Metamorphosis

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 1^st 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.