BC Becky

Never thought I'd want to be a breast cancer survivor

Tag: conferences

  • I almost didn’t go …

    I almost didn’t go …

    My proposal for a paper presentation at the Health Humanities Consortium Conference in Houston in March was accepted. When I was first accepted I was really excited about it. Then the plane tickets cost a little more than I’d like. I found myself doubting – do I really want to go? I found myself justifying all the reasons why I might not go.

    It was the celiac talking. It was me trying to avoid going out because the food might make me sick. I was deciding not to go because of fear – not for any really good reason.

    Yes, I’m nervous about the travel – air travel makes me anxious. I used to love it, now I worry that I’ll starve, and end up packing so much food that all I do is eat my way through the flight.

    I worry that I’ll be hungry during the conference. I even asked the conference organizer about food – which they haven’t planned yet. I got an awesome reply. They said they’d try – I cannot really ask for more.

    Once I realized the reason my waffling was fear talking, I decided to push through. I booked my flights, hotel, and registered for the conference. I’m committed now.

    I haven’t been sick since July. That is six months without accidentally consuming gluten. My blood anti-body levels are back to normal. From a celiac perspective, I am healthy.

    I have also tried to get past my fears on a local level. The other day I went out for fish tacos at my favourite local taco place. I only had one thing – fish tacos. I figured that if I tried anything else and got sick I wouldn’t know what made me sick. Next time I’ll try the carnitas (pulled pork) tacos. If I get sick then I know I need to stick to fish. I find that I need to take this one step at a time.

    I’ve also learned that if I’m going to branch out and try something – I might as well try a lot of it and really enjoy it. You see – if something is going to make me sick it doesn’t matter how much I eat. The level of sickness I experience is no different between a quarter teaspoon of flour and two cups of flour, so if something is going to make me sick I might as well get the most of it and really enjoy it – as it will likely be the last time I try it.

    Of course, now that I’ve decided to go the conference, I need to figure out my presentation. I’m working on my research now. I won’t get a huge amount of time to talk – so my presentation will need to be short and focused. I realize now that my past presentations have been a bit scattered – they have included snippets that were not relevant to the message – they may have been relevant to me personally, but they were not relevant to the overall storyline or the message I was trying to send. So now, I’m trying to figure out – what will be the theme for my short presentation?

    Feature image CC0 via Pexels.

  • Moving forward

    I now have a surgery date – December 17th. It isn’t exactly the date I wanted, but it is something that I can work with. With that in place, I can now start to move forward with my life.

    Over the last week I have started to move beyond my diagnosis. My life is becoming less about cancer-Becky and I am looking at a re-emergence as academic-Rebecca. I have talked to my supervisor and put a plan in place that will allow me to move forward with my PhD. I’ve talked to the very supportive folks at the Department of Family Medicine who are also onboard to help me move forward. I am thankful for all the support I’m getting.

    But the whole idea is still rather difficult. I’ve had to turn down a couple of conference presentations – the most recent being Dev Learn – which is disappointing, but there is no way I could travel to Vegas during chemo and present at a conference. It would be too much. I’ve decided that I’ll try a near-by conference first – one in Berkeley where I’ve had a poster accepted. I can get to Berkeley in 2 hours via public transit. It will be my first academic conference post-surgery (end of February), and I most likely won’t have hair. I have nice outfits that I can wear that will work with a flat chest, if I choose not to wear foobs, but I haven’t thought yet about what I shall do about my head. The whole idea of conferencing seems a little overwhelming right now – and yet I know it is something that I need to do as part of my re-emergence.

    In this re-emergence, I am already thinking about my new identity – and how much I might want my identities to overlap. I’m considering a proposal for the Canadian Conference on Medical Education (CCME) relating to this blog, my experience as a cancer patient, but also my role as a non-physician medical educator. I’m not sure what that presentation would look like yet – I need to do some more consultations with friends and colleagues in the medical education field, and with any luck find one or more people interested in collaborating on something. I feel like there is something important to be learned in this process, I just don’t know what it is yet. I’d like to talk about the power of social media as a cancer patient – perhaps the role of social media in cancer patient education – and what medical students, residents, and physicians can learn from the new ‘connected’ patient experience.

    My forward moving may get delayed now and then – and I certainly am not moving at the same pace as I was before diagnosis or chemo – I am glad, however, to be making some progress.

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