Everyone thinks that once a cancer patient finishes their chemotherapy, it meant the end of their misery or they finally won the fight.

On the contrary, it is just part of the fight that they have overcome not the full fight.

As I am now on medications to continue the fight against breast cancer, the medications do not have apparent hair loss, bloating or skin turning greyish in colour. But their side effects that affect your quality of life are no lesser than chemotherapy

For example, my struggles with insomnia, nausea and pains caused by the medicine are something that you cannot see with the visual eyes.

Each night, I struggle to fall asleep. I will apply essential oil, drink whatever people say can help with sleep, eat supplements but my eyes would just kept looking at the ceiling until its time to go to work. After 2-3 days of insomnia, my body will start to crash. I will go into a state of drowsiness and at work, I cannot function. I will try biting my fingers, pinching myself, drinking tons and tons of coffee just to stay awake. When I finally reached home, i will drift in and out of drowsiness for the next few days and this greatly affects my work,

Not only that, I suffered severe back pain from a fall that happened while on the medications. My hairline fracture does not seem to heal due to all the medications in my system and when it act up, I struggle to walk or get up from my bed.

My nerves issue has been bothering me since chemotherapy days till now. I can be inside the cubicle for a while and my lower half of my body just went dead on me. I would need to pull myself up and let the blood flow to my lower half of the body before I can start walking. I remembered there was once this happened in the office toilet, one of the colleagues who happened to walk in got a shock from me standing at the door of the toilet cubicle and struggling to walk, she asked me “do you need my help?”, i said “don’t worry, its normal to me, I need sometime before I can walk”.

So now when people asked me this question “How are you?”. My answer to them is ” You want the truth? There are good and bad days due to the side effects”. Another common thing I hear so frequently ” Oh you look good!”, I would go “Really? Thanks! I take pains to make myself look good.” Making myself look good is my way of compensating for the amount of pain and shit we go through each day due to the medications.

So why then did I choose to be on the medication? Its because I made a promise to my family, I would do my best no matter what it takes to be with them as long as I can. Even if the meds are giving me shit but I will try and live my best to continue with it so that I don’t give myself a chance to say “I should have continue with the medications maybe that is why my cancer came back.”

Last September, my doctor told me that there were more spots in both my breasts but 90% should be benign. I relook at my life and priorities and decided to make changes. I also schedule for an early ultrasound in Dec to check that the “10%” is not there. Praise God, I got the results and all clear.

“If cancer does come back despite all I have done then I would tell myself and God, at least I put up a good fight and tried everything.” – Me

Next time if you see a recovering cancer survivor, just give them a hug or a pat on their shoulder and say “I don’t know how you feel but you are a fighter.” Because they are constantly living in the fear of the ugly creature returning, that creature is call “cancer”.