Plausible versus Fact

I think that there are very distinct stages in survivorship. The first year is spent with the fear that the scans will not come back clean. This leads to crazy amounts of research and sometimes willing to believe a friend's facebook post about aluminum from deodorant being found in breast cancer tumors. This might then make you bananas about having to wear the natural deodorant that doesn't work so great when your a super sweaty girl. This means you are willing to take plausible interweb stories over actual science. Even if you are well trained in epidemiology and one of your favorite past times is dismantling studies to see if they really are worth the peer reviewed journal they are in. The first year out is spent searching for causes that might not every be found.

Funny thing happens when you switch over from counting survivorship in months and switch to years. Funny thing happens when you don't remember every 27th of a month that it officially puts you another month into survivorship.  You start to move back over to the side of science. You start to analyze the source of information and you may need to start fact checking yourself. Luckily, there are also people who devote their full time work to this.

Thanks to this blog post from Dana Farber I switched back to an non natural antiperspirant/deodorant. One cannot have a wacky internal thermostat and not need some help from a little bit of aluminum. This post helps me feel better about using it. (They also have a great post about the 5 myths of Breast Cancer, further evidence against Soy Protein Isolate).

Because I switched back to mainstream deodorant does not mean I don't think something in my environment contributed to my developing breast cancer. I will absolutely continue to filter my water with a carbon filter, eat organic for the dirty dozen, and try to avoid flame retardant materials. A great fact sheet from a study done at the Silent Springs Institute for the Exposure Biomarkers for Suspected Breast Carcinogens
confirms this (well the water and the flame retardant topic). But for now, I am going to enjoy that my brain has switched over from months and is now thinking in years. A fellow survivor did tell me that at some point you wouldn't think about having had cancer multiple times in a day and that gradually their will be days you don't even think about it. I'm not there, nor do I think I'll every have those days, but for now I am enjoying the fact that my thoughts about having cancer are much, much less frequent.