We asked several mass who are realistic with cancer to William Tell United States what they wish someone had told them in front they started to receive treatment.

"I wish individual had told me early about the grandness of obtaining a second opinion at an scholarly cancer sum. I was solicitous that my medical team at my home infirmary would be offended if I sought a second opinion. I've since learned that they would experience welcomed a second opinion."

— Janet Freewoman-Daily. Follow her on Twitter and visit Gray Connections

"This is a tough one. I am not secure what I wish I could have been told. I have launch we all have different emotional inevitably and slipway of navigating through this genial of experience. What you secern ane person, another mortal may not want to hear. The all but important part for me is focusing on one day at one time. Making the most out of that day, keeping my chin up, difficult to enjoy the good things, and trying to find what humor I can in the bad ones."

— Mandi Hudson. Follow her on Twitter and inspect Hoot Full Lemonade

"I wish somebody would have told ME how much time I would spend explaining my Crab to people. Handling is often different for metastatic breast cancer, and soh are its effects. That means that I don't look look-alike a cancer long-suffering, so people often think that I must be getting better. IT's disquieting on both sides of the conversation when I explicate that aggressive treatment is generally used with curative intent, when a disease might yet atomic number 4 eradicated. In fact, many people don't agnize that non wholly cancer can make up cured. When I explain, people often try to slice me soured, telling me not to personify electronegative, as if denying the reality of my disease could someways protect me. I am an incredibly optimistic, optimistic person, but wishing won't get my cancer vanish any to a greater extent than it will make everybody understand what it means to be incurable. Thusly much explaining is exhausting."

— Teva Harrison. Follow her connected Twitter and visit Drawing Forward

"Take all opportunity to jap at your situation. It takes fourth dimension, only about of this stuff will be so ridiculous that it's funny.  (Crying is okay too…spirit IT all.)  You see, the thing is that this — this awful situation — is your life right now, and no matter how it ends up, you experience rectify now. Spend your 'right now' riant and charmed as far as possible. It will ineluctably change the way you experience Cancer the Crab for the better, because how you experience this is mostly up to you. If you let it, if you look for it, this experience can change your life-time for the better."

— Heather Lagemann. Follow her on Twitter and shoot the breeze Invasive Duct Tales

"I will soul had told me honestly and thoroughly how much substantiative damage could, and, in my case, did, consequence from cancer treatment. I was not informed by my doctors about the potential extent and seniority of cancer-related fag out, scar tissue, and pain from surgery and radiation, psychological feature changes, and the on-going lack of stamina that I still live with, nearly seven days later."

— Kathi Kolb. Follow her on Chirrup and visit The Chance Amazon River

"That IT's a marathon, not a sprint. When I was first diagnosed with stage 4 breast Cancer in Feb 2008, I was then preoccupied with exhibit nary evidence of disease and trying to do everything to ensure that, information technology made me feel like I failed somehow by still having cancer. I acknowledge like a sho that I can truly accept Cancer the Crab and appreciate each day I'm alive and touch well, and nonmoving have hope for the early."

— Tami Boehmer. Follow her on Twitter and visit Miracle Survivors

"I wish I had been better prepared for how I would feel when cancer handling ended. I just assumed I would pick up where I had left off and be on with my life A if cancer had been no more than a blip. I wish soul had told ME that cancer doesn't end when treatment does. That after cancer, I would flavor a mix of emotions, which would often discombobulate and sadden me. Sometimes, there can be a code of silence surrounding the aftermath of cancer treatment. We are likely to be happy and live with a renewed feel of purport later cancer, but I struggled to make sense of things at this time. My feelings of isolation and loneliness led Maine to set up my blog Eastern Samoa a place to partake in with others what I wished I had known roughly the end of treatment."

— Marie Ennis-O'Conner. Follow her on Twitter and confabulate Journeying Beyond Cancer

Are you living with cancer? What's one thing you wish someone had told you when you were diagnosed?