Creative & Cancer Free, Part 1: Chatting About Anxiety

 

With all of the recent celebrity suicides, mental health is being talked about a lot, which is a wonderful thing. Mental health issues are so important, and if you’re able to talk about them, it might help another person get through the bad days. I’ve always been open and honest about my journey with cancer – and how my mental health was, and still is, effected by it. I actually like talking about it, because I’ve been through more medically than any 24 year old should have already gone through. Instead of being negative about it, I use it as an excuse to spread my positivity.

 

               

FIRST CHEMO 12/29/16  •  MIDDLE OF CHEMO 3/7/17  •  DONE WITH CHEMO 5/12/17

 

This week has been hard. Probably one of the hardest weeks I’ve had from a mental health standpoint since my actual diagnosis (and all the anxiety I went through then). Why? Because it’s been one year since I finished chemo, and almost one year since I was declared cancer free. And today is the day where I get the results of my one year scans. Every year this will happen, and every year my anxiety will go through the roof – because my cancer could always come back. As positive as I am, it’s hard to be completely positive with something this unpredictable. It was a complete surprise when I was told I had cancer the first time – meaning I had no symptoms separate from my regular Crohn’s Disease daily symptoms. Which means, I could get cancer again and have no idea until one of these checkups.

 

A few days ago, I was up late (as I usually am), watching Netflix and scrolling through Instagram. Something must have made me think about the cancer, because all my memories and anxieties about the checkup came rushing in. I had a major panic attack – my first full blown panic attack for months. I had a PTSD-like panic attack the first time I got an IV, because it reminded me of chemotherapy. What scares me the most is the unknown – and waiting for something that could possibly be bad is what gives me the most anxiety.

 

Cancer is a bitch. I lost all of my hair, I have a bunch of medical issues that have continued after chemo ended, I have PTSD-like flashbacks because of how horrible chemo was, my fertility has been effected (it’s complicated). But, at the same time, cancer has shown me that even when life throws horrible mountains to climb, the view from the top is absolutely breathtaking. I see my future and what I want clearer than ever now. All I want is a simple life, with the man I love, the people I call family, and doing something that I love. The threat of the cancer coming back will be with me for the rest of my life. There’s no avoiding the anxiety that comes with that. But in times like this week, I have to remind myself that there are so many reasons to be happy.

 

I started my journey with calligraphy and my small business after finishing chemotherapy last year. I dove into the deep end of business right away because life is short, and I wanted to do something I was truly passionate about. It has proven to be a good distraction too – and has made me happier than just about anything in my life. But even the happiest of people have their bad days (or weeks) – and it’s okay to embrace the anxiety and take a break from everything else. Mental health breaks are essential, even if you don’t necessarily have anxiety or depression. For me, if I feel my anxiety pushing through – it’s a major distraction, so I try to avoid certain tasks during this time, especially stressful ones.

 

If you made it through this whole blog post, good for you – I babbled a little bit. But what I want you to take away from this is that anxiety is okay. Panic attacks are okay. And most importantly, mental health breaks are not just okay, but absolutely necessary sometimes.