This morning I'm very tired. My face is puffy and my brain is foggy; I wish it was my period. I miss her; the whining onset of discomfort in the pelvis, the constant managing of products and underwear, the plump deep red droplets in toilet water - the deluge. I met her when I was 14. She taught me so much and she gave me Max. When she died, she took with her all of my unborn children; a true terrorist. But it was the cancer who started it all, the caner who gave the orders.
Thank God we got Max before that cancer started silencing ovaries and imbuing grief in everything gold!
This is my second diagnosis. Everyday I think about the first time I was diagnosed and how very, very different it was. By the end of my treatment; by the time I was told I was cancer free, I had post traumatic stress syndrome and had vowed to teach the ignorant about cancer.
The first time around was different in many ways; including the way I was responded to. People said things like "cervical cancer? doesn't everyone get that?" or "cervical cancer? is that about lifestyle?" or my favourite, "cervical cancer? oh that, well they just give you a hysterectomy and then it's gone." I chose to teach instead of resent, I think everyone preferred it that way; but man, did those comments dart and hurt and shock. I suppose, in every convoluted and painful scenario, a little tact goes a long way. But like I said before, it's more natural this way - this has got the verisimilitude of book studied in Lit class.
In my last series of treatments, I had essentially nine, count them - 9 doctors appointments a week for 10 weeks. 5 Radiation appointments a week, 1 chemo appointment a week, 1 blood lab a week, 1 radiation follow up a week, 1 chemo follow up. I worked and took care of my baby and my husband and I really don't recall not performing well.
It was during this first series of treatments, that I learned this was my battle; that I was on my own and only I could fight it; in a lonely kind of way. I was surprised at how many people forgot I was going through that. The phone would ring and I'd say hey and then off and running into a conversation that didn't have the word cancer or treatment in it. Most people didn't know what to say to person who appeared to be together. And for some reason, it wasn't "really" cancer. The odds were good, it was mostly always curable. I remember a friend of mine told me she wished I'd break down more often so she could feel like she was helping!
It's different now, everyone is right here and very close. That scares me.
1 comment:
On thinking about cancer, I was recalling that when I visited my hometown of Campbellton, in New Brunswick, some years back, to spend time with my sister-in-law, Dee, as she was living her last two weeks with cancer, I found that just in her block, there were five people dying of the thing, and so many of my old friends and neighbours had succumbed to 'it'.I wanted to know what the reason there was so much of it there, but got no answers. One theory was that they had sprayed agent orange in the nearby woods, so that the lumber company could have a better harvest.
A friend, whose husband and brother in law and others in her family had died, put it this way:
"I feel like there is a monster in the bushes, and it's just waiting for me to pass by, so it can grab me, like it has the others."
Surely, there must be a way to kill the bastard!
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