I wrote in my previous post that many of these are exhausting to write. To be honest, I knew this was coming up chronologically, I was dreading writing it and I've allowed it to delay a lot of further writing as a result. It's not so much the vulnerability I know I'll have to show to post this, it's more so the fact I'll have to live through the emotions again in order to do this justice. That's why these end up being exhausting. So, sitting in my chemo chair, hooked up to an IV for the next 5 hours, I finally decided to half-sack up and write it. I hope you can understand that it represents a brief moment of collapse in what has otherwise been a strengthening experience.
I was told by both my doctors as well as other cancer survivors that everyone seems to have a "Cancer Moment" after diagnosis. The general definition of that moment seems to be the realization that a) You have cancer; b) It's very serious; c) Treatment will not be fun; d) Hardest of all that there is a possibility, however remote, that you won't survive the experience.
It seems to vary from patient to patient as to when that moment occurs. Some get hit their first day of chemotherapy, confronted with the reality of the IV and seeing other patients at various stages of the fight. Others seem to let the moment wash over them after the port or PICC install or when their doctor shows them the CT Scan of the actual tumor(s). For me it was a little different.
For me it was my 5 year old nephew yelling, "I love you, Uncle Mike!". I had just fixed his Transformer toy before my brother, his wife and my niece pulled away in their Honda Pilot. It was heart-warming for a moment until reality kicked in and my anxiety addled brain played a mean trick on me.
You have cancer. What if he grows up without you? He's still so young he could forget you.
As I walked back inside, I could feel an emotional tidal wave coming. Like a good Irishman, I tried to push back the impending disaster; to stuff it down and deal with it when there was time to do so (which means never). I flopped down on the couch and tried to distract myself with Netflix and a Jameson. My brain decided to taunt me again.
You have cancer. What if it spread to your liver and you can't drink Jameson ever again?
That certainly wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, I suppose. But I was starting to get the sense there was something I was dancing around to avoid. Above the TV in my parent's family room is a portrait of me and my three siblings as kids. I was maybe 6 or 7? Close to my nephews age.
You have cancer. What if you can't have kids after treatment?
Well, I guess the message was getting more positive. At least whatever anxiety driven bullshit was being concocted in my head had come down from not surviving to surviving but being infertile. That's an improvement, right?
You have cancer. What have you done with your life?
Credit: http://www.theawkwardyeti.com
A lot, you fucking asshole brain. Jesus, get it together.
I've had these internal fights before, it's part of living with anxiety. These jabs seemed especially caustic given my current predicament. These were above and beyond the usual internal dialogue about being good enough or smart enough. It crossed into an unknown territory and it was getting frustrating to deal with. I wasn't able to distract myself as I usually would and I started to fixate.
My mom sat next to me after pouring herself a Jameson and asked how I was doing. My lips twitched sideways and I just shrugged, trying desperately to squint my eyes hard enough to stop whatever waterfall was trying to break past my tear ducts.
"I don't know...", I finally managed to stammer out.
After a small demonstration of mom-prying, she managed to get past my thin attempts to hide what I was feeling and I opened up. I had to. It was getting physically painful to contain it.
"I don't know..", I managed to get out again before my lips twitched to the side again and tear managed to sneak down my cheek, "It's just a lot."
By now I had devolved into a full-blown breakdown, tears streaming down my cheeks. It was more frustration than anything else, I knew what was happening with me was serious. But the percentages were great, my prognosis excellent, why is this so difficult? I had already told many people face-to-face and on the phone without much difficulty. Was it seeing my niece and nephew knowing they wouldn't understand? Fear of the isolation? After talking through it with my mom for who knows how long, it finally hit me.
"I guess, I just haven't said it," I said through a few sobbing breaths, "I've told people but I haven't really said it myself. I have cancer. It's serious and I know it's treatable but I have cancer."
It took me some serious parental comforting and a few more admissions about my current condition to come back from that cliff. Admitting it was hard. Previously, I had told people using couched words and clinical distance to describe what was going on. Like a doctor explaining to a patient, I was a few cold steps removed from the diagnosis itself.
Simply uttering the words I have cancer brought an odd amount of relief and allowed me to think about it clearly again with the acceptance and determination to come through it. That was also the moment I resolved to blog about the experience. I had a friend who recently passed away from pancreatitis. It had seemed to me he had isolated himself after his diagnosis and his death took many people, both close and distant, by surprise.
Isolation, I decided then, wasn't an option for me. While I was supremely confident in my prognosis, my mental wherewithal and my body's ability to heal, isolation would kill me. Beyond the depressing aspect of isolation, it occurred to me then as it does writing this now, that isolation kills in these situations. Beyond people being inherently social creatures, isolating yourself during difficult situations hides the light at the end of the tunnel. It makes us forget that people love us and there is something to fight for. Whether it's people in close proximity letting you know they care or those more distant expressing their love, you have to let the village in. It can be hard and, at times, overwhelming. It's difficult to know how to respond to everyone without sounding canned and sometimes, people slip through the "Thank you" cracks. For me, however, I decided it wasn't an option to isolate myself, as tempting as it was as a very private person. The risk was too high.
Mostly, it's people expressing a simple, "You've got this." or "Just wanted you to know I care". Semblances of normalcy are nice too, a game night with friends, going out for dinner, coffee or a smoothie. Helping people to understand what's happening helps me comes to grips with it as well (e.g. understanding through education). All of it helps. All of it is appreciated.
This was a long slog, so here's a cute puppy to cheer you up.
It took a little to write this one. It was harder than the others. Especially since I had to try and choke back tears as I sit here, in public, in my chemo chair, surrounded by people in various diagnoses and stages of treatment (many are much worse than mine). As I've said before, part of what makes these exhausting is reliving those moments emotionally and mentally so I can explain them better.
My cancer moment is what made me blog about this. It forced me toward the decision to let people in and to allow them to lend me a seemingly endless source of strength when mine inevitably lapses in private moments of weakness. Most importantly though, it helps me remember that when this is over and my life is my own again, things will be better than they were before. It's something I look forward to and focus on every day.
