I am writing about these two days together as you’d struggle to differentiate between them. The new anti-sickness concoction seems to be doing better than the last. This cycle so far seems to be going better than the second one. I’m sleeping, eating, coping well, walking, cleaning, cooking and generally feeling well enough to get into third gear. Maybe a moment or two in fourth – but I do feel the edges of my abilities and am learning to listen to those rather than put the clutch down and get into sixth gear. To go too hard too soon, stalls my engines and I struggle to start. So I do rest – I stop – sit down and read.
Chemo = catch up TV. So I throw myself into Killing Eve season 3. Had that done in these two days. My head is lighter – probably because my body doesn’t feel that heavy under the weight of the chemotherapy.
I had an assessment for counselling today. An hour on the phone with a genuinely keen to listen woman gave me the space to summarize – verbally – my journey so far. I haven’t done that for a while – verbalized it. I write it – and reflect in my head. I text/message/email. But the whole story again – what cancer I’ve got to my treatment plan, all chronologically dispersed into a neat order. And I didn’t cry. I felt I knew what I was talking about and it didn’t burn my lips when it came falling out. Good job Heidi x
Evidence I am on my way on this route. I’m not at the beginning anymore. I’ve made some distance and actually take a few moments to breathe in my achievements.
My lovely colleague now friend sends the most encouraging messages to me. She’s been on her journey and passed the finishing line so her words of comfort meant the world to me. I often re-read them to bolster my spirits, which is why I thought if I shared them with you, they may bolster yours too……
Having another human being believe in your capacity to kick the shit into the chemo and the cancer is essential. Life saving actually – and I am not exaggerating there. You need people around you to walk by your side and hold your hand – and if you can find one like this, with a raw approach and no filter – even more the better!!
She has always told me to reach out to my ‘awesome friends’ that will be there for me. She hints she kept some back – to protect maybe. But she is always telling me to talk – they’ll want to listen she says. “You’d want to be there for them if it was the other way round”. She is totally right. I would be there in a heart beat for my awesome friends. And I have realised that I haven’t done that. Is that why the last cycle felt so physically and mentally draining? I kept a lot of my feelings in. I withdrew from my husband and always had a ‘yeah I’m OK’ to hand to throw back at anyone’s inquiring concern. Why have I done this? I’m good at this – I have done it all my life – I was learning NOT to do this as much. I had learnt to let my husband in. Before cancer we were talking about our feelings. Lots to talk about with COVID and the changes we were feeling as a family being together 24/7. Plus the lock down gifted us time – something that was a rare commodity before 23/03/20.
But I have withdrawn once more and I have struggle as a result. I have pulled back. I have noticed it.
It’s a classic sign of depression. I’ve worked with this presenting issue for years and seen a shift in the way it emerges in people. Social media has a lot to answer for in my opinion. It has brought huge mounting pressure to people’s lives and many just aren’t robust enough to be on show 24 hours a day.
One of depressions closest friend and advocate is grief. Grief doesn’t always mean bereavement. You don’t have to lose a person to death to experience grief.
I am grieving. I am grieving for a life I once had, an identity I once owned, a body that was once working, a confidence I once felt safe in, a family I once ran, a job I once excelled in (or at least tried to), and a certainty that I was in control and emotionally and physically safe.
It actually really hurts writing that down and sharing that with you. Vulnerability has really cut into my soul and for the first time in my life I have felt truly suffocated by it. So, because I feel so at risk to myself and my life, I have put distance between myself and others so as to avoid these difficult feelings twisting inside of me.
I have been fed up and I have checked out. I couldn’t mobilize my thinking. I had burnt out and couldn’t see a way out.
But now – nearing the weekend and I’m over 50 hours in from my third cycle, I am feeling some light in the shade. A fleck of sunshine is seeping in and my face is desperate for the bright, warm feeling it has to offer. I’m guessing this is also due to less side effects – or my tolerance of them. NOT feeling nauseous is the most amazing feeling. Tired I can live with – I do live with. Ditto breathlessness and lack of energy. But the sickness is by far the most disabling feeling for me. I hate it. So far I’ve had hours of it and days of it. The feeling is just awful. Stressful. It makes me feel anxious and angry and I can’t do anything with those feelings because I don’t have the energy. So they sit, huddled together in the bottom of my stomach regurgitating their purpose, not caring at all for the body they are occupying.
To conclude – what I am trying to convey today is yes it gets nasty inside – your body hurts – your mind convulses – but you will get through it. It will pass.
You will rise again – maybe still weak – and listless but each time you get back up again is proof you are winning and cancer is not. The bigger picture – ‘an understanding of a situation that includes more than what is immediately apparent’.
Believe in yourself and what you can do. Eliminate your self-doubt. Right now you are capable of finding that tiny seed you need to feed. You are a worthful individual and you deserve to grow that seed into a more brilliant and more confident version of yourself.
