The past few weeks I've spent eating some cheese and drinking some things I shouldn't. I don't know what the hell is wrong with me. I know it's not good for me. I know it potentially feeds the seeds of roaming cancer cells and reduces my immunity. I made a promise to myself as I polished off a glass of wine tonight I'm having a little cleanse. I'll start that tomorrow.
Being diagnosed with cancer is like having a gun to your head for the rest of your life. You just have to walk around with it there. It may never fire, but it's pretty hard to forget that it's there. Some days you do a better job at forgetting, some days you just feel the pressure and the anxiety and you feel afraid. Some days I just feel really afraid I'm going to die young and leave my babies without me to sort out their lives. I'm worried they'll have to watch me die. I'm worried they'll cry and I won't be there and there will be nothing on earth to bring me back and they'll be hurt forever and there will be no one to blame.
I'm worried it will leave them with a hole in their hearts. I'm worried that when they celebrate their Christmases with their babies I won't be there... I'll miss everything in their lives. I'll miss being a grandma, an old lady, even a 50 year old lady, I'm working on a 3 month schedule. If the cancer stays away for 2 years odds improve. It stays away for 5, even more so but there really are no guarantees even after that. The longer darker days make me anxious and being home alone during the weekdays are hard. I try to busy myself but I find sometimes I get locked into a way of thinking and I can't unravel the reality of my situation.
Sometimes I go and sit in my children's rooms in the daytime and I fight back the tears. I think of them in their little beds without me to tuck them in, I worry how they'd be split apart and lose their whole world. Maybe even each other. Jason would lose them too. It woud be awful. Like the earth splitting apart. I just want to live long enough that they are adults and not little children like they are now. They still need their mom so much. I realize it when I go into their rooms and look around. They're still so little. I find litle notes in Madeleine's room that say "I love Mommy" and little stick pictures of me and her. You'd have to be a parent to truly appreciate the strength it takes to move on from that moment and carry on.
I feel angry sometimes and feel like life isn't fair, not to me, but for them. Regardless, they have to live with a mom who battles cancer and who can't say to them I'll be around when they're older with reassurance. Ari wrote a letter sealed it and asked me to give it to her in 2023. She asked me if I could....I know it was her way of asking me if I'd be alive then. It broke me. All I could say is I'd put it in my drawer and of course do my best. She knows. There are no gurantees. It's heartbreaking.
I just can't do or say the things I used to. This is my new reality. I can't eat the pizza, or drink or have sugar. I can't make promises to my children. I have to exercise and hydrate and take my supplements and be on top of things. The Aromatase Inhibitors I take to put me into menopause cause my joints to feel pretty stiff and my last bone scan showed osteoarthritic changes in my right hip. Running is getting tough, my moods are erratic.
I had a bronchoscope a few weeks ago and I still haven't gotten the pathology report back yet. Pathology reports usually take 2-3 weeks. That's one of the worst things. No one tells you that. I'm telling you. If you ever have a biopsy to determine if something is cancer, be prepared to wait weeks to find out. In the meantime you exist in that space. But the reality is that's my life now forever. I exist in the space between tests. I'll never know the future. I know tests, moments in time and periods of waiting and feeling relief and sometimes feeling anxious and hopefully not afraid.
My next scans are booked for Dec 11. I'll have a chest, abdominal and pelvic CT Scan. I've had so many CT scans if I had a punch card this next one would be free. Each CT Scan is roughly the equivalent of 800 X-rays. I have the scan on the Friday....then I wait until the 14th or 15th for my results. Those in between days they are the worst. I'm in them now waiting for the bronchoscopy results. It's the gun to the head.
I had a coffee with baileys and rum today and I felt like I was commiting a crime. It shouldn't be like that but at any point a cancer cell be looking to set up shop in one of my organs and I need to keep my sugar low, ketones high and immune system powered. That just isn't happening with the baileys and rum. So after I was done the mug I said to myself it's just not worth it. At the end I didn't really enjoy it.
I find that eating bread (last weekend I had some fresh sourdough with roasted red peppers and butter) mmmmmmmmm so good.... anyway, I find that eating that not only makes me feel comforted but it also makes me feel like I'm not a prisoner. BUT it's not worth it.
The truth is I am. If I want the best chances for survival I need to stick to the diet, to the plan and be vigilant. It sucks and I'm tired of it but I've got to go back to ketosis and to simply eating well and not diverting. It's so hard especially when you see people all around you eating and drinking and Christmas is coming but for me it's a matter of wanting to live. When I slip out of ketosis or drink too much or eat sugar I imagine I'm robbing my children of me. It's so not worth it.
This is the part of cancer no one talks about. The in between. But that's life. It's hard to live in the in between but it's where we make progress it's the difference between living and dying sometimes, literally and figuratively.
I am choosing to act and eat and behave and live in a certain way...I don't HAVE to. I can chose to eat whatever I want, I can not exercise I can think negatively, I can ignore advice. I realize today these are all my choices. I'm not trapped, yes that gun will always be to my head but I can lessen the effect by making smart choices and not letting myself get too bogged down by the future.
Tomorrow when I wake up, as I do everyday I will give thanks for another day. I will pick myself up, I will remind myself that the healthy choices I make are my own and are important and necessary not only for myself but to my kids. I couldn't live with myself if at the end of my life I looked back and thought I didn't do everything I could.
It's not like I'm never going to treat myself, but for now it's back to salad and avocado, being hungry and herbal tea.
Sometimes we need to be uncomfortable to get through rough times to better times. This is the whole point of the COVID advice now. NO one wants it. We're tired of being home, we want normal life, we want to go out, we want to be like we were before but nothing is ever going to be like it was before. Accept it. Learn to live within the limits for now and things will get better over time.
If you don't do everything you could and something happened to someone you loved how would you feel? It's like when I think about dying....I'd be dead. I won't feel or miss or know anything but the people left behind would forever be broken. It's selfish to not do everything you can, for yourself, for those you love and for those you don't even know.
I'm going to say it. Stay home. It sucks but it's going to save lives. It's like that cupcake I want to eat. It's just not worth it. There are too many hearts on the line. We have to do the uncomfortable things. Even for a short time, but we'll adapt.
I'll adapt. This past month has been a tough one. The shorter days, the kids at school, busy and Jason gone in the daytime and early in the morning. I spend a lot of time alone. Being in the hospital set me back big time. I ate some Halloween candy there, and since I've been out of ketosis which is a problem.
The ups and downs after a cancer diagnosis are real. Just an average day can sometimes be turned upside down by a strange pain or a thought that you can't shake or a little handwritten note from your 8 year old.
The reality is, at the end of the day all we can control is how we act, and what we think. We can't control the universe, or others and we aren't guaranteed the future, just the present moment.
It's going to be a strange time leading up to Christmas and during Christmas, but we'll be OK. If we focus on how much we have, how lucky we are to be alive today, how we still have a chance and that the world is going to continue spinning. We have to do the hard things to get to the good things.
I tell myself- I don't know the future, but better to assume the gun isn't going to go off than act like it already has.
I've had a rough month. Tomorrow is a new day. I'll try again.
It's all any of us can do.
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