When Cancer Becomes Routine
By John Bach
Julie and I have been together 32 years (married 26). Photo credit/Kayla & Caleb
I’ve struggled to say much about Julie’s cancer fight the last few months. Several times I’ve sat down to write the next blog, but over and over, I came up empty. It is as if I’ve started to numb to it all. Or maybe I just don’t want to reveal the lasting pain.
We are approaching 18 months since this new and unwanted journey started — just about long enough to begin to forget what it felt like to not be in this fight. So I wonder, has cancer become routine?
Have I forgotten what it felt like to go through a day and not talk about Julie’s pain or think about all she has lost? All we have lost. She’s technically “cancer free” since February 2022. Yet, every three weeks she goes to the chemo suite, where nurses access the port in her chest to push another Keytruda infusion. She gets to keep her hair, but this phase feels remarkably similar to Chemotherapy.
The drugs wreck her stomach for a week or more. Her face turns fire red. She can’t sleep. Still, the experts tell us that 17 rounds of this preventative medicine will significantly increase her odds of remaining in remission. That’s a big deal considering Triple Negative Breast Cancer is more likely to come back after treatment.
These infusions will stretch into spring, around the same time when Julie will go back into the operating room for the next phase of breast reconstruction.
Our family is walking alongside Julie every step of the way. Photo credit/Kayla & Caleb
Among the common misconceptions about breast cancer is that the words “cancer free” are immediately followed by a healing process and “getting back to normal.”
Far from it.
The reality is that we barely remember whatever our normal was before this long road started. The reality is that the mental hurdles are just as high as the physical ones. Cancer hasn’t just stolen her confidence. It beats the hell out of her psyche on a daily basis.
And that’s a routine that should never become normal.
