Acknowledging Your Diagnosis Day

It’s been a few years now since I heard the words, “you have cancer.”

On one hand, I can’t believe so much time has passed. On another, it feels like I just received my diagnosis yesterday.

Some people call this their cancerversary, but I consider my cancerversary to be the day I finished treatment. Now THAT is worth celebrating and I’m going to make sure to do so every year.

Remembering how far I've come

The day of my diagnosis was not a happy day, as you can probably imagine and/or relate to, but I still like to recognize it and think back to how far I’ve come. I also like to do something spontaneous when it comes to this time of the year. I do that partially to take my mind off of the negativity that now surrounds this month, but mostly to remind myself to never take a single day for granted. I’m still here, I’m still living and fighting and trying to enjoy every day that I’ve had. Cancer makes you appreciate each day so much more than before cancer. Every day truly is a gift.

The first year that I had to get through the anniversary of my diagnosis day, I decided to remove my wig on air (at the time I worked for a local news station) in front of thousands of people and expose my newly growing and very short hair. Actually, it ended up being hundreds of thousands of people if not millions! TV stations across the country were airing that clip of me crying on live TV and I had friends who lived in different states messaging me to tell me I was on their local news! That was such a crazy time in my life. Later that morning, I ran a 5k race and I was so proud of my finish time. I was on cloud 9 and it was an amazing feeling! It might sound silly, but that was my way of saying, “take that, cancer!”

I went skydiving!

In honor of my second anniversary of being diagnosed, I signed up to do something that I had been promising myself I’ll do for as long as I can remember, but I’ve just been too scared to sign up. When I was trying to think of something to do to send that same message to cancer, this was the only thing I could think of.

I went skydiving.

It’s something I’ve actually always been terrified of doing, but that’s what made it so appealing. It’s been one of those scary bucket list items that I always said I was going to do, but never actually thought I’d cross off. Cancer taught me to stop saying “later” to the things I wanted to do though and what a rush it was! I posted the video on YouTube if you want to check it out! It was such a surreal feeling and I think it’s one of those things that everyone should experience at least once. Will I ever do it again though? Probably not... I think this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me!

Do you do anything on the day you were diagnosed? Why or why not?