Or will it…
This time last year when I would become overwhelmed with feelings and emotions I would cut myself or drink myself into a dissociative state. There were times I would wake up in a pool of blood and not know how it happened. Friday nights were the worst night of the week for me because more than twenty years later I would still play out the same scenario of abuse over and over again. I couldn’t get through a Friday night without hurting myself – most of the time I didn’t realize it was even happening.
I never learned how to sit with my feelings or even “feel” them – or allow them – and know that they would eventually pass – no matter what they were. When I would fall into the pit of despair it felt like I would never climb out…all that has changed now. I don’t know why so I can’t explain it. I still have the same emotions, the same thoughts – there are times I’m still depressed, and I still want to hurt myself – but I haven’t. Not since I was diagnosed with ‘the cancer’.
They say a cancer diagnosis changes your life. It’s true. Since I was diagnosed with cancer my life has changed dramatically. I have an incurable, but ‘treatable’, form of blood cancer. My life now is so different from what it was a year ago I don’t even recognize it. My life is now chemotherapy and cancer centers and hospitals and fighting to live and not die. I look back on my life now and I want those days, weeks, years back. But I can’t have them… I only have right now.
I hear people say cancer is a gift and they’re thankful for having cancer. I’m not thankful for cancer. Having cancer sucks. I am being attacked by from the inside out. I’ve spent more time in the hospital in the past 6 months than the previous 38 years. Chemotherapy is poison and the side effects are severe and frightening; fatigue, nausea/vomiting, weight loss, hair loss, neutropenia. Cancer takes from you your pride, your energy, your confidence. It’s not much different than the abuse of the past: cancer can bring people together and tear people apart.
Last week I learned that my best chance for surviving this is a stem cell transplant and even then the cancer will most likely eventually come back. That’s the reality. Yesterday I spent hours crying on the bathroom floor, and then I got angry and threw a water bottle at the wall and screamed, “why me” into a pillow. Last night I was unable to sleep as my cancer ridden body tries to fight off another infection and I alternate between sweating and chills.
This morning my pelvis, hips, back, and chest are throbbing in excruciating pain as my body tries to produce white blood cells in mass quantities…wow! That hurts. But the sun is shining and I am blessed to have family and friends who reach out with love and support and truly make days like yesterday bearable. I don’t know what today will bring, what the future will hold, or if I will even have one – yesterday wasn’t a good day, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid, but I’ve already been to hell and back, cancer obviously didn’t get the message…I will win…every time.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
It's back again
It’s back again ~ that uninvited feeling.
It never asks if it’s welcome.
It just comes back again and again, that feeling of absolute hopelessness.
It wells up inside of you, consumes you, you try to hide it, but you can’t.
The darkness shows in the shallow tears that fill your wretched blue eyes.
The hollow despair is visible in the sardonic smile that sits heavily on your face.
You wonder why it’s there…
You wonder if it will ever end…
You want to scream and cry and rant and rave!
You want to run away. You want out of this life! You want a better one!
A life without all of these tears! A life without the fears!
You want a life without pain and disillusionment…
One with love and not lies…
But there is no out.
So you sit…and you wait…
And it hurts…and it’s lonely…
And there’s pain and there’s fear
Because there is no out…
There’s only ‘this’…
It never asks if it’s welcome.
It just comes back again and again, that feeling of absolute hopelessness.
It wells up inside of you, consumes you, you try to hide it, but you can’t.
The darkness shows in the shallow tears that fill your wretched blue eyes.
The hollow despair is visible in the sardonic smile that sits heavily on your face.
You wonder why it’s there…
You wonder if it will ever end…
You want to scream and cry and rant and rave!
You want to run away. You want out of this life! You want a better one!
A life without all of these tears! A life without the fears!
You want a life without pain and disillusionment…
One with love and not lies…
But there is no out.
So you sit…and you wait…
And it hurts…and it’s lonely…
And there’s pain and there’s fear
Because there is no out…
There’s only ‘this’…
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The end of my world as I knew it
Hello? Is there anybody out there? Just nod if you can hear me…is there anyone (still) home. Okay – enough with the Pink Floyd already. So if no one is out there – I understand since it’s been, oh, just over four months since my last post here. Wow – I feel like I should re-introduce myself, something like, Hi, I’m Grace, I’m a mental patient, and it’s been just over four months since I last wrote here on my blog. Not that anyone has been searching for me, or even read my blog…I dunno…but it was cathartic to write, so I’m hoping that will be the case today, too. We’ll see…
So, here goes…
This is hard to write – probably why it’s gone unwritten for four months. I started writing this blog as a way to write about my mental health *worries* and *therapy* troubles, and “stuff”. Well, “stuff” has evolved. “Stuff” has taken the form of a plama cell gone wrong and evolved into cancer. Yeah, the last post I wrote, when I said something wasn’t right, well, something was very wrong. Nine days after I wrote that last post, I was diagnosed with cancer, bone marrow cancer.
