I Remember

It has been two years since my last chemo treatment. Two years since I was unhooked from tubes of poison...tubes of life...and I signed the completion log and I walked out of the chemo room for the last time. Two years ago I finished the second hardest thing I've had to overcome in my life.

I remember the phone call that would change my life forever. That exact moment standing in the break room at work talking to my doctor on the phone and feeling as if I was falling. His words were cryptic, but I knew exactly what meaning they held. I remember hanging up and all I could think of was that I needed to find Adam.

I remember my first chemo. I was scared and I felt cramped in the crowded chemo ward. Everyone was easily triple my age and they looked at me out of curiosity and they looked at me out of pity. I remember Adam asked the nurses to turn my chair to the window and the two of us sat and looked out at the beauty outside instead of the pain within.

I remember the first time I saw my chest. I remember waiting a full week to look and Adam stood beside me in the bathroom and he let me cry and cry as I looked at myself in the mirror. I remember him hugging me and telling me I was beautiful.

I remember the dinner I had with Majah and Fajah the night of my diagnosis. They held my hand across the table and they told Adam and I that everything would be okay.

I remember waiting for the last surgery. I was lying on the table and they were pumping me with a medicine that took away all of my fear and pain. I remember trying to stay awake as long as could before they put me under so I could feel the absence of that quiet fear and pain I tucked away so carefully.

I remember that I hated chemo. I hated the way it made me look. The way it made me feel. The days of my life it took away from me. And yet I smiled and I went, because I loved it for saving my life.

I remember, our friend Steve being there with his generosity and his concern and his love. I remember how the absence of our friends ached in our hearts when I was too sick to keep up.

I remember an outpouring of love and support and gifts from my family. And by family I do not mean my conventional family. I mean the people in my life who have created a family for a girl who needed one. Both of blood kin and not.

I remember these memories and so many more that have made me who I am today. I walked into the chemo room as a scared and lost girl who wanted only to be strong, but I walked out with more than I ever knew I had.

And it was as I walked out of the medical center on September 29^th 2011 that I walked into what would be without a doubt the hardest part of my life...life after cancer.

I remember how scared I was of getting sick again.  Every ache or every oddity I found myself on the verge of tears and barely able to breathe for the fear that constricted my chest.

I remember feeling lost among even some of my closest and dearest friends.  I realized their lives had continued on in my absence, as only they should.  I found that I had missed major changes and seven months worth of stories and inside jokes.

I remember having no patience at work with people who were rude or angry.  I felt life was too short for them to create negativity in my day, and I feared that if I could not learn to cope I would lose my job.

I remember driving past the place where I was diagnosed every single day.  I would sit at the stop light and sometimes forget to go once the light turned green, because I would be drawn back to the day I was diagnosed.  I remember Adam and I decided we needed to move, because our whole town was connected to cancer memories.

I remember the cruel and heartless things that were said to me.  I worked with the public and most of the time these painful words were said by customers, but at other times they were said by people I knew.  I realize now that I was not the only one who was scared and having trouble finding acceptance in what had happened to me.

I remember Adam and I sitting outside of our new home, waiting to hear the news back from a recent scare, and crying. I remember how scared he looked as I told him how unhappy I was, and as I finally admitted to the major depression that had consumed me.

I remember my doctor prescribing me post traumatic stress medicine, and with that medicine I was finally able to take my first stable steps back into my life.

Now two years have passed, and we are celebrating.  We are celebrating the fact that I have made it to the first big milestone in a cancer survivor’s life.  But we are also celebrating that I am out of my depression...that I am here in the world and that I can honestly say I am happy.  We are celebrating the fact that I have been off of mood altering drugs, and I do not need them any longer to cope.  The memories come at me more frequently, but I am able to process them and heal in way that I was not able to do before.

I had planned to have a party.  A party to celebrate my journey, Adam’s journey and all of the people who have been there to support us along the way.  Instead I find myself writing this blog in the few hours between work shifts, having already celebrated a quiet dinner with Majah and Fajah a couple of nights ago.  I couldn’t have taken off of work, because I just started an amazing new job.  I couldn’t have taken off of work, because I wanted to make sure I was free to be involved in the wedding plans of two of my closest friends.  I couldn't have taken off of work, because I needed to make sure I could still get off for my five year wedding aniversary next month.  And I think that perhaps this says more about my healing than anything else could. 

How my two year anniversary is spent feels poetic to the nature of how life should be…I could have thrown a party to celebrate getting my life back…but instead I am too busy to throw a party, because I’m out living the life I worked so hard to have.  And even better yet, I'm living it with contentment and peace and am finally watching my wounds slowly heal.

 

I wish there was a way I could thank the people who have helped me reach where I am today.  I carry so much gratitude and love for the people in my life.  I do not know that I will ever have the right words to express to some of you, but what I can say is this....

 

Cancer, both during and after, has taught me pain.  It has taught me to feel desperation.  Fear.  Anger, and loss.  But it has also taught me strength.  It has taught me determination.  Acceptance.  Happiness and love.  It has given me the tools to find what is important to me.  My doctors in all of their ability and skill have saved my life...but in all of you I have found what it truly means to live. 

