What Is It Really Like?

People ask me what does cancer feel like? Valid question for someone trying to understand but it’s not an easy one to try to explain in a quick short answer. Most people ask but I will be perfectly honest not many can handle the answer. But here I go. 

1. It’s painful. It’s a constant 24 hour pain that is dull and draining and exhausting. There are bursts of sharp shooting pains in between. Some days the pain is manageable and others? Well the pain wins. It’s wanting to eat sometimes feeling hunger and your stomach revolts and now it’s empty again. Nausea so overwhelming you feel almost like you want to pass out from it all  

2. It’s knowing that there is a poison inside your body that fights you everyday. Everyday you wake up knowing that you are almost in an abusive and toxic relationship with it and all you can do is dream of the day the breakup between you and cancer finally happens. The longing for freedom all while feeling trapped. 

3. It’s seeing the look on your loved ones eyes. The look of sadness and fear. No matter how much you try to assure them you are ok it’s never enough because they are scared of losing you and no matter how many lights you try to shine to make the darkness go away you just can’t. It’s a monster under the bed you can’t make go away. 

4. It’s crying in the shower, bathroom, your car or behind any closed door because you don’t wanna cry in front of them. You don’t want to let them see anymore of the despair you feel because you’ve lost a part of you. You’ve lost the part of you that made you bubbly, made you silly, made you carefree or even made you feel normal. You now feel weak, you feel lost, you feel like you are no longer you. 

5. It’s feeling dependent and no longer independent of yourself. You need help it feels like ALL the time. A simple task of walking 20 feet to get something some moments feel so draining. Sleeping alone is difficult because you need the presence of the person who makes your pain lessen but they can’t be there at the moment so you spend the night in pain cause even their hand around you and the weight it holds feels like a security blanket and, on the nights you are alone it feels like when you were a little girl scared and alone in the dark trying hard to hide from this monster called Cancer  

6. The constant cramping of your muscles feels like you did hours upon hours at the gym. They harden and hurt and tears just fall freely cause sometimes you can’t reach the area to work out the pain. 

7. It’s feeling like a burden. You don’t want to ask for help cause you don’t want to burden people (even when they say you aren’t being one). But a lesson I’ve learned is eventually people feel burdened and when they do things change. So I don’t ask for help because I don’t want things to change. 

8. It’s the looks, the stares, and the whispers of when you walk by with a fully shaved head. It’s people looking at you like you are weak, defenseless, and some even pity you. For someone like me that’s a fate worse then death. I have always been small in stature. The baby of the family. The one always needing to be taken care of. I worked so hard to not be that and be strong. Work hard to let people see that I can be a force of nature and now... now I see them all look at me like I am 2.5 seconds away from collapsing. Why even when I feel sick you will see me get up, do my makeup, play on TikTok making silly videos so people think I am ok! It’s all about perception right? 

9. It’s a fear that you won’t be able to work and provide. Lose your income, lose your benefits, lose your livelihood. So you push to make them see you are still capable to perform your job so you don’t lose it. But now with all the strain your body feels you have to work on overdrive which causes more strain. You can say what you will about it being a vicious cycle but who will then have to be burdened when I can no longer provide? I couldn’t put anyone through that so I push and push. 

10. The one thing it feels like the most: loneliness! For the most part people don’t understand and to try to explain it makes it so hard so you hold it in and feel alone in an over populated world. That’s what cancer really feels like.