my walk thinking about the parallels between my life as a military spouse and my role as a cancer patient.
As the big day approaches,I plan to celebrate it donning the teal tutu I wore last year – perhaps buying one of the big number balloons that all the influencers use to pose when they hit a million followers, but for me – that number 1 represents a whole year of stolen moments, borrowed time and 365 chances to live the way I was meant to live but was too complacent before.
Ah, the service member homecoming tearjerker videos. Sometimes, I catch myself stopping the scroll to watch/pause/cry at the beautiful reunions of families. Knowing the difficulty of deployments and how long you wait for the first kiss and hug, it’s hard not to get emotional for the strangers on the internet. What the military families that actually live those moments know, is that the hard work starts AFTER the reunion video. Just like the hard work started AFTER ringing the End of Chemo bell.
Once the service member comes home and the laundry is all sorted, the work begins. Reintegration back into routines, accompanied by a transfer of power that was once a solo-parent household has become a two-parent family again. In my 20 years as a military spouse, we have learned that we go into hermit mode when my husband returns. Three to five days of just intense family time, no visitors or real plans, just to allow all of us to come together to rest, heal and connect before we let the world in again. Ironically, I needed that same 3-5 days to recover after each chemo treatment.
I call my time after chemotherapy my “crying on the internet” era. The structure of chemotherapy gave me immediate goals, as soon as one was done, I was counting down until the next. At the end of chemo, I was simply lost – hit with the “now what?” phase. I did not realize that my mental health was in shambles, along with my physical state. While social media was celebrating my victory as I rang the bell, so much struggle and healing was ahead.
The details of daily life for military families navigating deployment and cancer patients making their way back to themselves are hidden from the outside world. My support circle was fierce, and as I continued to update my cornfield vlog, only love flowed my way. Speaking to my phone in the middle of the cornfield as I made my laps became my therapy – to talk out the issues at hand while I figured out how to navigate the challenges. As my physical health began to improve, my mental health was soon to follow. I wish I would have been prepared for the depression that followed such a big life event – it was so hard to balance being grateful that I was alive, with the reality of feeling so awful and absolute rejection that this would be my new normal.
Much like the sisterhood that I found over the years with fellow military wives, I find that I can bond instantly with most cancer patients. Something so awful, becomes part of a shared trauma. The connection is immediate and strong. While my friends may all be from different branches, we come together on the shared experiences of military life, in a way similar to my friends with cancer. Their diagnosis may differ, but our journeys have bonded us, a different kind of battle buddy.
The best thing about living a military lifestyle has been for me, the community. That community is who carried me during my illness with the addition of my local friends and family. I find that now as I learn of friends of friends receiving their own cancer diagnosis, that I hold my promise to reach out – to hopefully be the one that went before them and can help navigate this scary, uncertain time. Don’t we all remember our first military spouse friend? I try daily to keep being that girl.