It may take a while before your recovery feels real

It can feel good to be done with treatment, but it can also be stressful. You may find that you now worry about the cancer coming back. This is a very common concern among those who have had cancer. (When cancer comes back, it is called a recurrence.)

It may take a while before your recovery begins to feel real and your fears are somewhat relieved. You can learn more about what to look for and how to learn to live with the chance of cancer coming back in Living With Uncertainty: The Fear of Cancer Recurrence.

Follow-up care

After your treatment is over, ongoing follow-up is very important. During these visits, your doctors will ask about symptoms, do physical exams, and order blood tests or imaging studies (like CT scans or MRIs). Follow-up is needed to watch for treatment side effects and to check for cancer that has come back or spread.

At first, these visits are scheduled every four to six months. The longer you are free of cancer, the less often you will need visits. After five years, visits are usually once a year. If you had breast-conserving surgery, you will need to keep on having mammograms every year.

If you are taking tamoxifen, you should have a pelvic exam every year. Be sure to tell your doctor right away if you have abnormal vaginal bleeding because the drug can increase the risk of uterine cancer. If you are taking an aromatase inhibitor, your doctor might want to have your bone density checked.

If anything suggests that the cancer might have come back, the doctor will want to do more tests. If cancer does come back, the treatment will depend on the place of the cancer and what treatments you've had before. Treatment could involve surgery, radiation, hormone therapy, or chemo.

Almost any cancer treatment can have side effects. Some may last for a few weeks or months, but others can be permanent. Please tell your cancer care team about any symptoms or side effects that bother you so they can help you manage them. Use this time to ask your health care team questions and discuss any concerns you might have.

It is also important to keep health insurance. While you hope your cancer won't come back, it could happen. If it does, you don't want to have to worry about paying for treatment.

This information was provided by the American Cancer Society.