Gita,

I'm inclined to agree with you about your alternative to "cancer survivors". Over the years since my treatment, I've found that many people who have no direct experience with cancer believe that if you live a certain period of time beyond the completion of treatment, you're "cured" -- you've "licked it". I think anyone who has spent any time dealing with it directly (and certainly anyone who has perused this board for awhile) would be quite hesitant to use the term "cured". Even when you go a good many years beyond the initial cancer experience, you tend to live with little day-to-day reminders of it -- what's referred to here so often as "the new normal".

With the benefit of a lot of hindsight, I can identify with much of what's in your final quotation. When I was first diagnosed with cancer, it came just a few hours after my father passed away (following a long and difficult illness). A few months later, while I was in the latter stages of radiation, my father-in-law also passed away. It was one of those periods of compressed and intense pain in our extended family that had me looking for answers that were not readily apparent at that time. However, in the months and years after that, I found my faith growing in ways it had not before. A while back, my husband and I were reflecting on some of the aspects of life that looked so bleak to us then, and how many unanticipated, amazingly good experiences we've had in the years since -- many of them traceable in some way to the process of living with cancer. That's not to say that every day is now a state of euphoria -- but dealing with cancer has taught me to live life in ways that I had not done before.

Cathy