@Sarnicad I'm finding that dilemma very hard to adjust to. Yes I'm alive when many aren't, but the quality of my life is so shit that a lot of the time it's hard to feel the pleasure in it.
I've pondered this a lot in the last 12 months. Having your cancer 'successfully' treated suggests that you can 'return' to good health, resume your life, go back to 'normal'. It's understandable that people who haven't had cancer (and BC in particular for us of course, though also because of its propensity to return even 15 years later) would think that way. It's understandable that we would feel that way. It is such a rude shock to arrive at this point and realise that it's massively untrue.
Positive stories about cancer survivors are mostly the ones that get the press. We read the stories about people who reassess their priorities and gloriously rebalance accordingly. We don't read stories about young to youngish (I turned 53 on Monday) people who ache 24 hours a day, whose hands and feet don't work properly, who are depressed and anxious, who have strangle prickling sensations in their ear, have desert dry vaginas, dandruff, osteoporosis etc etc etc, all because of the medication they're taking because it might stop the cancer returning.
We're encouraged to exercise, eat healthy, do something you enjoy everyday, etc. This is not especially helpful is it? It doesn't reflect the reality for most of us. That we have to work, raise kids, care for families, houses etc. Which for some, comes with side effects so debilitating that the very effort to get out of bed requires strength and courage.
In the end I'm left to conclude that it's about expectations. Somewhere along the way we've developed an expectation that being successfully treated for, being 'cured', of breast cancer, means a return to good health. For some it does, but for many it doesn't. And we end up feeling that we've been done an injustice.
Endocrine therapy seems to me to be as much as a sledgehammer as chemo. Yes I'm alive with an expectation of remaining so for some time. I'd rather be in this position than the alternative. But being bashed with that sledgehammer continuously for a decade doesn't make it easy or enjoyable.
