I tend to be a go-getter. When I discover a problem, I want to attack it and move on. This is how I wanted to attack my breast cancer. Go in, remove it, do a few treatments, declare myself a survivor and move on.
What I was not prepared for was the excruciating wait that goes along with this whole process. You run to find out what is wrong with you and have to WAIT until the tests are in. Then you decide to do surgery and you have to WAIT until all of your tests are done and the OR can be scheduled. You get the cancer out and you are ready to start treatments and you have to WAIT to heal before they will even talk to you definitively about what those treatments should be.
Bear in mind, I am only talking a few days or a couple of weeks… but for me, the time seemed to pass so slowly. I was like a child waiting for Christmas. It seemed to never get here! I even expressed this to my surgeon on my follow up visit about eight days out and he told me to calm down. He asked me to think of it this way, the demon was gone and a few days for me to heal would not hurt anything because the thing that we had been rushing to get rid of before was gone. I suppose he was right. That doesn’t make waiting around any easier!
The hardest part about waiting around is that your mind plays games with you! Yes, it creates all sorts of scenarios that are likely to never take place at all. Nonetheless, you still think them and it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing them if you are not careful.
For example, on one of my lowest days between surgery and my oncology consult was one where I simply felt… blue. My stitches were great, the soreness was leaving my breast and arm, I had been back to work already, but I just did not feel good. I was beaten down by the thought of what roads lay before me and I started letting horrible thoughts creep into my head. “Maybe I deserved this somehow.” “Maybe this is because I didn’t believe in God enough.” “What happens if the doctors are wrong and its still there?” and the one no one can answer… “Why me?!?”
It was late at night and I sat on my bed trying to coax myself into blogging or emailing a friend – anything to take my mind off of my bad thoughts. I flipped the channels and I landed on cute little flick I had seen once before, Last Holiday, and thought it might be a nice “chick-flick” for me on such a depressing night. As I watched the TV and ignored my computer, I became mesmerized by the story again. I literally laughed and cried as I saw myself and the past few weeks of my life wrapped up in the same type of emotions the character was feeling. By the time she started bursting out in the middle of Sunday morning choir service with a series of moaning “Why me Lords,” I realized I was opening crying. It was then and there I realized for the first time I was letting this get the best of me. I had sworn a hundred times over it would not, but here I was thinking I somehow DESERVED cancer. How ludicrous is that?!? So like my fictional counterpart, I decided to quite worrying about why and just enjoy the time I had (Or course, it’s not like I’m about to die or anything, but the lesson is still important for all of us!).
So I planned a trip and it didn’t work out. I planned an outing and it failed. Persistent to find a way to take my mind off of things, I stole my mother and daughter one Saturday afternoon and we went to Memphis to shop. I found so many cute things and spent more money than I should have, but it was honestly the first time since I heard the words breast cancer that I had felt like me. It felt good to still be me. I vowed then that I would not slump again. I would press forward and I would forget to always be the practical person and indulge my whims a bit as I went.
So what if I really didn’t need a PSP game console to entertain me during my chemo sessions – it sure will be fun to have. So what if I had to sit in the scorching heat the same day of my medaport surgery to see my son’s t-ball game – I’ll never regret it as the next games were cancelled and I got to see his very last game. And most importantly, so what does it matter if I do not live up to the magical standard that others set for me – I am happy inside my own skin and that is ALL that matters.
“Next time… we will laugh more, we’ll love more; we just won’t be so afraid.” – Georgia Byrd, Last Holiday
