Cancer as a Chronic Condition

Cancer can be a lot of things.

Thirteen years ago I had Stage 1 (early) breast cancer, with surgery and chemo, and it was like a walk in the park.
Before that, my Mom had breast cancer twice, then died of pancreatic cancer, which is very difficult to detect, and so it's quite deadly - they often don't find it until it's too late for surgery. Her pancreatic cancer was considered "Terminal" but obviously she survived her 2 bouts of breast cancer.

Those are two ends of the spectrum.
What I have is ovarian cancer, which is somewhere in between. People talk about it as a "chronic" condition - many women are on and off chemo - or on chemo - the rest of their lives.

You can read more about recurrent ovarian cancer here:
http://www.mnovarian.org/recurrence.htm

This is the first place I've heard the phrase "durable remission" - that would be something to wish for.

Recurrence - sometimes called "reoccurance" - is like an unwished for encore. (I didn't stand and clap for that. I was hoping it had made its final exit - those were my wishes.) To be more direct: I was initially diagnosed April of last year, officially went into remission last fall, and went out of remission this fall. Therefore, I currently have "recurrent ovarian cancer."

This blog is partly about teaching people about cancer. It used to be many people thought cancer meant death. Now more of us are understanding that's often not the case.
My Mom lost some friends because they thought she was terminal even when she wasn't - it was just too scary for them to deal with. I know that still happens to cancer patients, but I think a lot less often that it used to, now that people understand it better - not completely, but better.
Sometimes people need to be reminder cancer isn't contagious. Everybody knows that intellectually but not emotionally.

As we say in our prayers, "may we all live for a very long time."
I know I could use more time to improve my mind.