My mountain is large, but it is absolutely covered in fields of wildflowers.
People tell me that when all of my treatment is over I can look back on this past year and chalk it up to just a terrible year but you know what? It hasn't been. I was diagnosed in October of 2018 and I do not think it ruined my year. 2018 was one of the best years of my life and 2019 isn't looking too bad either.
This mountain I'm climbing hurts my back, my legs are tired, and I can't see the top from where I'm standing but I'm still here, and I'm still climbing. The beauty of it mingles with the pain and I can appreciate the worthiness of the struggle. It reflects back to me the common thread seen throughout my life; I am more than one thing.
It becomes easy to be consumed by the label of cancer. Days pass where it is all you talk about with your spouse, all you think about when you aren't talking about it, the core location for where all of you money, time, and energy is focused. If you are very lucky, time will pass and you will find yourself passing a day where cancer neither entered your mind nor your conversation. The mountain will never go away. It will shift and change as your life shifts and changes but I hope it is always covered in fields of wildflowers.
Surgery next week. I hope the drugs are good.
Thursday, April 18, 2019
Monday, April 8, 2019
Chemo Brain
Chemo brain is slowly watching your cognition decrease and thinking there are things you can do to stop it. Chemo brain is the character Charlie from Flowers for Algernon.
Chemo brain is 30lbs of potatoes in the house because you keep forgetting you already bought some.
Chemo brain is losing the ability to put together an outfit and going to work dressed like a preschooler who insisted on picking out her own clothes.
Chemo brain is celebrating, and I mean hardcore celebrating, when you remember to follow through on something.
Chemo brain is starting this blog and then forgetting you've done it...
On March 20 I went for my regularly scheduled weekly Taxol. When I went back a week later for my next dose the doctor decided to hold off a week to give my side effects a chance to settle down. A week after that it was decided that we would quit altogether. I finished chemo without even realizing it. It's f*cking terrifying.
Chemo brain is 30lbs of potatoes in the house because you keep forgetting you already bought some.
Chemo brain is losing the ability to put together an outfit and going to work dressed like a preschooler who insisted on picking out her own clothes.
Chemo brain is celebrating, and I mean hardcore celebrating, when you remember to follow through on something.
Chemo brain is starting this blog and then forgetting you've done it...
On March 20 I went for my regularly scheduled weekly Taxol. When I went back a week later for my next dose the doctor decided to hold off a week to give my side effects a chance to settle down. A week after that it was decided that we would quit altogether. I finished chemo without even realizing it. It's f*cking terrifying.
Monday, March 4, 2019
Peace be with you.
I had an abdominal CT done last week and there is no fear like the kind of fear that comes with waiting for scan results. I was talking out my anxiety with my husband and he told me that life had been pretty unkind to me in my 34 years and surely I was due for a bit of a break. I told him that life had been unkind but in turn it has lead me to find ways to be kinder to myself.
That's what I struggle with. In all of this anger and hurt and sadness it's easy to think of it as being directed at the cancer but since the cancer is inside of me I'm also directing those feelings at myself. I'm working to forgive myself. To find peace with myself. Cancer may be the big-bad-ugly but it is bits of me that went wrong and I'm coming to grips with that. It is really hard to be so thoroughly betrayed by your body and still wrap it in a comforting hug and tell it everything will be ok.
There is a part in the Catholic mass where you shake hands with those around you and tell them "Peace be with you". I am shaking hands with myself and saying peace be with you, Stephanie.
Friday, March 1, 2019
The Nowhere Place
On October 15, 2018 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Matrix forming metaplastic triple negative breast cancer to be exact. It's a scary cancer. Show me a cancer that isn't.
All I could think of when I got that call and everyday since getting that call was I don't want this. Not the cancer. No one wants cancer. The everything else that comes with having cancer. The half life, the fear, anxiety, dread, cycles of panic and relief. The pain. The fear. I wrote fear twice and that was intentional. I'll say it a third time: the fear. I call cancer The Nowhere Place. Until you have cancer you don't understand. And maybe some people with cancer won't understand either. Maybe only I do.
Cancer is The Nowhere Place. Once upon a time I was alive and I lived everyday like I was alive. Then one day, in one phone call that lasted less than 3 minutes, I discovered that I was neither alive nor dead. I was in the nowhere place in between, sentenced to a life of waiting to see which way the pendulum would swing.
How I railed against this new place. For me this is the worst. The most untenable. The bridge too far. This slow swing between living and dead digs at me. I find it most unfair. I can wrap my head around being alive and I can wrap my head around being dead but I want to either be alive or dead. It isn't suicidal ideations or a passive death wish. It is looking at life and seeing 3 years, or 5, or 50, of being in this nowhere place and being sentenced to an unknown lifetime of that fear. That anxiety, and dread, and cycles of panic and relief. A future of waiting for scan results and refreshing the MyChart page to see if my labs are loaded yet. I don't think that's living...but it isn't dying either.
All I could think of when I got that call and everyday since getting that call was I don't want this. Not the cancer. No one wants cancer. The everything else that comes with having cancer. The half life, the fear, anxiety, dread, cycles of panic and relief. The pain. The fear. I wrote fear twice and that was intentional. I'll say it a third time: the fear. I call cancer The Nowhere Place. Until you have cancer you don't understand. And maybe some people with cancer won't understand either. Maybe only I do.
Cancer is The Nowhere Place. Once upon a time I was alive and I lived everyday like I was alive. Then one day, in one phone call that lasted less than 3 minutes, I discovered that I was neither alive nor dead. I was in the nowhere place in between, sentenced to a life of waiting to see which way the pendulum would swing.
How I railed against this new place. For me this is the worst. The most untenable. The bridge too far. This slow swing between living and dead digs at me. I find it most unfair. I can wrap my head around being alive and I can wrap my head around being dead but I want to either be alive or dead. It isn't suicidal ideations or a passive death wish. It is looking at life and seeing 3 years, or 5, or 50, of being in this nowhere place and being sentenced to an unknown lifetime of that fear. That anxiety, and dread, and cycles of panic and relief. A future of waiting for scan results and refreshing the MyChart page to see if my labs are loaded yet. I don't think that's living...but it isn't dying either.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)