#survivingcancer

{this picture made us all laugh really REALLY hard.}

...

landon's eyebrows are back.

bushy lion eyebrows.

with a hint of ginger in my opinion.

pretty awesome:)

#survivingcancer.

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Q: when will you consider yourself a cancer survivor?

i will consider myself in remission up until 5 years from now because that's how long they'll do scans. i'll have one in 7 weeks, and if that's clear then i'll have another one is 3-6 months, and then as long as they stay clear then they will do them less often for up to 5 years.

at 5 years if you're clean, then that's when i would consider myself cancer free.

Q:in what way or ways has your life changed the most through this experience?

It really has changed everything.

It's the cliche of you're thankful for everyday, but to me it's my relationships with my friends and family that are most different. I'm more patient, less quick to get upset about something. I would say probably the greatest thing I've seen aside from my improvement with my family is my increased faith and testimony in God's plan and in the Atonement. I can't describe how it increases your faith. it's too hard to describe b/c of how your relationship with God is so individual. I've never had to rely so much on other people's faith to help me in my life. When cancer began I knew that I wasn't going to be able to do this on my own. I knew I would need everyone's faith around me to help me be cured or whatever it was that God had in store for me because you can't overcome that on your own. Aside from the faith part of it, to completely allow people to help you with all kinds of different stuff was really difficult. I take pride in taking care of my family, going to work, mowing my lawn, the basic things, etc. but for the benefit of my family I had to learn to accept charitable acts from people throughout this process. I've truly seen that people were helping our family purely out of love, expecting nothing in return. It's been amazing.

Q:is your life back to the way it was before?

No. 

I'm not physically able to do things I did a year ago, 

like certain aspects of my job, exercise, running, personal life, those sorts of things.

It's not the same b/c there are still the multiple times a day where I am reminded of what I am fighting. A year ago cancer wasn't on my radar. Now it is. I don't know when or if that will ever go back to normal. There are times where being reminded that I have cancer are positive. It's not doom and gloom I might die all of the time. It's really hard going through it, but then you look back, and you think holy cow I just did that.

Q:how do you live your life differently now than you did before your diagnosis?

Slower. 

It's kind of like how i mentioned earlier--things that may have upset me before or worrying about things i did before aren't nearly as prevalent. for example, i used to get irritated a lot of times with how people drove. Like driving too slow or whatever, especially if i was trying to get somewhere. I don't do that anymore. I will get there when I get there. I'm not going to worry about it b/c that is just a self created stress that is not going to benefit me or anyone else. That is just a very small example.

Q:do you worry about your cancer coming back?

Yes, 

and I think that I probably always will. 

But just like I can't control that it happened--there's nothing that I did that caused my cancer--

I can't really control if it comes back or not. 

So I try, I'm not always successful, but I try to not let that worry me too much.

Q:what surprised you the most about your journey through fighting cancer?

I was surprised at the number of people affected by cancer in their own lives that i never knew about before. Like people in my own family that I never knew fought cancer, people at work, at church, all of them talking to me about their aunt or their sister or whatever who had breast cancer or others who were going through chemotherapy right now too. It was just all over the place. It just seems like everybody has an experience or a story about how cancer has affected their life.

i stand all amazed:)