When you’re going through surgery and treatments, people sympathize. But the hardest parts are not the big moments.

It’s the moments after, when you’re grappling with this new invisible limb, that are the most difficult.

Cancer and it’s side effects do not go away overnight. It likes to show up in simple and unexpected ways.

It is packing pills and scar cream for sleepovers.

It is combing through your straw-like hair, just to find four or five strands pulled out along with it.

It is jumping from phone calls with doctors to meetings with colleagues.

It is the anxiety that comes with feeling a pain, a lump, a new symptom.

It is monthly scans, labs, and bloodwork.

It is googling percentages of reoccurrence late at night when unable to fall asleep.

It is opening up Facebook to see thyroid cancer groups flooding the feed with frightening stories.

It is sucking on mints each day to rid the metallic taste coating my mouth.

It is meeting new people and purposefully choosing the turtleneck to wear.

It is carrying around a medical card in case a cop detects the radiation running through my body.

It is people asking me how I was able to be vaccinated early, not knowing that cancer was my qualifier.

It is pretending not to notice someone’s gaze shift towards my scar.

Every time that these little things happen…it feels like a tiny voice is in my ear saying, remember, you are ill and you are different.