Truce & Realization

The title isn't as quite as zippy as "truth & reconciliation," but it'll do, it'll do. Which is, in large part, what this post is all about. Ever since the tour through the suburbs of Cancer Town started about five months ago, I've tried my best to look for the good parts; the lessons of kindness and grace that could be learned. In large part, I've had success with that - friends have been unfailingly kind, my medical team has made me feel that we're actually a team instead of me being Chart #17, my family has been just incredible, and even acquaintances and near-strangers have been beacons of support for me and for FryDaddy through all of this.

I can say with honesty that I wish I hadn't had to learn any of it, or at least I wish I hadn't been put into this class. But I can also say that I'm glad I have learned some things along the way. What follows are personal lessons; actual mileage may vary and heaven knows, the contents may have settled during shipping.

My stint of radiation treatment has concluded and I didn't expect/prepare for the aftermath. Even though I'd been told what to expect, I didn't listen. I truly thought that I was different and that while it might take other people a month or more to get back to about 80% energy-wise, well - that wasn't going to be me. Fewmets, I say. I've been out of treatment for a touch over a week and I get tired very easily. It took me about a week to recognize the obvious. (Speaking of which, I passed on Saturday's Color Vibe run - a decision I'm convinced was the right one due to my physical state and the weather that day [clear but quite cold], but a decision I agonized over far more than a sane person would have.) It also helped that FryDaddy said something that actually got through the butcher's block of my head. Yes, he said, it's true that I'm not vomiting or feverish, but I'm recovering from a super-mild case of radiation sickness. Somehow, that term made an impact that nothing else (including his [joking?] threat to go to the vet and get a tranq gun) had made. From that epiphany, a number of others have sprouted, all of which can be summed up with this:

I'm not what I was before the diagnosis but I have the ability to be magnificent in this new skin.

To me, this is completely eye-opening. As I've gotten older, I've struggled with - well, with getting older. I spent much of my growing-up years being the youngest in my crowd - I'm the baby of the family (both immediate and extended) and was the last of my friends to get my license and pass the other markers of teenhood. Also, I read the roles of my family as the pretty one, the athletic one, then me. (Don't bother telling me anything about that isn't accurate; I know it's screwy, but there it is.) Mind you, I never thought I needed plastic surgery to avoid scaring the livestock, but I always saw myself as plain, clumsy, and bookish. (Funny, though. I always thought I was funny.) Over the years, I made peace with that and even modified my opinions a bit, but there's my baseline; that's the skin I lived in.

And now my skin is different. The texture is different and the color is different - the treated area is both burned and peeling at the moment. My overall body is different - due in part to aging and due in part to dramatic changes (read: not the good kind) in the last few months in my diet and exercise habits. Things aren't tight and jiggle-free. My clothes are larger, which I spent a good deal of time hating, feeling that I was "letting myself go." (God, what an awful phrase, as if I need to be tightly controlled at all times instead of inhabiting my own body.) The fact of the matter is that yes, I'm different physically than I was twenty, ten, or even five years ago. I'm not willowy or waifish. I like a good, dense cheesecake and I long for the day when I can tie on my shoes and slowly jobble to the end of my road again, huffing and covered in the honest sweat that comes with exertion.

We had some tree work done over the last few weeks. Now that it's completed, the yard looks different. Messy in some places where leaves weren't raked due to the brush and also sort of raw where the trees and brush are cleared out. I'm looking forward to figuring out what to do with the space, determining what will best grow there and preparing the ground.

You know what? I feel the same way about my body. It's different than it was. In a way, brush has been cleared out and that's left changes on the landscape. And - it's true - I'll never, ever look like I did 20 years ago.

I'm so much better. 

Even on the days when I feel frumpy or tired or overwhelmed or like an impostor. I worked hard to look like this - to be upright and breathing and of at least a reasonable amount of usefulness to others and whether I do that with shiny hair and mascara-ed lashes or mismatched socks and a well-used ballcap jammed over pink hair - well, as Billie Holiday would saucily remind me, ain't nobody's business if I do.

Zero!

As in, "How many radiation treatments are left?" That's right - today is Day 3 post-radiation of my DCIS journey. On the final day, FryDaddy came with me to meet my treatment team (who really were just fabulous throughout the entire process) and see me ring the bell that they have for folks on their final day of active treatment. My techs gave me a glowstick necklace to simulate the superpowers that (sadly) never manifested - turns out that comic books lie about that part - and drew a funny picture on me that made the (ahem) affected area look an awful lot like Jeff Dunham's puppet Peanut. And there was, of course, cake and celebration.

