My mortal-image came from my whiske, not my chest.

I stood in social movement of the bathroom mirror, ready to start my mission.

Thistlelike with the world's tiniest straightening atomic number 26, a round brush, and an assortment of balms and creams, I charged forward into an epic battle with the wild mass of short, curly curls germination from my scalp.

My aim was clear: These unruly tresses had to atomic number 4 wrestled into submission.

I didn't always have curly hair. Well-nig of my life I had protracted, slightly wavy hair that I pet. Totally that varied a few months earlier when, at age 37, I found a lump in my breast and was diagnosed with stage 2 invasive ductal carcinoma knocker Cancer the Crab.

On uppermost of that, I tested positive for the BRCA2 cistron mutation. This is what caused my breast cancer to get contain at so much a young age. It also put me at risk for other cancers, including ovarian, serosa, and pancreatic.

Next came a backbreaking regimen of chemotherapy that made me lose my beloved hair, followed by a symmetrical mastectomy with node retrieval and reconstruction.

Shortly subsequently, I noninheritable my cancer had completely responded to treatment, and I received the glorious "no tell apart of disease" diagnosis.

While this was the top-quality possible termination, I found moving brash after my battle with cancer just about as difficult as treatment.

Everyone else seemed to follow breathing a sigh of relief, but I still felt anxious and faint. Every twinge of indorse pain, headache, or cough sent Maine spiraling, terrified my malignant neoplastic disease had returned or spread to my finger cymbals, brain, or lungs.

I was Googling symptoms almost day by day, trying to alleviate my fright that what I was touch sensation was more than just an everyday ache. All I was doing was scaring myself eve to a greater extent with the dire possibilities.

Turns impossible, this is a plebeian, yet often overlooked, experience for cancer survivors.

"When your treatment is over, your experience certainly isn't ended," says Dr. Marisa Weiss, breast oncologist, chief medic and founder of Breastcancer.org, a nonprofit organization organisation that provides information and support for breast Crab.

"Most hoi polloi look at breast cancer as a mountain to climb and surmount quickly, and everyone assumes and expects you to return to normal, and you don't. Depression is just as common at the finish of treatment as IT is at the beginning of treatment," Weiss says.

I wasn't only struggling mentally. Coming to price with my new post-Russell's body verified sporting as hard.

Though I'd had Reconstruction after my mastectomy, my breasts looked and matte up nothing like they once had. Now they were lumpy and numb from the surgery.

My torso was covered with scars, from the angry red jactitate below my clavicle where my chemo port had been inserted to spots on either side of my belly where postsurgery drains formerly hung.

Then in that respect was the hair.

When my bald scalp started germination a thin level of downy fuzz, I was thrilled. Losing my haircloth was most harder for ME than losing my breasts in their natural res publica; I derived far more of my self-project from my hair than my chest.

Before malignant neoplastic disease. Images via Jennifer Bringle

What I didn't realize initially was how chemo would alteration my hair.

Eastern Samoa those sprouts began to inspissate and receive longer, they upset into the tight, crude curls oft referred to as "chemo curls" in the Cancer the Crab residential district. This tomentum I'd waited so long for was nothing like the tresses I had earlier cancer.

"A slew of people who've been through this feel like damaged goods. The personnel casualty of hair is profoundly disconcerting, and the changed or loss of breasts, too equally the switching for many people into menopause because of treatment or remotion of ovaries — and just learned you're a person WHO's had cancer — changes how you catch the earthly concern and your have body," Weiss says.

As I attempted to style my fresh thriving hair, I learned all the techniques that worked happening my old, less-curly mane nary longer applied. Blow-drying and brushing just turned it into a poofy mess.

Eve my tiny straightening robust, purchased with the hope that IT could handle my tranquil-short locks, was no match for these curls. I realized I had to altogether rethink my border on and alter my technique to fit the pilus I had now, non the hairsbreadth I had before cancer.

After cancer.

Alternatively of fighting the curls, I needed to act with them, adjust to their needs, and accept them.

I began asking haired friends for tips and trawled Pinterest for anti-crape how-to's. I invested in close to fancy products studied specifically for curly haircloth, and I ditched the nose candy-drier and straightener in privilege of air-drying and scrunching.

As I made these changes, I realized something. My pilus wasn't the only affair artificial by cancer — practically everything well-nig me changed later my feel for with the disease.

I felt a new sense of fear and anxiety about death that flame-colored the way I saw the planetary and hung over me even during happy times.

I was zero thirster the same person, body operating theatre mind, and I needed to adapt to the new me the same fashio I'd hit accept my frizzly hair.

Just as I'd sought new tools to tame my frizzy curls, I needed to discover different ways to process what I'd been through. I'd been hesitant to ask for supporte, ascertained to quietly handle my post-cancer anxiety and body issues on my own.

That's what I'd always done in the past. I finally realized that just now like with the tiny straightener, I was using the incorrectly tool to clear my problem.

I began visual perception a therapist who specialized in portion cancer patients navigate life after the disease. I nonheritable new coping techniques, like meditation for quieting eager thoughts.

Though I'd at first chafed at the idea of adding another pill to my daily regime, I began winning anxiety meds to help me handle the feelings that therapy and meditation couldn't.

I knew I had to do something to alleviate the overwhelming fear of recurrence that had become a major hoo-ha in my life.

Just equal my hair, my post-genus Cancer mindset is a work in progress. There are days when I relieve struggle with anxiety and fear, even as there are times when my uncooperative hair's-breadth gets swept under a chapeau.

In both cases, I know that with the right tools and a little help, I could adjust to the new, accept, and thrive. And I realized that suffering in silence with my anxiety successful as much sense American Samoa applying my previous straight hair techniques on my new curly locks.

Learning to have that my life had changed — I had varied — was a big step toward finding not only a new sense of normal after cancer, but also the kind of happy, fulfilled sprightliness I thought I'd lost forever to the disease.

Yes, nothing is the same. But I've finally realized that's Hunky-dory.

Jennifer Bringle has typed for Glamour, Righteous Housekeeping, and Parents, among otherwise outlets. She's working on a memoir most her post-Cancer the Crab experience. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.