The breast cancer treatments are over. Now what? Here's how to return to your 'new normal'.
Life after breast cancer means returning to some familiar things and also making some new choices.
Instead, you're about to embark on another leg of the trip. This one is all about adjusting to life as a breast cancer survivor. In many ways, it will be a lot like the life you had before, but in other ways, it will be very different. Call it your"new normal." Two of the biggest hurdles women with breast cancer face post-treatment are fatigue resulting from chemotherapy and/or the accumulated effects of other treatments, and a phenomenon some women have dubbed"chemobrain" -- mental changes such as memory deficits and the inability to focus. If you tried, you probably couldn't pick two more frustrating and troubling side effects for women handling busy lives, managing careers, and caring for families.
How long after breast cancer treatment ends can you expect fatigue,"chemobrain," and other post-treatment side effects to persist? Everyone's different, of course, but as a general rule of thumb, Weiss tells her patients to expect a recovery period about the same time from your first"cancer scare" moment to the date of your last treatment.
Breast cancer survivorship, Weiss observes, is a marathon, not a sprint. That means learning to handle the symptoms that stick around after treatment ends, says Sloan-Kettering's McCabe, by using those adaptive strategies you learned while on chemotherapy or recovering from surgery.
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