It’s been a year since my mastectomy, and I’m finally starting to feel something I didn’t even realize I was waiting for.
On March 28, 2025, my “Wicked tits” (as I liked to call them after I found out cancer was growing inside one of them) were removed from my body. At that point, though I was told the cancer was gone and my treatment was over, the cancer anxiety definitely was not.
For months, though others assumed I was All Good Now™, I was still stuck in cancer land. It very much consumed my thoughts on most days. Not believing it was really gone, worrying it would come back, and hyperfixating on the changes in my body resulting from surgery.
At that time, I remember thinking that this is just how my life would be now. Forever. “This is what it’s like to be a cancer survivor.”
But a month ago, I was in Como, Italy, walking in the sunshine and eating gelato, and I had a realization.
I wasn’t thinking about cancer. Like, at all.
It was almost the end of my month-long trip, so I was reflecting on everything I had been doing this February: interviewing countless Olympic athletes, devouring endless plates of pizza and pasta, snowboarding in the Italian Alps, and now enjoying a few days of solo travel before heading back home.
How does this month exist in the same lifetime as February 2025? That month, I found out I had breast cancer. I spent the month at a million doctors’ appointments, trying to decide between different surgery options, while trying to accept the fact that there was fast-growing cancer inside my left boob. I was also learning how to walk again on a leg that I had broken in December.
And now, just one year later, I was here? In Italy? Walking around without a care in the world, my biggest decisions being which restaurant to go to for dinner, where to watch the sunset, and which flavor of gelato to choose?! Life is - pardon my French (though Italian would be much more apropos here) - f*cking crazy.
Of course, some of this is the glow of vacation - you know, when you don’t have to worry about “real life,” because all of that can wait until you get back home. Once I got home, more important life decisions would be waiting for me, so it’s not like my life one year after cancer is all sunsets and gelato.
But this wasn’t just vacation glow. I was on another vacation last September, and I felt totally different. As much as I tried to distract myself with the fun of travel, there was still an intense amount of cancer anxiety consuming my brain and body. I was gearing up for my implant surgery, and also getting new news from my doctor about something mysterious spotted on my liver (which thankfully was NOT more cancer, but I didn’t know that during that entire vacation). It had been six months since my mastectomy, and I was still pretty sure that this is just how my life would be now.
Which is why this realization on the shores of Lake Como hit so hard. How did I get from that mental place to this mental place? What changed?
I think time passing inevitably led to some change. Learning to live with it all. But also, a real “all-clear.” In January, just a couple of weeks before I left for Italy, I met with my liver doctor. After a CT, MRI, biopsy and PET scan, she finally told me that the mysterious things on my liver were benign. I would just need an MRI every six months to make sure they’re not growing, but that they really weren’t anything to worry about.
Of course, my anxious brain continued to scan for something else wrong. “I’m tired all the time,” I told the doctor during that appointment. “Is that a symptom of something else?”
She responded by saying that, at this point, she would be surprised if I was not tired all the time. She pointed out that for the past year, I’d had no breaks. No periods of time in which I was not waiting for something cancer-related - a scan, a surgery, scan results, biopsy results… All of that made it impossible for my brain and body to truly rest.
I started tearing up as I hesitantly asked her, “so is this the time when I finally get a break?”
She said yes. I did not need to schedule any more doctors’ appointments. No more scans (until the liver check-up in a few months, but that really didn’t feel too worrisome). No more waiting.
So here I was in Italy, a month and a half later, finally feeling the freedom of that. It’s a feeling that is hard to describe. Because it’s not so much a feeling but a lack of feeling. A realization that I had unknowingly let go of some of the weight I had been carrying (not literal weight, because I do think technically my new implant boobs weigh more than my real ones did… but you get my point). The feeling of no longer constantly worrying about my health, that some new bad news is about to hit. And maybe even a bit of trusting my body again.
A year ago, I really didn’t think any of these feelings were possible. I thought I would feel them forever.
And I’m not saying they’re gone forever. I know I will still have moments of health anxiety, of medical trauma, of noticing a new symptom and worrying that it means my cancer is back. I still have things I’m processing from this whole experience. That is the reality of being a cancer survivor. But at least for right now, it’s not all-consuming. My brain and body are free to think about and do other things - which, yes, often includes worrying about other things… but also includes things like resting. For real this time.
I think this is what mental health professionals refer to as “getting out of survival mode.” As much as I tried to trick myself into thinking I was no longer in survival mode a year ago, when the cancer was removed from my body, I wasn’t. I was still stuck in it. I did not feel safe in my body. And while I still have some gripes with my body, and I still miss my old boobs, I’m grateful to say that I feel pretty dang safe in this body right now. We’ve been through a lot together, and I think we’re a pretty good team.
Last year, when other cancer survivors told me that “it wouldn’t always feel like this,” that someday I would have days when cancer doesn’t even cross my mind, I rolled my eyes at them (well ok, honestly, I smiled and nodded, but internally, I was rolling my eyes in doubt). So if you are reading this and you are currently going through treatment, or you’re newly out of it, eye rolls and disbelief are very much allowed. Annoyingly, like most experiences in life, I think this one has to be felt over time, on your own. No one can tell you anything that will make it happen sooner.
But as much as I thought people were crazy and wrong when they told me it would get better, it also gave me a little bit of hope. So I hope that this can maybe give you a tiny bit of that too.
I wish I could go back and talk to myself a year ago. To tell myself that it’s going to be ok, and to hold onto hope that this won’t always be everything I think about.
I probably wouldn’t have believed most of what she had to say.
But I definitely would have asked my future self to show me my new boobs.
Beautiful - it’s so refreshing to be out of survival mode isn’t it? 💗💗