Dana Stewart was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010 at the age of 32. She is the co-founder of a cancer survivorship organization called The Dragonfly Angel Society. She volunteers as an advocate and mentor, focusing on young adults surviving cancer. She enjoys writing about life as a cancer survivor, as well as connecting survivors to the resources, inspirations and stories that have helped her continue to live her best life, available at www.dragonflyangelsociety.com.

Dana Stewart

When I first got my breast cancer diagnosis 11 years ago, I was devastated and basically lived in denial for the first days — which morphed into the first few weeks — of doctor appointments, tests, options and strategies for my treatment. I moved through each doctor visit almost as if I was a puppet being controlled by someone else.

It was like I was in the audience watching a play on cancer starring one lonely actor that looked scared and defeated. I had no feeling or connection, and it was like I was watching someone else’s life unravel, not my own.

I stayed unemotional when the doctors told me my best option was a bilateral mastectomy. I was literally told I would lose both my breasts to cancer, and I just sat there nodding at this first step of my treatment.

I sat there unemotional again when they told me I’d have multiple lymph nodes tested and then probably more surgery if they came back positive. I showed no emotion when they said I’d be on long-term hormone therapy.

I sat there with no feeling when they told me I needed 12 weeks of chemo treatment … until it clicked what that meant for me. I immediately spoke up and asked the doctor, “Does that mean I will lose my hair?” He, of course, said yes. And right there and then, I burst into tears.

OK, yes, it should have been obvious I would lose my hair. And some, mostly those who have never faced cancer, may call out the obvious that it is 

 hair, it will grow back, you can wear a wig, so on and so forth.

Yes, I realized all of that, but in my mind, it was the icing on the cake for me. It made the words “You have cancer” officially become real in my mind. I was going to lose my hair and then everyone would officially know that I had cancer.

It’s not that my hair meant everything to me, and I knew I could wear a wig or walk around bald, or whatever. All that didn’t matter. It was the characteristic I just always associated with cancer. Cancer = bald. It’s just how I saw it.

So yes, I lost my hair, and yes, I bought a wig. Yes, I rarely wore it, yes, I sometimes walked around bald, and yes, I dealt with it.

Then when chemo was over, I became a one-woman cheering section, anxiously looking in the mirror waiting for any sprouts of growth and dancing around with delight when the little fuzzies took control of my scalp. It made me feel like I was coming back to life with each little hair that poked through and banded together to become my new set of hair.

After that, I just wanted my hair to grow and grow, so I rarely cut it. I cherished it and was grateful to have it back. Fast forward about nine years and it’s the start of the pandemic. Everything shut down and I just let my hair grow.

Two years into the pandemic and I had one haircut. I knew where this was going. I had always thought if my hair got long enough one day, I would cut it and donate it. Parting with it to then share with someone else who has become the lone actor in their own cancer stage play seemed like the best idea to give back. I knew when the time was right, I would just know it.

Well, that time has spoken, and I just did it! Thirteen inches of my hair was just cut and banded together to be sent to an organization making wigs for children with cancer. It may not seem like a big deal to those same people who said to me the famous words of “it is just hair.” But it is NOT just hair to a patient with cancer. It’s one of many losses faced.

If my hair can help someone else who is in the spot I was 11 years ago, then I am all for it. It’s the cycle of hair in the cancer world — at least my cancer world. I grew it, lost it, grew it, donated it. And hopefully, someone else smiled because of it.

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A breast cancer survivor explains why she was inspired to donate her hair to make wigs for children with cancer 11 years after she lost her own hair during chemotherapy treatments.

11 Years After Losing My Hair to Chemo, I Decided to Donate My Locks to Children With Cancer

I am not a social media influencer, so I really don’t know how the whole collaboration thing works. I know it has something to do with partnerships. I know “collab” is a buzz word these days. So, I decided to try out and see how it feels in the cancer world.

I’ve been a cancer survivor for 11 years and 161 days as I sit down to work out this new collaboration. And no, it hasn’t been painful, and I am not painfully still remembering the details … yes, all said with sarcasm.

If it seemed hard to tell by the fact that I know my “cancerversary” down to the exact day, yes, my cancer anxiety and fears still plague me. They follow me around like a lost puppy begging for some TLC and love. I am still a work in progress and proud of it. I seek therapy and support for my cancer fears, even after all these years (and days) and I am proud to say it.

Unfortunately, I took the road of keeping cancer anxiety with me instead of parting ways with it after time like so many other survivors I know. It was an unfortunate road I took and therefore, I need to keep walking it, hoping to still find the fork in the road that leads me away from the constant anxiety.

