Feb 3
A mammogram. What was I thinking. I should have pushed for an MRI. I don’t trust mammograms. I found my own tumor. And it showed up on the mammogram. Of course it did. It was big enough for me to feel. Hard as a rock. The size of an edamame.
I pulled together a list of the tips for getting through chemo, and the side effects, that helped me the most.
Then came the circles under my eyes. And the rapid weight gain. The slightly puffy face. Well, I was thrown into menopause after my first chemo back in February so my metabolism is slowing down. What about the edema in my ankles? My ongoing Herceptin perhaps.
Still, on a sliding scale of awfulness, if I add up all of the bad things that have happened to my family in the last 12 months, I would put the awfulness at the higher end of the scale. One of my worst years ever. No, make that plain and simple: my worst year ever.
On November 18th, almost to the hour of when we first said, “I do,” we’ll say it again. In front of Elvis, in a little chapel on Las Vegas Boulevard. I’ll be wearing the dress I wore when we got married the first time. He’ll be wearing a Ralph Lauren Ultrasuede jacket that we found at Goodwill last week for $20.00.
I don’t have the “I’m in cancer treatment” look anymore. If you didn’t know me before I went through chemo, you wouldn’t know all that my body has endured. You wouldn’t know that I used to be in better shape or had shoulder length brown hair.
My hair is long enough to pass for NYC chic.
I am forever changed physically and emotionally. Maybe some of it’s for the better. I’m not ready to pass judgement on that part of it yet. But I know for sure that some of that change is not good. Not for me. Not for my kids. And definitely not for my husband.
Though I want to sprint to the cancer treatment finish line, to be done with this, and for my body to start healing, I don’t want these next few months to go by too quickly. Because I’ll never get them back. And I don’t want to let cancer steal them away from me.
When I was done I went back out to the bedroom and turned on my iPhone flashlight to check the condition of the sheets. Only a teensy weensy bit of shit had gotten onto my new West Elm sheets. I was relieved and figured I could lay a towel down over the spot and deal with it in the morning.
