Tag: life after cancer

What My Life Looks Like Now

This is an image of the author, Jan Mariet, using her custom-made upright rollator for support. The image is purely decorative.

I live with multiple chronic illnesses, including Psoriatic Arthritis, Ankylosing Spondylitis, Short Bowel Syndrome, Myotonic Dystrophy Type 2, and Sjogren’s Disease. I’m also a cancer survivor living with significant radiation damage.

None of these go into remission. There isn’t a cure.

There are treatments, but every treatment comes with trade-offs. Some treatments help one condition while making another worse. Sometimes I have to choose which problem to address, knowing something else will flare as a result.

Recovery from overexertion, or even common illnesses like a cold or the flu is slow. What might take someone else can fend off in a few days can take me weeks or even months, and sometimes even involves hospitalization.

Day to day, my life is very unpredictable. I still have some good days, some very hard ones, and everything in between. There are days when my body simply won’t cooperate, no matter how careful I’ve been or how much I want it to.

Because of that, I hesitate to make plans. It’s easier not to get my hopes up than to cancel at the last minute. When I do disappear for a while or go quiet, it usually means I’m dealing with more pain or fatigue than I can push through.

A lot of everyday things take more effort than people realize. Showering, driving, grocery shopping, cooking, eating, even walking can be too much some days.

Eating is especially complicated. With Short Bowel Syndrome, I can’t tolerate most fast food, restaurant food, or convenience meals. Spices, oils, sauces, fresh fruits and vegetables, most dairy, seafood, and shellfish are all off the table. I eat a very small range of foods, often the same meals every day, and even then, my GI system doesn’t always cooperate.

Socially, things have changed too. I don’t always answer honestly when people ask how I’m doing. It’s not because I’m trying to be dishonest. It’s because most of the time, the real answer doesn’t fit into a casual conversation, and I’d rather talk about something else.

I miss a lot of my old life. Teaching wasn’t just a job for me, it was my vocation. I miss it. I miss my hobbies, like embroidery, needlepoint, crafting, gardening, and taking day trips. I miss going to performances, the symphony, musicals, craft fairs, and home and garden shows.

Accessibility plays a role in that. Stairs, steep inclines, and venues that aren’t set up for people with mobility challenges make many places difficult or impossible for me to navigate. Not always being able to drive adds another layer.

Most of the time, my world is much smaller now. While others are working, traveling, going out, and meeting up with friends, I’m often at home or at medical appointments. Over time, those differences create a gap. Conversations get harder because our day-to-day lives don’t overlap the way they used to.

I do try to make the best of things. But I’m also realistic about the limits. I’ve spent a long time trying to push past them or work around them, and it doesn’t always work. At some point, constantly trying and falling short takes its toll.

So now, I focus more on managing what is, instead of chasing what used to be.

What’s been harder to come to terms with is how much my life now revolves around my illnesses. It’s not how I see myself, and it’s not how I want to be defined, but it’s there in almost every decision I make.

I used to be the person who stepped in to help, even for people I didn’t know. I put a lot of time and energy into making a difference for my students and being part of my community. That mattered to me.

Now, more often than not, I’m the one who needs help.

That shift isn’t easy. Asking for help doesn’t come naturally to me, and sometimes I don’t ask at all. At the same time, when no one offers and I truly can’t do something on my own, I’m left trying to figure out what comes next.

It’s a strange place to be, needing support while still not quite knowing how to live in that role.

Being chronically ill isn’t something I chose. It’s a lifelong reality I’m still learning how to live with, one day at a time.

by Jan Mariet      5/3/2026

Surviving Cancer Is Not the Finish Line

We talk about surviving cancer as though it’s the finish line. You ring the bell, everyone cheers, and you move on. What rarely gets mentioned is that sometimes the treatment that saves your life also leaves lasting damage that deeply affects your quality of life.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this whispered in private, “I’m grateful to be alive, but if I’d known how damaged I’d be after radiation and chemo, how much it would limit my life, I’m not sure I’d have gone through with it. I’m not sure I’d have agreed to the treatment.”

