Physical changes.
Emotional changes. One is not
easier or harder than the other. But I’m
going through both at the same time and the dials are turned nearly all the way
up.
Physical update:
Radiation is done. Skin is no
longer peeling, instead freckling. My
left breast is smaller and higher than my right and I still don’t know if I care. I have to wait 3 to 6 months to do
anything anyway because the skin is still healing, but I don’t know if I have
it in me to through surgery again.
Still getting Lupron shots once a month. These keep my estrogen levels low so that if
the cancer remains or comes back, estrogen is not present to feed it. Low estrogen level puts me through menopause
so I ride an emotional roller coaster.
My husband reminds me of this when I want to go to bed at 9pm because I
hate the world and my therapist reminds me of this when I sit in her office and
weep about my hair and wonder out loud why I am weeping about my hair. So I have some very low days. But they are matched with high ones and in
the middle are beautifully ordinary days where nothing happens at all. Those are my favorite.
Hot Flash is now my middle name. As such, my wardrobe consists strictly of
layers – tank tops under shirts under sweaters topped with scarves and knit hats. Because not only does my body
temperature reach a boiling point once an hour, it also plunges to freezing
within the same period of time giving bipolar a brand new meaning.
My doctor wrote me a prescription for a very mild dose of Effexor
which is supposed to help mitigate hot flashes though it’s typically used to
treat depression. I took one pill a couple of
months ago and turned into a zombie. I decided
I’d rather strip off my clothes every 60 minutes than be a zombie so I shelved the
bottle with the 27 other meds I’ve been given this year. When I opened the medicine cabinet and Willa saw
my collection she said “Wow, mommy. You have
a lot of vitamins.” I didn’t know she
knew the word ‘vitamin.’
Sleeping is a joke.
Really quite comical. When I get
into bed I am freezing so I bundle up into the soft warm pajamas that Antha
sent me for my mastectomy and shiver under the covers for a bit. I want to sleep on my stomach to get
comfortable but my breasts must still be healing inside because when I lay
on them they grow angry fangs and seek revenge.
I have discovered that if I tuck a thick pillow under the lower half of
my torso and place my head on another pillow, a little bit of space is created
for my breasts to free fall. Now I am
comfortable and can fall asleep. Until
my first hot flash. Then the covers come
off, thrown (angrily?) onto my husband, and I roll onto my back, arms and legs splayed in a desperate search for
cold air. The hot flash passes, my body
cools down, and I fall asleep again only to wake up an hour later from a dream that I am naked on an iceberg. I am shivering because I have no covers on and my pajama top is pulled up to my chin. The key throughout this process, repeated two
or three times a night, is to not wake up.
For any level of consciousness invites a minimum two hours of fierce and
rapid brain activity around completely mundane topics like frozen peas and Miley Cyrus. It is then that I wish breast cancer had gone
ahead and killed me.
And then there is the issue of my hair. It is growing in, though it is still quite
short, so I have what others are calling a Pixie Cut but since I did not
actually cut my hair into this fashion, I am calling it a Pixie Grow. Not to be confused with the cute pixie cuts
that you might see laying obediently flat against the heads of Jennifer
Lawrence and Pamela Anderson and Michelle Williams and who else? No, my pixie wants to curl. I have little hair flips happening all over but most notably above and
behind my ears. And these are not easily
tamed with hair product. Or even three or
four hair products. The hair at my
forehead wants to curl up too so I can either wear it greased and plastered
against my forehead or I can simply allow it to make a shelf. A hair shelf. My hair is winning and I am losing. When I look in the mirror I just say “Fuck
it.”
Emotional update: Dentist
says I am grinding my teeth. Holding
tension in my jaw. And sadly, even while
consciously trying to relax, tension builds. I spend more
minutes out of everyday identifying and relaxing areas of tension than anything
else. But if I spend the next year doing
this, I might just suddenly become a Buddhist and I would love to suddenly become
a Buddhist without really knowing what one is.
When I’m not taking care of the kids and the house and my
body and my mind, you can find me volunteering at the school. Last week I started reading with other peoples’
kids during their lunch hour, to give them a little extra practice. They are all sweet, even the ones who are completely
out of control, and I don’t mind being called Lady Gaga for no discernible
reason. Then I’ll go down into the chaos
of the lunch room to volunteer. The
Kindergarteners and 1st graders have twenty minutes to sit down, get
their lunch, eat their lunch, clean up their lunch, and get the hell out so the
next 200 kids can come in. The parent
volunteers help them open yogurts and thermoses and BPA-free boxes and get them water and forks and
remind them to sit down and stop running around and EAT!! even though it’s only
11am. Then we sweep up entire grocery
stores of food that have ended up on the floor and separate the trash into
recycling, compost, and garbage. We wipe
down the tables and clean the floors before the next group of kids sits
down. And I cannot explain why it is my
favorite part of the day.
I also cannot explain why I don’t like talking to my friends
anymore. I don’t return phone calls and
I’ll respond to an email weeks after I’ve received it. I find it very, very hard to discuss my current
life with anyone who is not actually in
my current life. I also don’t like the idea
of dragging people down with all that I continue to go through. And then there is the anger and frustration that I have cancer and they don't. So I am
this now and they are that still and do we really have anything in common
anymore?
I don’t feel like the same person. And I don’t look like her either. So I am in metamorphosis. And it’s really, really...uncomfortable.
