Having Cancer Makes Me Different

I had cancer. That makes me different from you (unless, obviously, you’ve had cancer too). Having cancer makes me different from me too, the me I used to be before a phone call in April of 2014. Three little words – “You have cancer.” – and everything totally changed.

Having cancer alters you, regardless of your age or what form the disease takes. Aside from the “typical” changes one might expect, there are changes specifically linked to cervical cancer.

Let’s talk about the somewhat universal changes cancer brings.  You are sick, and you feel sick. The treatments are often more painful than the disease itself. When I had my cone biopsy to find out how far into my cervix the cancer was, I spent the entire night after awake and in excruciating pain. I waited until 6 am (it was a Saturday) to page my oncologist, who told me to come in to the ER. There was nothing apparently wrong; “It just seems,” he told me, “that you have a sensitive cervix.”

Cancer is oftentimes an unseen illness. When most people think cancer, they picture emaciated people with sallow skin and no hair. That is one face of cancer, but it’s not the only one. I never looked sick. I just felt it every day of my illness. And I felt it much more painfully when people would say things like “Oh my god, you have cancer? You look so good!” To say that is to discredit my illness and the illnesses of all the others who don’t fit into your preconceived mold of what a cancer patient should look like.

Cancer brings a huge degree of uncertainty. No matter what stage you are at, how “good” of a type of cancer you have, none of that really matters. Cancer is still a potentially fatal disease. So I spent a lot of time thinking about my own mortality. I was very early stage, at 1b1, there was no lymph node involvement, and I had a 95%+ rate of beating this beast. But I was still scared, because 95 isn’t 100. Because I have cancer, and my friend does not.

As uncertain I was of the future, my priorities seemed to shift overnight. I suffer from a form of mental illness, and had attempted suicide in January, just three months shy of my diagnosis. That diagnosis made me want to live, for a very long time. I didn’t know what the future held for me in terms of my living beyond cancer, but I would be damned if I was going to keep acting like a brat and taking my life for granted. This is in no way intended to shame or disparage people with mental illness or who are suicidal; this was just my way of looking at my situation.

I so often feel misunderstood, different, like an outsider. I am about to turn 36; I am too young for this shit. But I know that there are women fifteen years younger than I am who are dying from cervical cancer, and I know I’m not so alone.

With cervical cancer, the biggest (and least talked about, unless you know Tamika Felder-Campbell) change is sex. My oncologist told me I could have sex after six weeks. I think my jaw hit the floor. I had already spent the last four months having my vagina actively poked and prodded, and I was looking at that continuing on for at least another few years. Sex was on par with bamboo shoots under my fingernails at that point. You couldn’t have paid me enough money to voluntarily put anything anywhere near there. 

However, this was really unfair to my husband (boyfriend at the time). So in August, two months after my surgery, we attempted to do the deed. He put his finger in my vagina, and kind of went, “Huh.” That’s never a noise you want to hear during sex, ESPECIALLY two months after you’ve had a radical hysterectomy to remove cervical cancer. I pretty much lost my shit, demanding to know what brought that lovely little “Huh” on. He told me he felt a bump. Well, describe it, I demanded. Why don’t you just feel it yourself, he asked. Because there was no way in hell I was putting my finger in my vagina, not that night, and possibly ever again.

When my oncologist finally examined me, he said it was just a hematoma, which a CT scan backed up; just a simple surgical artifact. No big deal, my oncologist said. Have some sex, he told me. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I said.

I wasn’t ready for sex then. I thought I would never enjoy it ever again. It was one more thing I had lost, like my fertility, unwanted thought it was. But of course this changed too.

My sexual hang up was a mental block. I was terrified that my husband would not enjoy sex with me the way he used to. My vagina was different; they removed a section of it during surgery. The most helpful thing to do was to talk it out. And to listen to and believe him. If he says he finds me beautiful and sexy, why should I doubt that?

It’s not always easy, but he respects my pace. And I can’t think of anything sexier than a husband wanting to make his wife have an orgasm (or more!). When I can just focus on him, and what he is doing for me, our sex life is explosive.

So yes, I’m different now. I worry about the future, and how much of it I’ll have. I’m not like the other moms in my son’s class (but my tattoos made me an outcast in that department long before I had the “STD cancer). I talk about cervical cancer, HPV, how you can prevent those, what you should do about vaccinating your child.

Cancer changed me. It took out some of the worst parts of me, and allowed the best parts to shine.

xoxoxo Jennie