At the end of active treatment, a patient’s safety net of regular, frequent contact with the health care team ends. Survivors may experience:
• Relief that treatment is over
• Uncertainty about the future
• Loss of usual support
• Increased anxiety
• Fear of recurrence, that the cancer will come back after treatment
• Guilt about surviving, having lost friends and loved ones to cancer
• Physical, psychological, sexual or fertility problems
• Relationship struggles
• Discrimination at work
• A social network that now feels inadequate
“Cancer Survivorship” has at least two (2) common meanings:
- Having no signs of cancer after finishing treatment.
- Living with, through, and beyond cancer. According to this definition, cancer survivorship begins at diagnosis and includes people who continue to have treatment over the long term, to either reduce the risk of recurrence or to manage chronic disease.