Cancer can be a devastating diagnosis throwing both the patient and his or her family into a whirlpool of fear, depression and withdrawal from the ordinary world.

Life after a diagnosis of cancer is about survival, coping with the fear, isolation ,despair and the stigma attached to it.

Cancer, by and large, is a random occurrence but people feel safe blaming themselves or those close to them rather than accepting the fact that they live in a world over which they have little control.

As treatment progresses ,survival entails struggling with disease, its attendant side -effects, mounting expenses ,disruption of family schedule. Desperate days of depression, fatigue and nausea are interspersed with days of improved strength and hope.

The period of extended survival after treatment is also traumatic. Physical strength is diminished while the mind is full of anxiety and ready to interpret each new symptom as a recurrence of disease. Problems such as loss of a body part, missing hair and weight loss have to be acknowledged publicly as the person resumes work and social obligation.

The patient has to renegotiate her relationship with the healthy world all over again and evolve a new sense of normalcy.
Cancer robs a patient of his coccoon existence but offers a brave new world in the long run.

Therefore once you learn how to die you learn how to live. You have to find what is good and true and beautiful in your life as it is.
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more so that we may fear less.

Cancer is behind........Life is beyond.