Most survivors barely dare to say that out loud, but we sometimes share it quietly with each other. The world assumes that once you survive cancer you’re beaming with gratitude, you live a wonderful life, and everything goes back to normal. What people don’t see is what many of us live with afterward.

Some end up with stents, feeding tubes, or ostomy bags. Some live with bowel obstructions, chronic diarrhea, constipation, or malabsorption that leads to malnutrition. There are fistulas and radiation damage that never fully heal. There is neuropathy, nerve damage, vocal cord paralysis, balance problems, hearing loss, or changes in memory and concentration.

Skin can become fragile and tear easily, and wounds may take far longer to heal than they once did. Bones can weaken, and joints can stiffen, making ordinary movement more difficult. Breathing may not come as easily as it used to, and the heart itself can be affected by treatment.

Hormones shift in ways that disrupt sleep, mood, and overall health. Fatigue is not occasional but persistent, and the immune system often never fully regains its former strength.

The daily reality can be far more personal.  You learn that you need to know where every bathroom is before you agree to go anywhere. You avoid long car rides and carry discrete personal supplies. Some survivors are left with digestive damage that severely limits what they can safely eat, and that can make eating outside the house feel stressful instead of enjoyable.

You have to calculate how long you can stand, how far you can walk, and whether there will be a place to sit. Sometimes, you decide it is safer not to go at all.

Along with everything else, there’s grief. You miss the body you lived in before every ache and twinge meant something. You miss the freedom of saying yes without having to think through every possible consequence. You miss the person you were before your life had to be rebuilt around limitations, and you grieve the future you once assumed was secure.

There’s another layer to all of this, and that’s the financial side of things.  Cancer treatment can financially bankrupt you.  Treatment costs more than most people have, and the bills don’t stop when treatment ends. The complications that follow often require ongoing appointments, medications, supplies, and procedures that add up quickly.

Even ordinary things like going out to dinner, attending a wedding, or contributing to a group gift can become stressful decisions when money is tight. For many survivors, the cost of staying alive slowly erodes financial stability in ways that are hard to explain to people who have never faced it.

Cancer doesn’t just affect your body; it changes your personality in ways you’d never expected. You stop being spontaneous because everything requires thought, planning, and a careful analysis of whether you can tolerate the consequences. Do you have the energy? Can you drive that far or ride in a car that long? Will you be able to park close enough? Will there be a place to sit? Is there a restroom nearby?

Instead of saying yes with excitement, you find yourself saying, “Let me check,” because you need time to think it through. You hesitate, not because you don’t want to go, but because you’re trying to be realistic about what your body can handle. Sometimes you end up canceling when you realize it will cost you more than you can physically afford. Other times, you wait so long to decide that the moment passes, and the choice is made without you.

Some friends or family members may think you’ve become distant or negative. They may wonder why you’re still talking about things they believe you should be over by now. A few may quietly decide that staying close to you requires more effort than they want to give. Simply speaking, they quietly decide that you’re too much work.

They don’t realize that while surgery and radiation can leave visible changes to your body, it also leaves damage you can’t see. They don’t see the numerous complications that now dictate what you can do, how long you stay, and whether you can go at all. They don’t see that movement can hurt, breathing can be strained, and fatigue often gets in the way. They don’t understand that you’ve had to rebuild your entire life around staying functional.

There is also an emotional cost that lingers long after treatment ends. You do not simply forget what your body went through. The procedures, the scars, the burns, the vomiting, the needles; and that vulnerability stays with you long after treatment is finished.

When you feel a new ache, you immediately wonder it might be.  Scans and follow-up appointments can bring a kind of anxiety that is hard to explain to anyone who has not lived it. And somewhere in the background, there is often a quiet panicky thought that you cannot quite silence; you wonder if it’s come back.

I’m not pretending that surviving cancer isn’t something to be thankful for, because it is.  But that doesn’t mean everything goes back to the way it was. It doesn’t mean the damage disappears, or that life feels simple and easy again. A lot of us are learning how to live in bodies that were permanently changed, and we’re doing it while people assume we should just feel lucky and move on.

