Once you are diagnosed with breast cancer, your life as you know it is forever changed. Breast cancer treatment seems to take up most of your life while you are going through it. Going to doctor's appointments, follow-up appointments, diagnostic testing, and, after treatment, knowing that you body made the cancer cells that started the whole thing in the first place, may make you feel more vulnerable to getting the breast cancer back. The fear itself can begin to affect you physically and can precipitate the risk of breast cancer's return. Breast cancer is part of you for an entire year, walking beside you as an unwelcome guest. With time, it begins to recede in your mind's eye, but breast cancer is not something you can truly put behind you. Time helps as far as not letting breast cancer define who you are and taking up residence in your mind. Yet fear of recurrence, at some level, is a battle for most women living with breast cancer. The good news is that the longer you do not have a recurrence, the better the odds are that you will not get breast cancer again. Even though most women strive for the five-year guideline to remain cancer-free, biologically speaking, there is no magic five-year milestone. Breast cancer can reoccur many years after the initial diagnosis.