It is the middle, actually near the end of March. I have thought and thought about and studiously considered this blog space since my last post in late December. I was so excited and thrilled and happy to be writing that last post. I was so relieved to be ringing that bell. Little did I know, that last day of treatment, how my body would be wrecked with illness and fatigue and the after-effects of chemo combined with a terrible bout of flu and pneumonia and GI illness. My sweet Ellis got the bug that would plague our household for 3 months on New Year's Eve. We exchanged germs for the better part of 2 weeks and each of us coughed and sniffled and barfed and pooped ourselves for weeks and months. FINALLY, just in the last 2 weeks, I am feeling nearly normal. FINALLY, after CT scans and rounds of antiobiotics and steroids and inhalers and just recently, a naturopathic "tincture" for "lung health", I am feeling better, more energetic, more like myself. I have hope. I have energy. I feel like I want to move and dance and play again... I feel happiness and lightness again, although it is always tempered and measured now. The innocence and carefree ways are long lost.
My hair is growing. And that helps me feel better. I am still sporting my little knit hats every day. I have been quite shy about exposing my bald head to the world. It is almost as if I can hide under these beautful and quirky and sassy hats... they are colorful and cute and thank goodness, they suit me. But now, when it is getting hotter and I am getting more hair and spring is coming, it is time to maybe consider taking off the hats and wearing my new hair and being once again vulnerable in the world. I am scared to be so open about it, for whatever reason. It is like being naked, vulnerable, exposed. When I am wearing a hat, no one really knows. Does she have hair under there? Is it just fashion? But as soon as I take off the hat, then people will really see that my hair is so short... they will know... and that is hard all over again.
I never knew, before all of this, that hair was so important to me. I never once in my life felt like a vain person, before all of this. But now, in the aftermath of the AC (after cancer) life, I fervently long for long, flowing hair again.... to make this cancer experience a distant memory. It is not just the hair that I long for... it is the symbol that the beaufiful long hair represents -- carefree youth, health, femininity, beauty... all of those things feel far away from me now.... even though I actually am doing pretty well.
I recently have noticed my fingernails. I learned - a very long time ago, in medical school- that when someone has a trauma or a serious illness, that you can see evidence of that in their fingernails. The trauma causes a temporary slow-down of fingernail growth. That growth stoppage forms a line or a ridge in the nail. As the nail then resumes its growth, you can see this line in the nail, marking time and marking the moment in time when this event occurred, like a scar that will slowly grow out and fade... but at least a very tangible sign that something terrible happened here, in the body.
My fingernails, after each chemo treatment, would hurt. I think, after the last one, the cumulative effects really damaged them and they started all to pull away from my nail beds. (I am sure that one more treatment would have cost me all of them.) I definitely sustained some damage though, and in late January, I was seeing them break and tear and they caused my quite a bit of discomfort. I somehow forgot about them these last few months and today, I looked again at them. Sure enough, right there on my fingernails, there was my cancer story, played out for all or anyone to see. It seemed so significant to me. Right there, on my thumb, I counted 4 of these growth arrest lines, corresponding to my 4 chemo treatments... The nails are growing out. The tips are still yellow and brittle, but the nail beds are pink and healthy looking again, and just like my hair, they show a body that has been damaged and battled, but which is slowly gaining ground and recovering health and it is an amazing and inspiring thing, just to look at a tiny fingernail. It fills me with both gratitude for the journey being over and hope for the journey ahead.
While my life has plodded along on the recovering health journey, I am still so hyper-aware of women and mothers suffering all around me. I am more empathic. I feel more deeply for mothers who face their own mortality. I feel so desperately lost for mothers facing a life of loss, and grief, after losing a child. I feel such fear and fury for those mothers still fighting the demon cancer that I fought, and I pray for each of them to find their cure. I see so much suffering still. I see women, newly diagnosed, with fear in their eyes and I remember so poignantly, those first days of terror and rage and loss and worry. I see women, still in the trenches getting their chemo and waiting on the results of their scans, and they are counting the days and months of time with their kids and I wonder, 'how would I be if that were me?'- and I know that it could easily be.... and I wonder, how is it that I just got the luck of the draw that I am currently ok and so many women are not? And I know it is not fair... and I know that it is mostly random. I know that there are kids in this world who are going to lose their mom to breast cancer... ( or to alcoholism, or to a car accident.... or whatever....) and they are going to wonder their whole lives what their moms would think of them... and those kids will grow up with a part of them MISSING...
I know I still want to write the letters that I thought I would write if I knew I was to die soon. I know that should something tragic happen, and I leave this world before any cancer occurs again, that I would want my children to know the legacy that I leave then with is my great and tender and grateful and beautiful love for them... and it is the greatest and most tender of loves. I have so much still to say to my girls... and to my husband too. I must keep writing... to write it ALL down.
It sounds all peaches and cream, yes? Beautiful and meaningful and all this gratitude... and that is true.... but there are days when I am still so pissed off that I still look like I have cancer. I am still ridiculously mad that I had to have both my boobs chopped off, just to have a chance to live There are days when I am still so furious and filled with self-pity and rage... and I want to scream and shout... but don't.
I am in my "new normal", my AC life. I am still not sure how to be... but I sure as hell will keep trying to do and be and grow and live well... I don't think there is an endpoint here, so just the TRYING is probably enough anyway....
I am getting so sleepy, here at 12:29 am, so I am calling it a night.... Cheers to good sleep and good friends.
xoxoxoxo