What just happened? After being treated for breast cancer, most women ask this question, to themselves. This question leads many, if not most, breast cancer survivors into a heavy examination of their lives, now that survivorship is an integral part of who she is. Depending on your loved one, she may or may not want to make big changes in her life, while you just want to get back to the way things were before. ‘‘She is thinking that she is forever changed, and says to herself, ‘I am not going back to the way things were,’ ’’ according to Penny Damaskos, Coordinator of the Post-Treatment Resource Program, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. ‘‘Cancer has been a huge wake-up call to live her life differently.’’

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And the big changes for her may mean a radical shift in behavior, such as deciding to stay out all night at bars, smoking and drinking heavily, and getting little or no exercise, until she decides to have an affair and leave you to, just as she has left her past life. You were probably a bad husband, or at least to overwhelmed by the practical realities of cancer while she wanted to forget it all and start a new life.
All this doesn’t make things any easier when I’m trying to find a job to boot.