Some days just suck. Some days that suck can also be catalyzing.
A powerful Both+And, indeed.
This day in 2018:
Funk
I’m funky tonight. Can’t quite put my finger on what all I’m feeling. Just. Funky.
It’s probably a combination of a lot of things….so I’m probably just at my max of all of the emotions, all of the tensions, all of the everything.
This day in 2019:
Un-Cancer
I was asked today when all of this “stuff” was going to be behind me.
I get the question. I understand the motive behind it.
But the answer is “never.” I won’t ever have it out of my head. Once you have cancer you don’t get to go back to not having cancer. I can’t un-cancer. Even when my hair is long and it was as if I wasn’t bald, I can’t un-cancer. Even when the scars are covered with an amazing tattoo, I can’t un-cancer. Even after 10 years when I don’t have to take Anastrozole anymore, I can’t un-cancer.
That’s not how it works.
This day in 2020:
Four of Six
Covid, while difficult in many ways, sure makes for easier traffic. My trip to Rose was noticeably different in that regard today but everything else was wrought with emotions. I had a follow up appointment and being there, almost 3 years after diagnosis, was still difficult. Waiting in the waiting room… Waiting in the exam room… Waiting in the infusion room… Seeing the medical-educational posters on the back of the exam door… Over-hearing the conversations of other patients and providers… Having to say my name and birthdate several times… Being examined and the intense vulnerability that that entails… The nervous stomach and dry mouth and foggy head… Angela, my chemo nurse… Blood draws and infusions… The reminder to drink plenty of water to flush the toxins out of my system… The chair… The IV pump and its clicking and ticking and dripping and beeping… the view out of the window… the ringing of the phones… the taste of saline flushing my vein… the sitting there staring straight ahead instead of reading or being on my phone or watching the tv… the uneasy nausea that accompanies all of the above…
And then the drive home.
It’s interesting, the cancer monster looms, always, but not in a way where I feel afraid of the words, “you have cancer.” It looms because I always think about it. It looms because I feel a swollen lymph node and think, *hmmm, I wonder… It looms because my entire body hurts and is covered in scars. It looms because it’s proximity is directly correlated with the closeness of the memories… It looms because cancer has fully changed me. Even as I sit here with eyes watering (not because I’m crying but because of the lasting effect of chemo and the possibility that I have rheumatoid arthritis) is evidence of such change. The cancer monster looms and I’ve noticed today, that while I can engage and have conversations, I can be productive and do work and I can go from this 5 minutes to the next, making progress in my day, I am totally in a different world. A world where it feels like one foot stands in my current survivorship and the other stands in my past (albeit quite recent and quite enormously traumatic) diagnosis.
Today was my 4th of 6 Zomeda infusions. One more year… Then what?