APPENDICURE

APPENDICURE · LIVING IN THE IN-BETWEEN · PART 5 OF 5

DRIFTING IN OPEN WATER

Living with cancer under active surveillance feels like drifting in open water.
There is no shoreline in sight. No moment when someone calls you back and says—you’re safe now.

The best you can hope for are words some doctors don’t always use….remission, NED.

Instead, there are scans. Waiting.
And the quiet question that never fully loosens its grip:
Is it back?

WHAT HOLDS YOU

In a life like that, you learn what keeps you from drifting too far.
You learn what holds you.
You learn about anchors.

WHAT AN ANCHOR REALLY IS

An anchor is meant to steady you – to keep you from being carried somewhere you never intended to go.

It’s grounding. Safety. A place of return.

But in real life, anchors are not just symbols.
They are people. They are moments.
And sometimes, they are something deeper you can’t fully explain….but you feel it all the same.

WHEN PEOPLE DRIFT AWAY

At the beginning, there are often many. People show up in the shock of diagnosis and surgery.

And then, slowly, some begin to drift.
Life resumes – for them.

But not for you.
Only the patient lives in the long stretch of after.

THE ONES WHO STAYED

That was my experience.

In the hospital, my husband never left my side. He stayed overnight, somehow convincing the staff to allow it.

He was there in the quiet – unglamorous moments – the middle of the night, helping me to the bathroom, tracking down nurses when it was time for pain medication.

He held steady in ways I didn’t yet understand I would need.

My son showed up with that same steadiness. Every appointment. Waiting through an eight-hour surgery.

Visiting every day – sometimes with his wife and my grandsons – bringing brief moments of light into a very clinical space.

WHEN YOU GO HOME

And then I went home.

The noise faded. The rhythm changed.
The urgency that had surrounded me became less visible to everyone else.

I was healing….technically.

But inside, something else was happening.

UNRAVELING

That is when I needed anchors the most.

Because physically, I was getting stronger.
But emotionally, psychologically, spiritually—I was unraveling in ways I couldn’t control.

The days felt heavier. The nights stretched longer.

It felt like I had been set down somewhere unfamiliar, and I didn’t know how to find my way back to myself—if that version of me even still existed.

TRAUMA LIVES IN THE BODY

With the help of a friend, I found a therapist who understood trauma not just as something we remember, but something the body carries.

We still meet weekly. And that work continues.

Because trauma doesn’t end when the event is over.
The body holds on. It stays alert, waiting for something else to happen.

Surgery. Anesthesia. Diagnosis.
They don’t just pass through you. They stay.

WHEN YOUR BODY WON’T SETTLE

Mine showed up as anxiety that wouldn’t settle, panic without warning, and a constant sense of unease I couldn’t think my way out of.

Sleep fractured into vivid nightmares.
My body held tension as if it were still bracing for impact.

A long history of fibromyalgia only deepened the physical weight of it.

LOSING CONNECTION

Before my diagnosis, I had a strong spiritual practice. I meditated daily. I had completed Reiki training.

I felt connected….to something larger, to meaning, to a sense of inner steadiness.

And then, suddenly, that connection felt gone.

I couldn’t access it. Not through meditation. Not through prayer.

It felt like the thread had been cut.

A PRESENCE THAT REMAINED

Almost.

Because in the quietest moments, there was still something.

A presence I couldn’t see or hear, but could feel.
Steady. Protective. Unwavering.

My father.

He has been my anchor since the beginning of my life – and somehow, even after his passing in 2003, he still is.

SEARCHING FOR GROUND

Outside of that, I felt like there was nothing holding me here.

Like I was slipping further down into something I didn’t know how to stop.

So I reached outward….toward places and people who had once felt safe.

But something had shifted. Or maybe I had.

What once felt like refuge no longer did.

THE QUESTION

And I was left with a question I couldn’t avoid:

Where do I go now?

FINDING YOUR WAY BACK

The answer didn’t come all at once. It came quietly, over time.

I began to recognize something familiar – a path I had walked before in other seasons of grief.

Even though I felt disconnected, something within me had not disappeared.

It had only gone quiet.

REMEMBERING

Slowly, I found my way back….not to who I was before, but to something more grounded.

I remembered what I had once believed:

That the answers we search for are not outside of us.
That the strength we think we’ve lost is still there.

BECOMING THE ANCHOR

And somewhere in that remembering, I understood:

I am an anchor too.

Not the only one. But an essential one.

I am not powerless to this disease.
I still have a say in how I live inside it.

WHAT ANCHORS LOOK LIKE NOW

Anchors are not only the people who stay.

They are the small, steady rituals that carry you from one scan to the next.

They are honesty.
They are presence.
They are choosing not to drift.

WHEN ANCHORS BECOME PURPOSE

For me, that purpose has taken shape in advocacy for appendix cancer.

In sharing my story.
In being part of Appendicure.
In connecting with others who understand this in-between space.

ENOUGH