You'd think coming home from the hospital would be a great feeling. The thing is... I try to be as honest as I can with these blogs...because someday someone who is in the spot I'm in right now might read them, or my kids will look back on them or people who knew someone with cancer maybe didn't realize all the things associated with a diagnosis and all that comes with it...
I've had more than a handful of women who have lost their mothers at a young age to cancer tell me that my blog helps them to understand what their moms were going through at the time. As mothers we want to protect our children. We want to pretend everything is OK. We want to be strong, we want to sheild them from the reality of what this disease does. We want them to be happy, we don't want them to worry, we want them to hear the bad news last and we don't want them to know we are suffering. We hide it. We keep it inside and we struggle through the steps, the stages to protect those we love. We do it for our partners too. We do it because we love them.
Being in the hospital waiting for test upon test result was like standing on the edge of a cliff. Holding on by your rough nails, not looking down, not looking back at your family, just looking straight ahead. Holding your breath and holding on.
When I was in the hospital, they put me in the Oncology ward. Of all the wards, this one is the most depressing. It's people who are losing their battle with cancer. It's people who are so sick they can't be home. The woman in the room beside me was younger than me. Her son came to visit her, they made and exception for her. I heard her time and time again say to her son "It's OK, Mommy feels fine...." she kept it together while he was there. When he would leave I would hear her moaning and in pain. It's amazing the things mothers do for their children.
Needless to say this whole experience traumatized me. It's almost a year to the date to my diagnosis. You wouldn't think this would be a huge trigger but to illustrate just how much a cancer diagnosis fucks you up I'll relay an experience I had this weekend.
I was laying in bed with Jason sunday morning. We were lazy and sexy which was wonderful because the sex life is another area that really suffers when you're diagnosed and in treatment and on hormone inhibitors. Anyway, I had my head on his chest and I smelled the air coming in from the window, it was of rotting leaves and sunshine.
Normally I'd love this smell but this time is sent me into a full on panic attack. I couldn't understand why, but the more I considered my feelings and thoughts the more I realized this was the smell and mood last year when I was diagnosed and it triggered that attack in me.
I thought I had a handle on it, but the hospital stay, all the tests, the patients, the realization that this is my life for at least 5 years.....tests and results. Hope and holding my head high....it was tough.
This past week, the morphine, the heavy duty drugs and all the radiation and poison from the hospital stay, the lack of sleep and lack of nutrition took it's toll on me and I had to drag myself out of bed. Out to exercise and convince myself that I can't stop. I have to keep going.
My mood is unpredictable. I don't even know when I'll feel good or scared or bad. I have to roll with it.
Covid isn't helping.
But here's what I've concluded a week after being home....
We can't stop. We have to keep just moving forward in whatever way we can. No one is perfect. These are difficult times. Any moment of panic...if given 20 minutes of breathing and bringing self back to the present moment will become easier.
I don't have the pathology report of the bronchoscope I had. I don't know if that was cancer in my lung but I'm assuming it wasn't and moving ahead.
I don't know day to day what battles my body wages, but I'm aware of the thoughts and intentions I'm putting forward. I project hope and positivity for my children. For myself.
For those of you reading this who has had a family member, particularly a parent, pass away from cancer...understand that it was tough for them. It was awful, but their concern wasn't with themselves. It was with you.
It's still with you. I write to my children everyday in a journal for each of them. I don't know when I'll die but I hope to hell it's before they do. When they read the journals they will read one overlying message. Over and over again.
The world consists of more levels of "alive" than we can see as primal humans. There is energy and light and thought. When you look the possibility of death in the face you come to appreciate the many levels of life, of existence. Of energy and of presence.
I've said to my kids in their journals....just because someone is physically gone, doesn't mean they're gone. There are layers of life we can't see but we can feel if we focus. Life is a great mystery.
That hospital stay really fucked me up. I'm re-evaluating everything. I suspect this will continue until I'm OK with the tests, the waiting and the not knowing.
This is my karma. I am learning to accept it.
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