JJ Singleton, Research Advocate at Fight Colorectal Cancer, adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivor, shared on LinkedIn:
”The memories hit you without warning it could be from a thought, a sound, a smell, a word or anything but instantly you’re taken somewhere else. My feet are firmly on the ground by my mind my soul my thoughts are a million miles away good or bad it’s all the same until after
This is me many days sometimes reliving good times others living a nightmare again, that part depends on the trigger. This used to happen often to me and mainly not the good times it was almost always the nightmares of life with cancer. Today it was a good flashback
I got to go speak to the Cherokee High School football teams that my cousin coaches, the sounds of preseason camp the coaches yelling the smell good and bad, the hunger and the friendships that you can feel instantly took me back to fall 2005 when life was easy I was a good athlete and loving playing football
Life with cancer is hard in so many ways an us patients have to deal with a lot of really hard PTSD from diagnosis to treatment to survivorship in whatever way that is for you being NED or long term treatment. It’s a lot and it’s important to address these triggers before they become spirals to often
Today was a nice reminder triggers work both ways a memory of one of the best times of my life a trip back to the JJ I knew from 6-25 years old. Embrace the good memories the good trips back, work on the hard one and work on the bad triggers we are all in this together going through it as best we can.”
You can also read ‘FIND Trial: ctDNA-Guided Surveillance After Curative-Intent Colorectal Cancer Surgery‘
