The night before last I went out in Smithtown and saw a bunch of my high school friends for the first time in a while; some are moving, some are starting grad school, some are preparing for their first or another year of teaching. In short, everyone is getting on with their lives, which to me fits in with the way that the cold breeze sweeps in around this time and lifts the dead leaves from their branches to be raked up. I don't think I'm alone in thinking of September as the beginning of the year, rather than in January. Things kind of collect in the summer--from laissez faire attitudes to work to pints of ice cream in the fridge--but fall is the time to assess what you don't need and exfoliate all of the extras like the dry skin of an old tan.
(I'd just like it to be known that metaphors aside, I'm not happy about losing my tan.)
Maybe I'm not starting school and probably won't start a job until November or December, but today marked what should be (it pains me tp type should be, details on that in a bit) my last day of chemotherapy. I made a facebook status while having coffee today about it, and over 80 people "liked" it. I'd love to claim it was representative soley of my extreme popularity (ew Internet popularity is such a weird thing to ponder), but I also think people were responding to something positive revolving around such a heinously negative thing as cancer. The many people who liked that status and left comments told me not only that people cared about me (which I can't emphasize how gushy it made me feel) but also that maybe I have succeeded in a small way one of the things I set out to accomplish with my blog and being more vocal about it on FB than the average bear--giving people insight to having cancer in a way that a google search couldn't. If I was the first person to do this for anyone, or better yet, made it known that me or my blog could be a resource for people who are diagnosed on the future, I would consider myself utterly grateful, and that would probably be the best thing that could come out of all this. (I do realize I'm talking about facebook, where people comment on things willy nilly, but still. I hope. )
I wrote that carefully so as not to come off "I am the queen of all cancer information and my blog deserves a pulitzer," because, duh, in the end, it's just one of thousands of personal chronicles on the Internet, but I just wanted to ultimately express my gratitude for all of your messages that said it was being well-received by you. (Also my Chronogram horoscope said some stuff about knowing the difference between being self centered vs being "centered in yourself" and narcism vs self love, so, according to the stars, I am sorting it out, and will continue to do so here, because, as I've said many times, this blog allows me to articulate myself on ways akin to therapy.)
That being said, I'll get to what's really on my mind--yesterday, after I posted that status, I thought "Well, better just check with my doctor that this is truly it." According to him, there is a 95% likelihood it will be, but there is a 5% chance that the pet scan I will get in two weeks will reveal something "very extreme" (meaning the activity of the cells is not low enough to satisfy my doctor) and I will have to have four more sessions of chemo, potentially tacking another two months on.
95% is an A+ in most learning institutions. It is by all means a fantastic percentage. But after something as unlucky as getting cancer happens to you, no matter how optimistic a person you are, for a little bit your mind goes to the other 5%, and you get anxious thinking about doing half of what you just did (which, if you're looking exclusively at the second half, were no picnic.) As I said to my friends, I literally can't entertain that idea. Except I am. Ugh.
There's only so far positive thinking can take you, but after this writing, I vow to do my best not to consider the possibility of more chemo so my body is like, "You know what? you're right, let's move on to radiation, shall we?" but obviously, if it has to be done, I'll just have to fucking do it. That's been my attitude from the start, and it's not like I have the choice of changing it, so...yeah.
I remember my fourth session of chemo, a nurse I had met at mather hospital was on her last session. I asked her how she felt, expecting a big smile and relief but she just looked at me, tired. "I'm done, I'm just done," she said. "I want my hair to grow back, I went to lose the ten pounds I've put on from the nausea medicine, I want to not be tired. I'm done."
Instead of breaking through the finishing line tape triumphantly, it seemed to me she was limping to the end of the race. But now I understand how it feels to get to the last one and just feel exhausted rather than exhilarated. Apart from tired, I just feel like a shadow of what I could be physically. I get winded walking up two sets of stairs. I feel ugly and bloated. My eyelashes thinned out so much that my eyes are constantly tearing and it makes me sad to attempt to wear mascara. I average about one dream a week about putting my hair up in a messy bun, or even that it's anything but the patchy, weird, chicky baby hair I have going on right now.
There's a fine line to tred when complaining about your looks and cancer. On one hand, feeling unattractive for reasons that are mostly out of your hands sucks. But on the other hand, the one that would weigh more if I were doing the hand scale thing, I'm alive and will most likely continue to be for a while. Having friends and meeting people whose family members or loved ones have died from cancer, you can't complain about looks without thinking of them and how much more pain they're in. I'm just trying to be as honest as I can here, and part of that to me is admitting that I feel like a troll doll. I dont know.
This whole thing reads a lot more serious and subdued than what I usually like to write, I guess because I'm afraid to feel the full flush of relief until I get those pet scan results back. But like I said, after this, I want to do my best to let it go until I have to deal with it and try to accomplish something good in the next few weeks.
There's a fine line to tred when complaining about your looks and cancer. On one hand, feeling unattractive for reasons that are mostly out of your hands sucks. But on the other hand, the one that would weigh more if I were doing the hand scale thing, I'm alive and will most likely continue to be for a while. Having friends and meeting people whose family members or loved ones have died from cancer, you can't complain about looks without thinking of them and how much more pain they're in. I'm just trying to be as honest as I can here, and part of that to me is admitting that I feel like a troll doll. I dont know.
This whole thing reads a lot more serious and subdued than what I usually like to write, I guess because I'm afraid to feel the full flush of relief until I get those pet scan results back. But like I said, after this, I want to do my best to let it go until I have to deal with it and try to accomplish something good in the next few weeks.
In non-cancer news, Hurricane Irene left us without power from Sunday morning to last (Thursday) night. Like true pioneers, we hooked the generator up to the fridge in the garage and ran a line through the kitchen, unplugging it from the coffee machine and plugging it into the toaster for breakfast. Like pilgrims, we called my dad's electrician friend and had him hook up the generator to the hot water heater, too, and took hot showers.
It was almost a complete non-event, other than the fact that instead of crickets out my window, I heard the VERY LOUD growling buzz of the generator and those of my neighbors' every night and read by the light of a flashlight. Wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been. Oh, except all of the bands and events scheduled for the Quiksilver Pro NY in Long Beach were cancelled because they couldn't build the stages up back in time. Major bummer, brah.
But hopefully, probably, good things are on the horizon, and I'm just gonna focus on them for a bit.
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