If you haven’t walked this road yourself, I hope what I’ve shared here makes it a little easier to understand. And if you have walked this road, I hope you know you’re not wrong for admitting it’s been hard.

You can be grateful to be here and still be honest about what it cost you. Those two things don’t cancel each other out.

Cancer Always Has the Final Word – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Cancer Changes Everything – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Cancer Always Has the Final Word

Image of a teal ribbon, which is the symbol for cervical cancer.

It doesn’t matter if the ribbon is pink, or teal, or any other of a myriad of colors. It means another person has heard those heart-stopping words: You have cancer.

Once those words are spoken, disbelief does something strange. From that moment on, you barely hear anything else that is said. Or maybe you hear it, but you don’t understand it. You certainly don’t remember it. The words bounce around the room like sound effects in a movie theater, echoing without meaning, until everything turns into a kinetic blur.

And if you happen to be alone when those words are spoken, the first time you try to say them yourself, they come out one of only a few ways.

Sometimes they are choked out through sobs, leaving the listener struggling to understand what you are trying to say, only knowing that whatever it is has shattered you.

Sometimes they come as a low, gravelly whisper, barely audible, but powerful enough to silence the room.

And sometimes, you don’t say them at all. You keep them locked inside, afraid to even whisper the words you are certain you must have misheard, even though deep down you know they are true.

The unfairness hits hard. Why me?  Reality hits.  Why not me?

All the qualifiers the oncologist offers, “We’ve caught it early.” “The chances of getting this under control are promising.” “Surgery alone may take care of things.”  They ring in your ears. But your heart and your mind hear something else entirely. They see the worst. The awful realization that your life might be ending, and that there is still so much you planned to do. Wanted to do. Needed to do.

The people you might be leaving behind.
The good you always meant to do.
The changes you intended to make.
The challenges you believed you would someday meet.

All of it floods your thoughts and your body at once. It spins together into a blinding, hopeless spiral of the life you could have had, if only you had known.

But don’t we all know that life is finite? Fragile? And yet we are stunned when that truth becomes more real than we ever imagined it could be.

Reality is something we push aside while we live our daily lives. Sleep. Wake. Dress. Eat. Work. Repeat. Over and over, without much thought.

The plans we always meant to follow through on slowly slip away with each step we take and each quiet thought we set aside. The day-to-day cycle becomes the pattern. The pattern becomes everything. It spins until we barely recognize that there was ever anything else.

Until the word, barely spoken, speaks: cancer.  And the pattern changes so quickly it disarms us.

Now the pattern is appointments. Recovery. Radiation. Chemo. Maybe immunotherapy. So much stops mattering. The world shrinks almost overnight.

Nausea.  Retching. Exhaustion.  Malaise.  Shrinking.  An endless fog of confusion.  Alternating devastation and hope.

We live for the day this aggressive pattern ends. We wait to be finished. To be well. To continue our lives. We believe that once this is over, everything we dreamed of will still be waiting for us.  But cancer always has the final word.

For some, life itself ends the conversation. For others, the collateral damage left behind by the disease, and even more by the treatment, forces life to be reordered. Reorganized. Reassembled. Reimagined.

The things we mourned when we first heard that word are no longer possibilities. We recover. We mourn. We go on. But we are never the same.

Regardless of the ribbon color. Despite the unpronounceable name that both specifies and reduces our lives. Not even when survival is the outcome.

We return to a pattern. A slightly altered one. Waking. Dressing. Eating. Working. Resting. Dreaming. A life reshaped by a single word that still echoes, long after it was first spoken: cancer.

Cancer Changes Everything – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

“I’m Fine” – The Reality of Surviving Cancer – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Products That Make Life Easier When You are Battling Cancers of the Mouth, Tongue, or Throat – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Products That Make Life Easier When You are Battling Cervical Cancer or Cancers in the Abdominal or Pelvic Area. – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life

Where Were You? – Jan Mariet’s A Day in the Life