So yes - 33 treatments over six-and-a-half weeks have come to an end. (Yay! Cheers! And the crowd goes wild!) I'm not done yet - I have frequent follow-ups and five years of tamoxifen ahead of me, but this endeth the active stage of treatment. It'll take a little while for me to heal from it all - I'm burned and the healing involves itching, peeling and overcoming the fatigue that comes with 33 doses of radiation dangerous enough to the healthy to be delivered in a room that could withstand a nuclear attack - seriously, the door to the treatment room is a good foot-and-a-half thick. Therefore, I'm not planning on doing much beyond my day job for at least the next two weeks (and I hope to do large chunks of that from home). I'm using Easter as my marker. It seems appropriate to use that day of joy and resurrection as my new starting point.

Back before I realized that I was like everybody else, and would therefore have side effects from radiation treatment (seriously, I'm not always the brightest bulb in the chandelier), I signed up for a 5K Color Vibe run with a friend who's never done a 5K before. That seemed like a great thing to do. The Color Run was my first 5K a year ago, it's untimed and tremendous fun, and it was the official "coming out" of my jobbling persona, the Dancing Sloth - I was eager to share that experience. But the event is next weekend and I'm not in any kind of shape for running. Well, that's okay. There will be very little running from this Sloth, but I expect to walk the route and get doused with color and cheer on my friend. No doubt about it, I'm starting my training over pretty much from scratch (and I'm not really starting anything until Easter), but that's okay. I understand things differently now and part of what I understand is that I'm still a runner, even if I haven't run in a while. You have to take time off to heal from injuries, whether those injuries are running-related or not, and by my calculation, cancer treatment counts.

Other changes are also indicated, especially in diet and stress reduction, and these are areas FryDaddy and I plan to work on together. Much work remains to be done but wow! am I glad to be moving forward! Let me once again give a shout-out to everyone, everywhere who's been part of this with us. Whether it was your willingness to wear a colander on your head, whip up dinner for us, tend to the Spookinator, rake the yard, pray, meet for coffee, send cards - the list of kindnesses that let us know that it wasn't just us against the world goes on and on and on and on. And I don't know that I can adequately express how much it all matters. It really, really did - and does! I've learned so much about kindness, compassion, and (weird as it sounds) joy over the last few months and I'm grateful for the lessons, although I still dislike the teacher.

Be kind. Everybody needs it - especially the ones you don't think deserve it.

Boost!

I'm pleased to report that I'm on the home stretch! Yesterday was my last "big" radiation treatment and I had my "field check" to mark the area that would be involved in these last eight treatments. These "boost treatments" are more narrowly focused than the previous treatments and focus more on the actual surgical site instead of on the entire breast. The good news (aside from the fact that this means the end is in sight - YAY!!) is that I'll no longer be getting radiation on the area that has been most affected by the radiation. While my side effects haven't been that bad, there has been some burning and irritation, as well as noticeable fatigue. Not exhaustion, mind you - it's not that I can't get out of bed, but it takes a bit longer to do things, running is a pale memory right now, and I conk out by the time television considers "prime." This too shall pass, although it may take the better part of a month post-treatment for me to really feel like myself again.

Of course, the end of radiation treatments is not the end of this whole thing. I'll still have check-ups and there's a medical regime I'll be on for five years. FIVE YEARS. Then again, post-surgical radiation statistically cuts my chances of recurrence in half and following this regime cuts that number in half again, and even I can do that math.

Another one of the common side effects of even a brush with cancer is increased anxiety and boy, did I get that one in spades. Stupid ol' brain just wouldn't settle down and look at reality. Oh, no, it had to spinandspinandspin. Lack of sleep led to more fretfulness over a wide variety of things - my Calvinist work ethic makes me think fatigue is laziness and I should just "buck up." Also, like many academics, I suffer from "impostor syndrome" from time to time, feeling that my writing, ideas, and observations aren't really original and that people are just being kind - ideas like that went into overdrive.

After a few weeks of trying to think my way out of it, I used the common sense God gave geese and made an appointment with my doctor, who patiently informed me that, at this juncture, not feeling normal was - well, normal. So we came up with a plan to work on that issue. Seriously, people - check your headspace. You don't have to feel rainbows & roses constantly (in fact, that's pretty off-the-normal-scale), but you wouldn't "tough it out" with a compound fracture, would you? Same idea. You're worth taking care of, but you have to be willing to do it.

Let me repeat that - you're worth taking care of.