Written by Jean Cozier, friend of Cancer Wellness Center and breast cancer survivor.
I had my mammogram last month. It’s been five years since cancer treatment, so it was the first regular screening exam I’d had in a while.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in April of 2020, just a few weeks into the pandemic. I underwent a lumpectomy, followed by chemotherapy and radiation. I’m into my sixth year of taking Anastrozole, since genetic testing recommends I take the drug for another five years. I had lots of nasty complications during chemo and after radiation, and I still feel occasional pain at my surgery site, especially after a mammogram.
I got most of my life back, but it took a while. It’s been five years, and apparently, that’s some kind of threshold. Some things have changed. Like only seeing my oncologist once a year, or having a screening mammogram, instead of a diagnostic one. My last mammogram took 25 minutes, and I waited three weeks for the results. In contrast to the years right after cancer treatment, my yearly diagnostic mammograms lasted anywhere from 2 ½ to 3 hours. hours. Hours in which I went crazy waiting for the results. And I waited alone. No one was ever allowed past the doors to be with me.
During my first post-treatment mammogram, they did two more ultrasounds on my non-cancerous breast and brought in three radiologists to look at the screen. I was convinced that they’d found cancer in that breast, and I would have to relive the whole nightmare. I screamed at them to just get it over with and tell me. They looked at me like I was crazy, saying they had only found one small anomaly and would look at it again in six months.
“Nothing to worry about,” they told me. And they were right—six months later, everything looked the same. I went on to have three more diagnostic mammograms. Usually, for the first two hours, I would keep my fears in check, but after that, I would start imagining the worst again.
I had asked myself over and over for five years, could I go through it all again?
People expect you to “get over cancer”. They toss around phrases like “cancer-free.” I have no idea what that means. I am never free from cancer. I don’t think I ever will be.
But…
After that last screening mammogram, I found myself thinking a little differently. I looked at my calendar and figured I’d schedule the next one in February of 2026. That was a year off. A whole year, it occurred to me, that I wouldn’t have to think about cancer. I was clean of cancer, for one whole year.
That’s what I’m telling myself these days. Every year, after my mammogram, I’ll be free of cancer for one whole year. Minus the weeks I wait for the results, of course. I can put the rest of the questions aside, at least for now.
I will be living cancer-free…one year at a time.