Missing Pieces...Still Whole

                In layers I can feel almost normal.  At first glance you wouldn't know I have scars instead of breasts.  This is just one of many reasons I prefer the winter.

                In the summer it is too hot to cover.  Ever since chemo I simply cannot handle the heat.  I get dizzy.  I get nauseous.  I get weak in my knees and all of my insides feel as if they are melting.  And so I layer with limitations.  I will put a tank top over another tank top.  I try to go with a more delicate flowing look.  But no matter what I try my lack of breasts is obvious.  For me this is okay, but what about for the rest of the world?

                I work with the public.  The more brazen people will ask me out right.

                “What happened to your breasts?”

                “When are you going to fix your boobs?”

                “I bet it is hard to find clothes that fit.”

                “You are so lucky.”

                “Does your husband care?”

                “Are you going to get reconstruction?”

                “Are you going to get reconstruction?”

                “Are you going to get reconstruction?”

                It is one of the most difficult accomplishments to be comfortable with one’s self when the world is not.  This is something I have learned.

                I wish sometimes I could see another person like me.  I would not say anything.  We would just see one another and we would lock eyes and we would know.  We would understand.  Even in my own breast cancer community I am surrounded by breasts whether fake or real, and so I asked my doctor.

                “Am I the only one?”

                He says no, but sometimes I’m not so sure.

                I worked a breast cancer event shortly after returning to work.  No one thought I was ready, but I agreed to go for only one reason.  I wanted to see women without breasts.  I wanted to see what styles they choose to wear for shirts.  I wanted to see their confidence.  I wanted to see their beauty. 

There were easily one hundred women at the event.  They flowed through the room like a river of pink.  All different shapes.  All different sizes.  As far as I could tell all had two humps on their chests.

                I do not have judgment for women who choose reconstruction.  Nor do I have judgment for women with prosthetics.  After all, I can still be found to wear a bra with certain shirts.  It’s a tight fitting sporty bra that covers my scars in case my shirt hangs forward.  We all have our own personal battles and journeys and no other person has the right to question those decisions, so please do not misread my words.  It is not judgment.  It is only mild surprise mixed with the longing of a more understanding culture.

                I am not ashamed of the way I look.  I can stand and look at myself in the mirror without flinching.  My reflection may represent a different person than it once did, but I am still a woman and I still can find beauty.  But it is after I am dressed and walking in this world that the battle of acceptance is challenged by stares, by comments and by questions.  By our culture’s pure obsession with breasts and outward beauty.  Yet this is a challenge I will not lose.

                Cancer has not only been a lesson in surviving.  It has also been a lesson in accepting myself even as the odd woman out.

                So to the public I say in response,

                “I had cancer.”

                “They aren’t broken.”

                “Isn’t it always?”

                “You have no idea how very much.”

                “Of course not.  He loves me.”

                “No.  I don’t need it.”

                “No.  I don’t want it.”

                “No.  This is who I am.”

Lost and Found

I am back.

Or am I?...

Perhaps I am here for the very first time,

Because “I” is a very fickle thing.

Changing between the now and the then,

and all of the in-betweens.

I am beginning to believe that life is the process of losing and finding oneself continuously.

Lost and then found.

But it is not the same as the losing and finding of more material things.  We all have lost our keys at some point.  I always seem to do it when I am in a hurry or when my patience has already been thoroughly tested by other things.  I dump my purse.  I rummage through pockets.  I scan the counter tops and even check in the refrigerator…just in case.  I search until I catch a glimpse of them and with a leap in my heart I exclaim, “There they are!” and grab them before dashing out of the door. 

Lost and then found.

We take this for granted, you and I.  We take for granted upon finding our keys that no further inspection is needed.  They are the same keys they have always been and the same keys they will continue to be.

But what if they weren’t?  What if we found our keys and they no longer opened the same doors or started the same cars?  What if instead of finding all of our keys intact on their ring we could only find one key at a time hidden in a million different places?  Would we still count the keys as being found if time had changed them from their original design?

Lost and then…found??

These are the questions I ask when I see an old picture of myself.  I could just as easily be looking at someone else, but I like to hold the photo and remember how this girl felt.  I try to put myself in her shoes only knowing what she knew and enjoying the things she enjoyed.  I can remember, but I also must acknowledge, as I put the photo away, that I am not her any longer.

I have changed from one year to the next.  Through one event to another.  We all have.  My biggest change has occurred since cancer, but certainly we all have those big life events that change everything we once knew.  Even if we don’t, we have changed more slowly over the passing of time, but have changed all the same.

It still disarms me though.  I think of the girl who was lost.  I miss so many aspects of who she was at times.  Some of them are physical, but most of them were based in an innocence of thought.  Every once in a while I will see a small part of her, but it is more of a shadow than a presence.  I lost her, and while I am finding myself, I do not believe she will be found in the process.

Lost and then never found, but always finding.

If that makes any sense.

This new self I am finding promises to be so much more than my old self was. This new self is back…or here…or is coming and I am okay in knowing one day she may be lost too, but that is why we are here.  To adapt…To change…To lose…To find…And to hope the process creates something beautiful enough to make it all worth it in the end.