Leanna's Winding Path
Hi friends. Thanks for checking in on me. I thought this would be a good place to share with you the details about my journey in this life. I hope to keep it simple and honest.
I love you.
14 October 2011 – A New Insight from the Retreat
Something I learned from the retreat, but didn’t actually process until earlier this week; I am part of a community I hadn’t fathomed.
Being diagnosed at 29, you know I’m part of the community of young adults diagnosed with cancer. It wasn’t until the retreat weekend that I found I’m also a part of the community facing metastatic disease.
It doesn’t change anything. It’s just a new awareness.
Both communities are what I would call underserved when compared to that of the average (what a terrible word to use) cancer patient. Young adults find themselves asking questions and looking for connections and for people to identify with. They are looking for advice on how to raise children, pursue a career, or be a part of a normal social scene while juggling a cancer diagnosis. Resources for such advice is rather sparse. The community is self aware though, and it’s growing.
However, the metastatic community is not as easy to identify. While age is easy to approximate with the eyes, stage of disease is impossible to guess unless you are told by the patient or someone else who knows the diagnosis. There is also way fewer studies for and talk about people with metastatic disease. Apparently, this is based on the morbid truth that a metastatic diagnosis means used to mean almost certain near-term death, but it turns out this is changing too. Medicines are being created to extend the life of those with metastases. More articles are being written. More support groups are developing. Yet still, the voice of the metastatic cancer community is muted. To find resources specific to metastatic cancer, I would have to do some research, as opposed to other resources that inundate your doctors’ offices and your inboxes for the “normal” cancer diagnosis.
This is interesting to me. I had no idea I was part of this community likely to die before other people diagnosed with cancer. Now I do. It doesn’t worry me though. I’ll just keep on living the best that I can until I can’t. That seems like the most rational course of action to me.
