When you start a week in the OR, it's not a blazing Monday. You're not singing from the rooftoops. You're not rolling into the OR like "Yeah!" Fact.
This week was also the one where I was offically diagnosed with PTSD.
After I survived my third surgery of the year of course.....
At first I was like..."Nah...I've just had a rough year...." Who wouldn't feel discombobulated? Who wouldn't struggle. And then the evidence was provided to me.
My therapist made me write it....here it goes. And this is point form and leaves out many appointments and weekly injections, treatments and conversations. Here she be.....
In the past 18 months I have gone through:
-my Dad being diagnosed with cancer, facing a potentially fatal surgery
-watching him suffer through the diagnosis, the waiting....
-subsequently being diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer myself while he was waiting for his surgery.
-loss of income and purpose from work
-Christmas without telling my kids about either
-Chemo for me starting in January
-surgery for my dad in February - I went everyday, I visited, I waited for 7 hours while he had his surgery, taking breaks to throw up in the bathroom...hoping he lived through the surgery.
-Being there for his recovery in hamilton, trying to be positive for him, smiling through my suffering and his
-Covid hits....from now on I do everything alone in hospital.
-isolation from friends and family
-chemo for the next 12 weeks. Suffering that is borderline unimaginable.
-surgery to amputate my breasts and part of my lymphatic system.
-recovery which included needing my husband to not only help me out of a chair but off the toilet.
-follow up appointment to tell me that not only did the chemotherapy not work but that my cancer was aggressive and unpredictable. A rare form - 3% of breast cancers are like mine was....they just "don't know"
-an appointment with my oncologist to tell me to plan short term. Think in terms of months.....if I make it 2 years my odds go up. If the cancer comes back within those two years I would be lucky to live 5 at most.
-radiation and hyperthermia starts
-I ride my bike to radiation monday to friday at 9am, two days of the week I then get in my car and drive to Vaughn (75min each way) to receive hyperthermia treatment at $400 a pop and drive home. I do this for 4 weeks straight
-the 5th week I receive a "boost" of radiation which depletes what reserves I have and I lose all the weight I've got left to give.
-I return home to the Soo and Superior and realize I am not my old self, I tire easily, I am thin and bald and treated differently.
-September comes, covid still a factor....I'm now on my own, my oncologist sets me free, I feel lost and alone - everyone is gone to work and school and my blood counts are still too low to return to work. It's just bald me. Home.
-Complications from radiation arise and I am diagnosed with "radiation pneumonitis". I have 4 of 6 functioning lung lobes. I am hospitalized for a week. I try to escape and fail. I am assigned a full time psychiatrist.
-I am released from hospital returning home I try to become old me. I fail miserably. I drink too much, I lose sleep, I scream at the sky, I pound the pavement running. Nothing works.
-I go to the Soo for Christmas and all the memories of the year past come racing back, I try to stuff them down with food and alcohol.
-One year anniversary of my diagnosis
-Covid worsens and children are sent home.
-Complications arise from chemotherapy and I need to have another surgery.
-All the emotions from the mastectomy and year come up and I have a panic attack in the OR before the surgery.
-I recover from the surgery.
-Covid worsens and my children are sent home
-I return to the Soo emotions surface and I again relapse into old patterns
-I come back to Hamilton to find out that I am scheduled for a surgery.
That pretty much brings us up to speed.....to this past monday.
I mean also add in the everyday....life. It's been a ride.
It was then that I agreed with my psychiatrist that it was indeed possible I was displaying signs of severe PTSD.
I denied it, but it's real. I'm psychologically damaged. I now begin the process of not only healing the body again but this time the mind. And mine has always been quite a complex machine.
I am employing new tools, I am working everyday. I am silencing the noise. I am being gentle and kind to myself and others.
I am rising above. I see Sara. I see what she has been through, but my thoughts about it all aren't me. They are like waves on the ocean of life, the thoughts they rise and fall.
I was caught up in the ocean of it all. I still am....but I'm learning to pull my head above the waves. I am not even in the boat anymore. I see the boat and me in it. I am somewhere above observing.
I am learning to see.....that life is but a series of ups and downs, as are our thoughts.
I can say....this week hasn't been an easy one....but sometimes life gives us just enough to push us to the edge of who we were to open up the possibility of a new better us.
I don't know about the cancer. It's been a year. I had a checkup with my oncologist today, we both say the same thing... "knock on wood". We don't know. No one does.
I do now forgive myself for the ways I've been, for trying to find a way out of the darkness anyway I could. I forgive myself for my humanity. I am sorry for many things but I can't take all the blame.
It's been a tough year.
Before they put me to sleep this Monday, a kind nurse leaned over my head as they put the oxygen on my face as the tears streamed down and she whispered to me "It's ok....you've had a rough year".
When I woke up. I realized it was all true.
I learned this week....that I've been through a lot. That it's OK to not be OK.
I have been both blessed and unlucky. I have been saved and abandoned. I have been enlightened and traumatized.
My job now is to rise above it all.
Today I rose up out of my bed....I tied up my shoelaces, I looked at the road ahead and decided that I am "a Sara" watching a Sara.
I am not my thoughts, I observe them. They pass like waves on the ocean.
Everything does.
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