Below, Donna McNutt shares how City of Hope supported her throughout her battle with multiple myeloma.<\/em><\/p>\n The journal, pale yellow sheets etched with neat, bubbly cursive, sits on a side table in Donna McNutt\u2019s bedroom. In it are her reflections on having cancer.<\/p>\n The feel of the first year\u2019s entries is hazy, dim, and questioning \u2014 painful missives describing McNutt\u2019s despondency after being diagnosed with multiple myeloma.<\/p>\n \u201cCancer is lonely,\u201d says one entry. \u201cYou want to protect your children from everything and I feel myself trying to protect them from their mom possibly dying at an early age.\u201d<\/p>\n Although myeloma is no longer detectable in her body, McNutt can never fully let go of her thoughts about relapse, and possibly dying. Her journal \u2014 with its frequent undulations of fear and uncertainty \u2014 is a metaphor for those complex emotions.<\/p>\n According to a 2006 report from the National Academies of Science, \u201cSurvivors of cancer, although free of the cancer for which they were treated, may be immobilized by fears of recurrence.\u201d Nearly 60% of cancer survivors remain moderately-to-severely concerned one year after remission, according to the American Cancer Society’s Studies of Cancer Survivors.<\/p>\n \u201cIn many cases, there\u2019s not a normal arc of, you get a horrible diagnosis that\u2019s life-threatening and then if you\u2019re lucky, you finish treatment and it never comes back,\u201d said Marissa Cangin, a clinical health psychologist in the Department of Supportive Care Medicine at City of Hope. \u201cThere are so many things that happen in between, and even when you are celebrating, there can be this voice inside screaming, \u2018What if?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n For McNutt, despair takes on a different hue depending on the day. Some days it is stinging. On others, it can be mobilizing. McNutt is using her journal \u2014 and her cancer journey, overall \u2014 as a tool to teach her children how to face difficulty with grace and hope.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not all perfect little quotes and \u2018I love yous,\u2019 but what Mom knows, what Mom feels like, what Mom wants for you, things that I\u2019m so grateful for,\u201d said McNutt. \u201cI get to teach them what it is to be strong when something like this happens to you \u2014 to remember that Mom fought cancer with everything she had.\u201d<\/p>\n McNutt, 56, is sitting on a bench on the City of Hope campus \u2014 her shoulders hunched forward, her face creased with worry.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m worried about what is waiting for me on the other side of those double doors,\u201d she said on a breezy day last November, gesturing toward the building where, a few minutes later, she had an oncology appointment.<\/p>\n \u201cI had this monster that was in me and I will always live with the reality that it could come back.\u201d<\/p>\n To continue reading about McNutt’s journey, head over to\u00a0fff.me\/mcnutt<\/a>.<\/p>\n xx, The FabFitFun Team<\/p>\n For more inspiring stories, read about\u00a0Stacy Kimmel<\/a>, a five-time cancer survivor, and\u00a0Krissy Kobata<\/a>‘s journey through\u00a0myelodysplastic syndrome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":"FALL 2019 BOX PARTNER Here at FabFitFun, we partner with a new charity every season ...","author":272854,"featured_media":143619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[201],"tags":[533],"thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/static.fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/18152042\/city.jpg","thumbnail_url_middle_card":"https:\/\/static.fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/18152042\/city-386x200.jpg","formated_date":"August 12, 2019","category_name":"Members Only","category_icon":"https:\/\/static.fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/11113301\/iSiu0EDM.png","author_name":"","trending":false,"sponsored":false,"random_color":"#dbdd58","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143614"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272854"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fabfitfun.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/mcnutt-kids-body.jpg\")
<\/p>\n