This is the second post of a three-part series where Heather discusses the evolution of her cancer experience. Click here to read the first post!
By Heather Bonynge
3. Moving forward and leaving cancer behind
After treatment, I felt great! I know that sounds strange, but emotionally I was in a very positive mindset, and was driven to get my body back to a healthy state. I had an action plan. I even named it, “Heather and Hansa get healthy.” Hansa was my overweight dog. I had been through two abdominal surgeries, chemo and radiation, so we spent that summer, going for long walks two or three times a day. We would strap my nearly-on-year-old daughter into her stroller, and I would use my action plan as my mantra as we walked. I had a goal in mind, I kept moving forward, and I imagined I would leave the cancer behind.
4. Why me stage
The disconnect and the denial came crashing down on me two years after completing treatments. This was when it finally hit me what I had actually gone through, and when I started to realize the long term of effects of cancer. I was devastated and angry and bitter. I felt completely cheated by what cancer had taken from me.
I could no longer do labour-intensive tasks because I would get searing pains in my abdomen. I made numerous trips to the emergency rooms at the hospitals due to irregular bleeding and painful ovarian cysts that would wake me in the middle of the night. Mostly though, I was grieving for the children I could no longer have.
I would be driving home in my car from work, and all of these things would suddenly come to my mind, and I would just start crying, and yelling in my car, “Why me? What did I do to deserve this?” I felt completely sorry for myself. This was not the direction my life was heading before cancer. I felt lost and alone. I didn’t know how to share my sense of loss with people, especially since I seemed so positive before and now they saw my cancer as being in the past.
Thank you for reading part 2; click here for part 3!
