What Will This Year Bring?

For the last year I have been completely fixated on breast cancer, chemo, surgeries, treatments and healing.  Unfortunately it became my life and my reality over the past 13 months.  Getting through all of the chemo and reconstructive surgery is a long, draining process.  It not only wears on you physically, but mentally.  For so long I kept wishing it would be 2012 so I would be done with all of that, but now that it IS 2012, I don't know what to think!

Lately things have been feeling more "normal".  With the help of time and medications, I don't fixate on the breast cancer 24/7 like I did in the past.  Don't get me wrong, I do still fixate on it, but not at the same frequency.  I can't imagine after going through a cancer diagnosis that anyone would be free from thinking about it. 

Now, life is busy with "normal" things.  I am still trying to get us settled into our new home.  I am organizing the house and cleaning.  I am back to cooking and blogging.  I hit the gym daily and run errands.  I am busy with the day to day things a mom and wife does.  I still have doctor appointments here and there, but not multiple doctors in the same week and someone always drawing blood like last year.  Overall, I am pretty busy most days and I am busy doing "normal" things, not "cancer" things.

Now that things are feeling more "normal" I don't know what to think.  How do I just go with the flow of that and not allow my brief thoughts of breast cancer grow into fixations again?  I am just going with the flow more and somehow that scares me.  It's almost like I am back to me again but I can't really be that same exact person.  In some ways I feel kind of foolish thinking things can be "normal" or carefree again.  In the back of my mind, tucked way back in the corner I still feel fear of the cancer returning.  I don't want to spend my whole life in fear, but I have to be realistic too.  I am not invincible.  I had breast cancer....me, the healthy one (so I thought). 

I never in a million years would have thought I would have gotten breast cancer.  When I talk to friends about having breast cancer, they all act like "well you must just have something in your body" and like they won't ever get it.  What's scary is, that's how I thought before getting diagnosed.  One in eight women will get breast cancer in their lifetime.  Right now, I don't have any other friends or family that have had it.  Who will be next?  It scares the crap out of me at times.  I keep thinking about the many women that are important in my life.  There are more than eight.  Right now I am the one in eight, but at some point there will be another.  Breast cancer sucks!