The Things Nobody Tells You About Breast Cancer
There are a lot of things people tell you when you get breast cancer.
They tell you about treatment plans.
They tell you about surgery.
They tell you about side effects.
They tell you about scan dates and pathology reports and medications with names you can barely pronounce.
What they don’t tell you is that your tomatoes still need water.
Your dog still wants breakfast at six in the morning.
The weeds continue their hostile takeover of the side yard.
The laundry somehow reproduces when you’re not looking.
The kids still need rides.
Life, rather rudely, continues.
When Britany and I started Backyard Breasties, we thought we were starting a nonprofit that helped with gardens.
That’s technically true.
We pull weeds.
We prune roses.
We water plants.
We help people keep their little green spaces alive while they’re focused on something much more important.
But after meeting survivors and caregivers across Ventura County, we’ve learned something.
The garden is rarely the problem.
The garden is where the problem shows up.
An overgrown flower bed can mean someone is exhausted from treatment.
A dying houseplant can mean a caregiver is stretched so thin they don’t know what day it is.
An empty vegetable garden can represent months of plans interrupted by a diagnosis nobody saw coming.
Cancer creates a thousand tiny losses.
Not just the big scary ones.
The small ones.
The Saturday morning you were going to spend planting zinnias.
The evening walk with the dog that never happened.
The tomatoes you ordered from a seed catalog in January because surely by summer everything would be back to normal.
And then there are the things nobody warns you about years later.
I have a CT scan coming up.
Nothing serious.
Probably my sinuses.
Everything is a little puffy, so they ordered an ultrasound.
The ultrasound found something that was just the tiniest bit out of whack.
And now…
I
Want
All
The
Scans.
PET scan? Sure.
MRI? Sounds great.
Fancy futuristic machine that can see through walls and into my soul? Sign me up.
But radiation?
Nope.
Not that.
Thank you.
That is life after cancer.
Even eight years later.
Most days you don’t think about it.
Then somebody says, “We’re just going to take a quick look at something,” and suddenly your brain is mentally assembling an imaging wish list like you’re ordering off a restaurant menu.
The funny thing is that survivorship isn’t usually one giant fear.
It’s a thousand tiny negotiations.
With your body.
With uncertainty.
With the voice in your head that remembers things you wish it didn’t.
Those moments matter too.
Because survivorship isn’t just about being done with treatment.
It’s about learning how to keep living anyway.
One scan.
One garden bed.
One weird ache.
One spring season at a time.
One of the most powerful things we’ve witnessed is what happens when a survivor realizes they don’t have to carry every single thing by themselves.
Sometimes that looks like a volunteer pulling weeds.
Sometimes it looks like someone watering a collection of beloved orchids.
Sometimes it looks like pet support.
Sometimes it looks like sitting in a driveway laughing with another survivor about things that are only funny if you’ve been through it.
What we’re really offering isn’t gardening.
It’s breathing room.
One less thing.
One less worry.
One small reminder that there is still life happening outside of appointments and treatment schedules.
A reminder that spring will come whether you’re ready for it or not.
A reminder that gardens can recover.
People can too.
And sometimes hope looks a lot like a freshly weeded flower bed.
If you or someone you love is going through breast cancer treatment in Ventura County, we want you to know something.
You don’t have to do all of it alone.
Not the big things.
Not the little things.
Especially not the little things.
Because those little things add up.
And carrying them together is what Breasties do. And Dahlias. Brit and I do Dahlias. lol.