I also took on a partnership with PTSD. The “fun” thing about PTSD is that it lets you forget a lot of the bad stuff. There are some parts of my diagnosis of breast cancer at the age of 32 I simply don’t remember. But, there is PLENTY that I have the delight of reliving constantly thanks to those four letters:P.T.S.D.

So, I’ve decided to try and throw my nemesis off its game as we head toward yet another year together. I’ve asked my anxiety to collab with me. I am assuring myself there is no way it saw this coming. I mean 99% of the time, I spend my day running from it, fearing it and/or succumbing to it once again. It’s truly exhausting to live in fear of cancer. Just ask the 11 years and 161 days I’ve been through since diagnosis.

Here’s my genius plan to collab with anxiety. I’ve made some rules. Anxiety hates rules, so it will be interesting if it agrees and follows.

 We acknowledge each other’s existence. I see the anxiety and it sees me. We agree to live together but I agree to acknowledge its existence and it agrees to just step to the side when the tools I use to battle its dominance work on suppressing it for the day. I am sure it will be back tomorrow, but our agreement is for each today as it comes, not for tomorrows.

 We don’t discuss the past. My breast cancer happened. We all know that. It happened then, not now. Eleven years and 161 days ago. Nothing can change that no matter how hard the anxiety pushes me on that. So part of the collab is the anxiety drops the past fears.

 We agree to a limited amount of time spent on the cancer fears. Currently, anxiety has asked for the stage 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I think that is a bit too much as I am struggling to think of other things. So, I can’t give the anxiety the spotlight with quite the same amount of time. We agree to work toward 30 to 60 minutes a day of fear getting to take the lead on my life.

I am waiting for my cancer anxiety to sign this collaboration contract. I’ve given it time to review and decide. My deadline is December 31st, 2021. We need to agree on the new partnership to start the year. It’s about time I take back my life back and limit the intruders.After all, a huge rule of this collaboration is leaving the past in the past.

A breast cancer survivor describes how exhausting it is to live in constant fear of cancer and how she plans to combat it in 2022.

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Excuse me a minute while I go recover from that massive punch in the gut.

We all know that hearing anyone telling you they have cancer just flat out stinks, but when it is a parent, it’s unchartered waters. That’s just about the top of my biggest fears…. with the exception of hearing one’s own cancer diagnosis, which oh wait, I’ve already witnessed. 

I thought that once I was diagnosed with breast cancer almost 10 years ago, when I was 32 years old, that I had taken one for the team. I thought for sure no one else I knew would get it, let alone my parents. This is the nice naïve world I lived in for a long time. Then, this past January, my mom was diagnosed with uterine cancer and my world was shattered yet again by cancer. It’s a story I am sick of repeating.

When I received my own cancer diagnosis, I was completely caught off guard and unaware of how to handle it. However, I navigated the waters and found myself safe on the shores of the other side of a diagnosis. Almost 10 years later and I am grateful to say I am still standing. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster for me. 

I deal with constant fears (that still linger even after all this time), I struggle with PTSD & cancer triggers and anxiety all thanks to cancer. I have been in therapy for years to move past all the emotional baggage that cancer brings. Then when my mom was diagnosed, it was like reliving my own cancer nightmare again, but instead, watching helplessly as my mom was going through her own battle.

Here’s the catch that I was not prepared for: parents seem to handle a cancer diagnosis quite differently than their kids. Or maybe it is just my mom? She was calm, cool and collected when she told the news of her uterine cancer diagnosis. It was like watching her tell me the washing machine broke or something trivial that happens every day. She was annoyed and wasn’t excited about the process but honestly wasn’t worried.  She said that it was a totally treatable with surgery and even if it had spread, the doctors were confident it could easily be treated. 

She was much older than me during her diagnosis so in her eyes, it was totally different.  It was a different type of cancer than me, and basically it was a different everything. That was why she was so calm. 

In my eye’s cancer was cancer. End of discussion. How was she not screaming, crying, angry, frightened, etc.  How was she not having the same reaction as I did when I heard I had breast cancer? This made me so mad. Then upset. Then scared. Then mad at myself. Was I seriously getting mad at my mom for her reaction to her own cancer diagnosis? I mean, I have preached for years that every person’s cancer is their own and therefore their reaction to it should be their own. Yet, I was mad at my mom for, as I put it, blowing off her cancer diagnosis

Looking back, I realized my reaction to her diagnosis was because I was so scared for her. I didn’t want her to have to go through all the horrible physical and emotional trauma I faced with cancer over the years. It has been a nonstop uphill climb for me, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I didn’t care that her uterine cancer was treatable, most likely didn’t spread and most likely would mean surgery and that was it. All that went through my head was: cancer is cancer, cancer is cancer, cancer is cancer….and it has now affected mom.

