Treat Stage four cancer as chronic disease

Recently there is someone recently shared the below and it is so spot on. 🎯 This is a reality of living with metastatic breast cancer that most outside of the community don’t realize. If you’re feeling this too, we hear you and we’re here for you. 💗

“Recently I was told by my Psychologist at the Cancer Centre that I need to be phased out of the Psychosocial Oncology Program. Why? There isn’t enough funding to continue to support the mental health of someone with stage 4 cancer who is simply ‘living too long’. As messed up as that sounds, it is the perfect illustration of how our system doesn’t know what to do with people like me.

I came into the program as a postpartum mom who had just been told she had terminal cancer and likely no treatment options. Diagnosed with PTSD from the jarring abruptness of how everything suddenly went from ‘You’re just tired cause you’re a mom’ to ‘Sorry but you need to get your affairs in order.’ Then the depression that comes from having your life completely blown apart while you’re trying to raise your babies through chemo, targeted infusions, radiation, Scanxiety, loss of peers, all of it.

I’ve had an excellent response to treatment and my last round of scans, (which I finally got last night) continue to say I have no evidence of disease. Don’t get me wrong, I am deeply grateful for that. But so f**king lost about what to do now.

There is no cure. I’m never done treatment. No one can tell me how long before cancer progresses. My initial prognosis was 3-5 years but that’s all changing. I’m left living in uncertainty about what to do with my life now.

People say things like ‘anyone can get hit by a bus tomorrow’ but it’s not nearly the same as living this way. I lost my career, my savings, my autonomy, my independence, my goals, my ability to complete my family, because I still have STAGE 4 CANCER written across my file. I have to live in 3 month increments, scan by scan. Sorry, but you don’t lose all those things while waiting to get hit by a bus. …”