Aftermath

So the reality that cancer is a permanent thought in my brain has been harder to cope with than I imagined. Somehow I thought this might fade into my memory the way the pain of a broken arm fades once the cast is off and full use of the arm is regained. Not so lucky....the word cancer remains in the daily vocabulary of myself, my family, and friends, and a part of my daily existence--a box of cold cereal with a breast cancer ribbon prominently displayed, a small box of pink tic tacs for my purse, I'm beginning to think that there is not a product on the market that hasn't committed a donation to the Susan Komen foundation for Breast Cancer research....and I'm positive that it's a successful campaign judging just from the number of items that go into my cart on even the shortest trip to the grocery store. Let's not forget that the number of pink items increases exponentially if I take one of my children in the store!
The fact that my diagnosis occurred one year ago on October 2, 2007 at the beginning of breast cancer awareness month means that every anniversary of my diagnosis will be marked with a flood of pink into the stores and signs and posters reminding me that I am one of the lucky ones whose cancer was detected early...but unlucky in the fact that they found breast cancer in the first place...but lucky in the fact that a yearly exam sent me to the mammogram machine, and lucky in the fact that I chose to do the mastectomy which lead to the discovery of the chemo inducing 1.2 cm invasive tumor that lurked undetected by the mammogram or the MRI. Hardly a day passes that I don't think of my surgeon looking me straight in the eye and saying "you do realize that you just got another shot at life"--it's a sobering thought to have rumbling around in your brain...surfacing everytime you have a spare moment to contemplate the blessing of still being alive and healthy.
In some ways I have this euphoria that I'm alive and yet, I also have this tremendous sadness that I can't live in my pre-cancer state of naivette: that state when I thought my health was controllable and influenced mostly by my actions or lack thereof. Now I have the bald reality staring me down--I have no present control over my genes and their actions and while the magazines and reports are full of suggestions like "women who exercise have a 40% reduction in their risk of breast cancer" that statistic gives me no comfort or satisfaction or feeling of relief. If I had read those lists 2 years ago, I would have put myself squarely in the very low risk category...I had my babies young, I nursed my babies, I exercised, kept my weight under control, ate lots of fruits and veggies, didn't have family members with breast cancer... it's sort of like playing OLD MAID with Andria, I can be ahead the whole entire game, have stacks of matches stored up, but if I pick the old maid out of her hand at the last minute I still loose! I seem to handle loosing a card game okay, but I'm not so hot at handling the loss of faith in my body to do what it should!

I used to consider myself a happy optimistic person--and while I'm still happy (most of the time) and optimistic (most of the time) I feel a little more like a bi-polar personality, flip-flopping between euphoria and anger/sadness at random times and in random places. I find myself wondering more often if I'm really spending time on the things that matter, if there was some way I could have avoided lossing my temper, or have been more gentle and patient. Shouldn't I have enough perspective to let go of the small stuff and focus on the big picture? Shouldn't I be better at enjoying the little moments of life and letting go of irritations and offenses? Maybe all I accomplished in the last year besides fighting cancer was creating a whirlwind out of my emtions-I used to think I had a plan, direction, and trajectory for my life...and now I'm not so sure that I have anything figured out--and that makes it hard to live with me--for myself, my spouse and my kids!

How do I articulate that cancer has changed my view of the world and my view of myself and my view of life in general? How do I express my joy at living and my frustration with lingering fatigue? How do I express my grattitude for the gift of life, and my fear that the cancer might return? How can I explain to my child that the cancer I have is hopefully permanently in remission, but the person in the movie died from cancer that spread to another area--to a 7 year old Cancer is all the same! How can I explain the sadness that passes over me when my child says "when I have kids and you are a grandma" and I have the thought " I sure hope I get to be a grandma"...then I realize that before October 2, 2007 I never, ever, questioned the fact that I would be the most amazing, doting grandmother--because my long life was inevitable. How do I convey my sadness that at age 39 I'm wondering how many birthdays I will get to celebrate (while optimistically thinking I'll have tons) and then just as quickly I am mad at myself for feeling ungrateful--I know lots of Cancer friends that won't get nearly as many birthdays as I will. It feels almost wrong to be so happy that my cancer was found early when friends my own age or younger have worse pronosises.

I hit my one year from diagnosis mark and went to celebrate with my family--a toast with fruit topped frozen yogurt that I have a long and healthy future to look forward to, yet my emotions feel raw and on the surface just waiting to be exposed. I shed tears as I went to meet with my internist one year after she sent me for a mammogram--it was too real and heart wrenching to remember the ease with which I went to my appointment, the lack of fear I had going to the mammogram, the pinch of fear at having the biopsy and the heartbreaking day of telling my kids and family that I had breast cancer--Raw and Real to remember meeting the plastic surgeon and hearing about microsurgical options that weren't really practical options for me, seeing my scars for the first time, not being able to hug my kids, and the list could go on for days. It took me a couple of days and lots of tears to get over that day of remembering, and just writing about it reopens the wounds. And as I go about checking back in with my oncologist, or see my radiologist at a bike ride, or ask my gynecologist to join my cancer team (gotta watch for endometrial cancer now that I'm on tamoxifen) I realize how much my life has changed for better and for worse. Now that I'm in the "maintenance" stage--I'm wondering what medicine there is for maintaining a balance between my emotions of sadness and loss of innocence and my joy and gratitude for a life to live--somehow a pill just doesn't seem enough to process all the emotions and thoughts that move through my brain on a daily basis. So check in tomorrow--I could be teary eyed, or laughing; joyful or fearful; cranky or sassy...but no matter what emotion fills the moment it is who I am at this point in time...and I'm still moving forward.