I had flashbacks to my own diagnosis and treatment constantly as my mom went through her treatment. I had to remind myself daily that my cancer was not back and that her cancer, her treatment plan was different than mine. I had to force myself into the role of caregiver, not cancer patient.

 I am thrilled to say that her surgery was a success and she is fully recovered. The cancer was contained to the uterus and her prognosis is amazingly positive. I am so happy, and still scared, as I never know what will happen next in the world of cancer. 

I am sad that I now have to share the title of cancer survivor with her because I was hoping no one else I knew would ever have to go through cancer. It’s one of the worst experiences of my life but yet, taught me a different side to cancer. I became a co-survivor. Watching a parent experience cancer is really the worst. It can bring out the worst fears of your own diagnosis too.  However, it can bring out the best knowing you can relate, knowing you can support them in their time of need too.

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The idea of cancer survivorship seems like it should be a simple idea. You have been diagnosed with cancer. You are still living; therefore, you are a survivor. That about sums it up in laymen's terms. Now, let's break that down from the eyes of a survivor. It' just not so black and white.

That initial definition of survivorship is how I understood what cancer survivorship was long before I actually became a cancer survivor.

After receiving the diagnosis of breast cancer 9 years ago, the first thing I did was cry. Then I got mad. Then I went back to crying. After all the initial emotions and reactions, I had to start breaking down treatment options, scheduling appointments, surgeries, and of course, the telling of friends and family. I hated all of it. I was a planner and always planned everything out. Cancer was not in my detailed life schedule, so it threw off my whole life plan. Then, of course, I had no plan on how to deal with a diagnosis because I never thought it would happen in the first place. One of the constant questions people asked me was did I consider myself a survivor? Well, that was also not a question I thought about, so I had no response because I had no clue.

I had no idea what the protocol was on the label of a cancer survivor. I thought it was odd that was what people asked me after they heard I had cancer. I guess it is better than them asking if I thought I was going to die, so I accepted their questioning. My first reaction was always "NO. I am not a survivor. I haven't survived anything yet." That reaction went over, well, not at all. People would just look at me perplexed. Personally, I don't understand why this is such a big question. I was dealing with cancer and I could think of about 650 other things that seemed way more urgent than deciding 2 days after my diagnosis if I was a survivor or not. I decided my answer would be if I lived one year after my diagnosis, I would then call myself a survivor.

Looking at myself pre-diagnosis, I can kind of relate to people's questions on survivorship. Survivor is such a strong word. It means you went through something terrible and came out the other side still standing. That's how I used to see it. Having had cancer, I started to see it in a new light. However, that took some time and a lot of sales pitches to myself to sell the idea that I was a survivor from day one. I had to remind myself with each day after that diagnosis I was surviving cancer. It was just one day at a time, but I was surviving.

Then after a year went by and I thought of all I had gone through, I felt stronger on the idea of cancer survivorship. I was still hesitant on saying I was a survivor because I'd only lived a year after diagnosis at that point. I thought I would truly feel like a survivor when I hit 5 years after diagnosis. It was like living a survivorship timeline in which with every tick of the line I passed, it meant I survived another year. Then I thought I would just close the book on cancer and move on.

I think the truth of it is, there is no true timeline of cancer survivorship. I am 9 years out from diagnosis and I still feel like every day I am just surviving one day at a time. I still have fears, anxiety, pain, sadness, and anger towards cancer. I hope every day it doesn't come back. I hope every ache or pain is nothing more than an ache or pain. So, as of today, I am still surviving. That's how I have sold myself on the idea of survivorship. It's a constant. It's always there in whatever form or idea you want it to be. If you feel like you are a survivor the minute you are diagnosed, then you are. If you are still going through treatment and don't consider yourself a survivor? Hey, that's cool and don't let anyone tell you otherwise (and there will be plenty of people who give you their thoughts on that one.) If you never feel like a survivor, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that either. Bottom line is, you just need to sell yourself the idea of survivorship in whatever way or form it means to you.

The label of being a cancer survivor can be simple, but underneath it can mean something so different to each person. Only you can choose what the idea of survivorship means to your journey.

Dana Stewart

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When A Parent Is Diagnosed With Cancer

Sell Yourself the Idea of Being A Survivor

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