Jennifer Douglas, Writer and DCIS Breast Cancer Patient Advocate, shared on LinkedIn:
”On the plane home from Venice a few years ago, I realized I’d spent the whole trip not thinking about cancer. Four years since treatment ended, headphones on, and I sat there with a question I couldn’t answer. Am I still recovering, or am I somewhere else now?
Recovery was the word I’d been handed, and I kept using it long after it stopped describing anything I was actually doing.
This is what I was actually doing. On the first tropical vacation after breast cancer I put my bathing suit on and adjusted it just right so the scar wouldn’t show. Every single time. In 2024 I put on that same bathing suit and didn’t check at all.
Nobody saw that happen. There was no appointment where it got written down, and nobody told me it counted.
That’s restoration, and it’s a different thing from recovery. It’s slow, a lot of it is private, and you measure it in years instead of months. Recovery sounds like an event with a date on it. This doesn’t have one, and I’ve stopped needing it to.
If you’re years out and still waiting to feel done, you’re not behind. I wrote the whole thing out, including why a building under restoration turned out to be the best picture I’ve found for it.”
Other articles featuring Jennifer Douglas on OncoDaily.