Six Years After Breast Cancer, I'm Turning into a New Person

There's an old saying that every cell in your body is replaced over the course of seven years. Some people dispute that, but I've begun to notice that six years after I was diagnosed with breast cancer, even my gestures have begun to change.

Before I had chemo I had long, thick hair that was impossible to control. I had developed unconscious habits to deal with it: flicking it out of my eyes, tucking it behind my ears and flipping it out of my collar with my index and middle fingers. I didn't realize I did all those things until I lost my hair to chemo. The movements were so engrained that I continued to flick and tuck and flip hair that no longer existed. I was playing hair guitar! After my last chemo, my hair grew back sparse and limp, so I took to wearing it very short. And still I kept flicking and tucking and flipping my nonhair. But the other day I noticed that I'd finally stopped.

Then there's the shirt tug. Even as a teenager I never liked wearing bras. They rode up and squashed my not-huge breasts. So I stopped wearing them when I graduated from high school and no longer had to undress for PE. But I must have felt self-conscious about it, because I took to wearing loose shirts and pulling the fabric away from my chest to hide the contour of my breasts and nipples. I did this my entire adult life—even after I had a bilateral mastectomy. Just recently I realized I've stopped plucking at my shirts. Nothing to hide anymore.

Losing these old habits is one of the things that make me realize that I'm a different person now than I was before my diagnosis. I'm not just older. I'm newer too. After all, six-sevenths of my cells have been replaced.