Still Me By Rashmi

Four years ago, I went for a routine check-up.
I felt perfectly well. A routine check-up seemed like something everyone over age 50 did. Ten of us decided to make a day of it.
I wasn’t expecting my life to change that day. But boy, did it!
I heard the words no one ever expects or wants to hear. Cancer is something that happened to other people. Not to us.
Well! Apparently, I had a lump. I couldn’t feel it, but it was there. After a biopsy, I got the news.
I had breast cancer.
Like everyone else, I was terrified.
My mind raced ahead to every frightening possibility before I’d even had time to process what had happened.
But something unexpected happened too.
The treatment, while never something I’d choose, was kinder to me than I’d imagined.
I had surgery.
I had radiation.
I took my Tamoxifen exactly as prescribed.
I never missed a follow-up appointment.
I never skipped a scan.
I was, if I may say so, the model patient.
Eventually, life became… life again.
There were days when I genuinely forgot I’d ever had cancer.
I travelled. A week after my radiation ended, I flew to the other end of the world to attend my son’s graduation.
I laughed. I spent time with my family.
Cancer gradually became a chapter, not the whole book.

Then, at another routine check-up three years later, everything changed again.
That was probably the biggest shock of all. I’d spoken to so many people with breast cancer, and not one had experienced it twice.
But mine was back.
Not because I’d ignored something.
Not because I’d stopped taking my medication.
Not because I’d missed an appointment.

I had done everything right.
Every tablet.
Every scan.
Every check-up.
Every piece of advice.

And yet, here I was, hearing those words for a second time.
It took me a while to understand something that now feels incredibly important.

Doing everything right isn’t a guarantee.
It’s simply the best thing we can do.
Sometimes life follows the plan.
Sometimes it doesn’t.

That doesn’t mean we failed.
It doesn’t mean we caused what happened.
It simply means that life can be wonderfully predictable one moment and deeply unpredictable the next.
If you’re reading this because you’re wondering whether you could have done something differently, I’d like to gently take some of that weight off your shoulders.
Please don’t turn your diagnosis into a report card.
Please don’t spend your days searching for the one thing you should have eaten… or shouldn’t have eaten… the appointment you might have missed… or the decision you think changed everything.
Sometimes there isn’t an answer.
I still believe in following medical advice.
I still believe in taking my medication.
I still believe in going for every check-up.
Not because they promise me certainty.

But because they’re the best tools I have.
The rest?
Well… I’ve learnt that none of us really knows what tomorrow has planned.

So, these days, I try to spend less time asking, “Why me?”
And a little more time asking,
“Where shall we go for a mini holiday next?”

That doesn’t mean I don’t have difficult days. I do.
It simply means I’ve stopped believing that living carefully is the same as living fully.
I’m still going to follow my doctors’ advice. I will turn up for every appointment.

But I’m also going to laugh.
Write poems.
Spend time with the people I love.
And keep making memories.

Because that’s something I can choose.
And somehow…
that feels like doing everything right too.