First off, I'm sorry you're here.
There is life over the ledge. It will take time, but you will get your life back and it will not revolve around cancer as much. While it goes quick at first with all the scans and appointments, it settles into a routine. Whether you start with chemo every week or three weeks, or with surgery and then recovery, it seems to pace itself out. After what seems like forever and the pace changes from active treatment to maintenance, you will look back and wonder if that really was your life.
Second off, you did not do this to yourself. The cancer did not come about
because you drank bottled water from a plastic container, or didn’t go to that zumba class on July 12th, or you couldn’t breastfeed. It just happened. Random cells went rouge. Your body did not betray you. The cancer cells just found a nice, warm spot to set up home. Now it’s time to evict them.
If you see something, say something. There is no trophy at the end because you stayed quiet and didn’t question that big red mark around the surgery site that turned out to be an infection. Ask “what would make me call you?” Listen to that, but also let the doctor or nurses know everything that is off. You never know what could be that one thing that could have been prevented had you said something. Protocols can be changed. Chemo can be turned down. But you have to speak out.
Put you first. Not easy, I know, but detrimental. You will feel “off”, like you can’t catch up. Like you are that spinning circle of a website trying to load. It does go away eventually, but it can be hard, especially when you are hard on yourself. You will be able to do ONE THING a day. It might be going to work. Don’t expect to come home and cook dinner and do laundry. You are not helping yourself heal if you do this.
It is okay to set ground rules. It is even more okay to write it down if you can’t verbalize it. If you want phone calls and visits, great. If you don’t, great. Set ground rules. “No Aunt Betty, I do not want you and your four puppies to come visit me and ask me all sorts of questions an hour after I get home from a long day of chemo.” “I will go to work today, but I cannot cook dinner.” “I can cook dinner, but I will not go to work today.” Your rules.
Chemo takes away the good cells as well as the cancer cells. The good cells rebuild; the cancer cells do not. Meanwhile, those good cells are rebuilding everywhere and your body is exhausted because of this.
You are not lazy or not good enough or not strong enough. Your body is doing a huge job and it needs you to be nice to it.
Chemo is not what it used to be. You should not be puking your guts out for days on end. This even starts to happen, call your doctor. It can be helped. You should feel off and a little out of it, but not completely under the front tire of a bus for the foreseeable future.
This is a chapter. Yes, it’s a sucky chapter, but it is not your entire book. Life will be different after diagnosis. People call it the “new normal” a phrase which I personally hate. My old normal had a 2 centimeter tumor in it so I will take anything that doesn’t have that. It’s simply a readjustment and realignment of your life.
