Sam Alexandra Rose

Category: Cancer Survivorship

  • Top 10 Cancer Blog of 2016!

    I’m so pleased to say that this blog has been named one of the top ten cancer blogs of 2016!

    The lovely people over at IHadCancer.com listed their ten top cancer blogs of last year, and out of hundreds of submissions, mine was one of the top ten!

    So, I can now say I’m officially an award-winning blogger, right?! I’m even gonna get a badge to put on my blog and everything.

    I mean, when I submitted my blog for consideration I didn’t even know it was for an award type thing, I just thought they were putting a list of resources together. And I thought my blog would be too poem-y and not quite as bloggy as others to merit consideration. So this is really cool.

    And best of all, it’s really inspired me and motivated me to keep writing, and blogging, and posting my poetry. I feel appreciated and like what I do matters, and that is the best start to the new year I could have gotten. So a huge thank you to the guys and girls at IHC – it might sound silly but this really means a lot. You’ll all be hearing a lot more from me in 2017. This is my year.

    I can see I’m in great company, and it’s really cool to be connecting to other cancer bloggers on Twitter, too. You can see the list of all the top ten blogs and special mentions on the IHadCancer.com website.

  • my cancer story

    I wasn’t planning to do this tonight, but I have been asked today what my cancer story is, and not for the first time. So I’m basically doing now what I intended to do when I was first asked by someone on Tumblr a few months ago but never got around to – a brief summary of my cancer story.

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  • self-help scrapbook

    So I’ve been thinking about getting counselling to help with fear of recurrence, self confidence and body confidence stuff, but there are a number of reasons why I’m apprehensive about getting counselling. So I thought I’d try to be proactive in giving myself some self-therapy. I haven’t found much on the internet about how to do this, but the above is a really quick list of a few things I’d like to put in a kind of self-affirmation scrapbook. Other things I thought of after I took the pic were poems I’ve written that I’m really happy with, poems I’ve had published that I’m proud of, and my favourite selfies. I’m not sure if I’m going about this the right way. Like, I could keep adding to the book and read the positive things in it, and use it to identify things I want to change and figure out how to change them as well. I don’t know, what do you think?

  • Hair cut

    Hacked away at my side fringe because hey here’s something about my body I have control over and if it’s shit at least it’s like a scar other people can actually see and I did it and it’s MINE and if I did it badly I’m okay with that because at least it was me who did it.

  • on post-traumatic stress after cancer

    Having PTSD – or anxiety, or whatever the hell this is – is like lugging a big heavy suitcase around with you all day, but it seems to be invisible to everyone else and you’re shouting at them in your head, “Why can’t you see this thing?!” But you don’t dare say it out loud in case the suitcase really is all in your head and your friends and family think you’re crazy and making a big deal out of nothing, or just attention seeking or trying to get sympathy. Experience has already taught you there are wrong people to try to talk to about it, so you keep your luggage to yourself and hope one day it becomes lighter, and someone sees it and says “are you okay with all of that?” And then you can finally say “No. Thank you for asking about it. I am not okay right now.” After days, weeks, months of lying, you will finally have found a chance to tell the truth. “No, I’m not okay, and this is a bit heavy, actually.” And then someone might give you a luggage trolley, or something. And things will be easier. I hope. Because I don’t even know where to find a luggage trolley.

  • it could have killed you

  • How do you find yourself again after cancer?

    This is just for me. If someone else gets something out of it too, whether it makes someone else feel less alone, or like someone can relate, that’s fantastic. If not, then fine, it’ll just be an outlet for me.

    I’m struggling this week. I had a bad dream a couple of nights ago, and because I didn’t want to have any more bad dreams, I delayed going to bed last night and went to sleep late. Not too late, but I was tired today. I feel perpetually tired.

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  • I Lost the Game

    Remember that game from when we were kids, where the whole point of the game is to not think about the game and when you do, you have to say “I lost the game”, causing everyone around you to also lose the game?

    And then after that, all you can think about is the game, even though you hadn’t thought about the game in a long time and the only thing that set you off was thinking “hmm, I haven’t thought about the game in a while, I’ve been doing really well”?

    That’s what thinking about my cancer history is like.

    It’s a fucking tedious game.

    I thought I’d been doing well. I had been doing well. It’s just been a bad week is all. Next week will be better.

  • You’re doing okay

    If you’ve been doing really well lately, you should tell yourself that. Give yourself a pat on the back. Seriously. Give yourself some credit for coping. You’re doing okay.

  • Confiding in a friend

    Confiding in a friend is like shouting – you have to get a bit closer before they really hear you.