Living with cancer

It is with a heavy heart, a pit in my stomach, and tears in my eyes that I am writing this essay about survivorship. Yesterday,  a woman who played a crucial role in my cancer experience was buried. Her name is Yasmine. She was a psychologist who was a member of   an association devoted to helping people who live with cancer deal with the experience. This organization can be considered as heaven for those people. In order to support them, support groups, art therapy activities and   journaling groups were organized.. It was a place  where we can go, where many things were understood easily from the very beginning, where there were no platitudes, and where people were real. Actually, they understood the seriousness of the situation. They also were awared of the fact that some of us would be lucky in case they survive this “nightmare”, and that some of us, unfortunately, would not.

The first time I was diagnosed  with my first breast cancer, I didn’t know any precedent idea about survivorship. There was only one thing I knew is that I wanted to be within that group of people who lived with cancer. But I also knew that there were no existing support groups for  women who are living with breast cancer in the area where I used to live. Due to relation in breast cancer association,I was introduced to Yasmine, and she agreed to establish  the first support group for women in my situation. Every week, a huge group of  women came to meet. All the women of the group were assisted by Yasmine to guide themselves throughout the experience, and after the experience if they were lucky.

In order to describe the experience of living with a cancer, people usually use some “ battle metaphors”. Yasmine hated those expressions. She rather believed that the "battle" metaphor against illness often lead us to think about the patient always doing something.  After all, “a soldier who gives up the fight is a coward”.  However, medical techniques that are essentially "doing nothing" are often better than active treatment, because they give icreased chances of life and giving improved mortality rates. She also affirmed that soldiers who get injured or die in battles are usually given medals. But she wanted patients to live and to dodge as much bullets as they can. All of the women from the group agreed with Yasmine when she said that surviving the battle implies the fact of fighting very hard and very well, if you die at the end it means that you did not  while dying at the end suggested you didn’t  fight hard enough to win.  Yasmine was always reminding us that a great deal of survivorship is drawn by luck. She called it  happenstance: You happen to discover it  in time, the treatments happen to work, and finally you happen to escape death. She supported each  women in the association  to find out how she wanted to describe her experience and how she wanted to make an outline for this experience. Overall, she helped us to see the good things around us  even on the days  that we thought were the worst ever.I was also allowed to hold meetings about women’s breast cancer organization in her office. At this time again, every week  women gathered and helped others in the same situation to join them and feel the warmth of togetherness and understanding during periods of deep despair.

Day after day, over five years ago and   because of Yasmine, a very firm community of  women living with breast cancer was created. And yesterday during Yasmine’s funerals, almost all of us were there. But still There were some missing. In fact there have been many funerals  during the last five  years. Here can be noticed the penance of survivorship. . . you always have to watch those with whom you spent a long time being close to each other being buried. However, now I see that with every death, with all its sadness and anger, there is a renewed awareness of the preciousness of the current time. People living with cancer are highly awared of how things can change instantly and all what you have planned and did so far can be messed up by three words: “ You have cancer”.

 Being someone who is living with cancer, It won’t be a hyperbole if I say that Yasmine helped me to define my experience in the most  It’s not hyperbole to say that Harriet helped define my experience as someone who’s lived with cancer in the most essential ways possible. If she did not do so, I would not have been able to definite my life after cancer. My current life is  much richer and better than before. I will never say that going through the experience of having a cancer was a gift, however Yasmine offered me all the tips that helped me to recognize the gravity of my situation, and at the same time simultaneously come up with goodness from it. She made me discover   the power of hope.