Did you know that they now tell you that stuff over the phone? Talk about crazy? I was driving when I got the call…on my way to my office! And the doctor was all, “Um, yeah, Grace, we got your test results back, and there is cause for concern.” Yes, he said “cause for concern”. There was no, “Are you in a place where you can talk?” or anything like that, he was just calling to “deliver the news: Congratulations, you are the proud new owner of bone marrow cancer: Go, Fight, Win! Okay, he was more diplomatic than that, I joke…but seriously, you tell someone over the phone they have cancer? So after the doctor tells me that I will need to be referred to a hematologist oncologist, and he’ll have the nurse call me with some referrals… I somehow make it to my office and close the door.
My ears are ringing and I think I may vomit but I don’t. I sit down and put my head down because nothing feels real and my first thought was: I need my grandma. But my grandmother is dead so I can’t call her. I started to call a friend of mine but suddenly everything felt so loud and overwhelming I hung up before she answered. What was I going to say to her anyway – I couldn’t say the word cancer out loud and I didn’t want to sound needy and pathetic. Or afraid.
So I called the therapist. She knew I had been having health problems, she knew I had been having tests done, she wouldn’t be surprised to hear fear in my voice, and I didn’t know who else to call. It was the middle of the afternoon and I didn’t expect her to answer the phone anyway. I could leave her a voicemail and try to compose myself to speak coherently by the time she called me back. She answered. I tried to squeak out the words, “I have cancer.” I don’t know how successful I was since she kept asking me to speak louder…slower. Finally I told her that I would email her and we hung up.
It’s funny, looking back, as I write this now, tears welling in my eyes, it feels as though I am reliving it again. You never know the day you’re world will change forever, it’s a day that starts out as any other day; you get up, tired from not getting enough sleep, shower quickly, dress the kids and get them off to school. You check your calendar as you stand in line at starbucks and nod your head when offered that extra shot of expresso…you need an extra kick to get through this day, for sure. And then in the middle of the day your phone rings and your life takes a dramatic change when you learn you have a rare bone marrow cancer. And what you thought was *body-memories* (pelvic/hip pain) for the past two years, wasn’t “all in your head” it was really plasma cells in your bone marrow are on a rampage; multiplying and squeezing out your red blood cells, it was cancer ravaging your body, in real life, not memories of your step-father ravaging your body from when you were a child.
So, here goes…
This is hard to write – probably why it’s gone unwritten for four months. I started writing this blog as a way to write about my mental health *worries* and *therapy* troubles, and “stuff”. Well, “stuff” has evolved. “Stuff” has taken the form of a plama cell gone wrong and evolved into cancer. Yeah, the last post I wrote, when I said something wasn’t right, well, something was very wrong. Nine days after I wrote that last post, I was diagnosed with cancer, bone marrow cancer.
Did you know that they now tell you that stuff over the phone? Talk about crazy? I was driving when I got the call…on my way to my office! And the doctor was all, “Um, yeah, Grace, we got your test results back, and there is cause for concern.” Yes, he said “cause for concern”. There was no, “Are you in a place where you can talk?” or anything like that, he was just calling to “deliver the news: Congratulations, you are the proud new owner of bone marrow cancer: Go, Fight, Win! Okay, he was more diplomatic than that, I joke…but seriously, you tell someone over the phone they have cancer? So after the doctor tells me that I will need to be referred to a hematologist oncologist, and he’ll have the nurse call me with some referrals… I somehow make it to my office and close the door.
My ears are ringing and I think I may vomit but I don’t. I sit down and put my head down because nothing feels real and my first thought was: I need my grandma. But my grandmother is dead so I can’t call her. I started to call a friend of mine but suddenly everything felt so loud and overwhelming I hung up before she answered. What was I going to say to her anyway – I couldn’t say the word cancer out loud and I didn’t want to sound needy and pathetic. Or afraid.
So I called the therapist. She knew I had been having health problems, she knew I had been having tests done, she wouldn’t be surprised to hear fear in my voice, and I didn’t know who else to call. It was the middle of the afternoon and I didn’t expect her to answer the phone anyway. I could leave her a voicemail and try to compose myself to speak coherently by the time she called me back. She answered. I tried to squeak out the words, “I have cancer.” I don’t know how successful I was since she kept asking me to speak louder…slower. Finally I told her that I would email her and we hung up.
It’s funny, looking back, as I write this now, tears welling in my eyes, it feels as though I am reliving it again. You never know the day you’re world will change forever, it’s a day that starts out as any other day; you get up, tired from not getting enough sleep, shower quickly, dress the kids and get them off to school. You check your calendar as you stand in line at starbucks and nod your head when offered that extra shot of expresso…you need an extra kick to get through this day, for sure. And then in the middle of the day your phone rings and your life takes a dramatic change when you learn you have a rare bone marrow cancer. And what you thought was *body-memories* (pelvic/hip pain) for the past two years, wasn’t “all in your head” it was really plasma cells in your bone marrow are on a rampage; multiplying and squeezing out your red blood cells, it was cancer ravaging your body, in real life, not memories of your step-father ravaging your body from when you were a child.
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