Noun:

A mark left on the skin or within body tissue where a wound, burn, or sore has not healed completely and fibrous connective tissue has developed.

 

Physical scars can much easier to come to terms with than the mental and emotional scars that you are left with after cancer treatment.

 

I guess many people, especially younger people, will struggle with the physical change.  I was a bit self-conscious of my scars at first, and would cover up when on holiday, or if changing in a communal changing room.  But now I wear them with pride.  They are part of me and a symbol of what I’ve been through.  And I quite like the confused look on people’s faces when they look at my tummy, with the absence of a belly button.  I’d love someone to ask me about it one day.  I would tell them I was grown in a jar and had no need of an umbilical cord.

 

Emotionally, it is difficult not to carry cancer on your shoulder every day.  Do your best to knock it off though.  It didn’t get you.  You survived.  Cancer can do one.