7 February 2012

Back to Normal?

Stomach

Breast

People like me who have a blissfully uneventful life are often sent reeling by big events.  Such was the case for me seven years ago when my step-mother and mother were both diagnosed with stage 4 cancer within months of each other.  My step-mother's stomach cancer was brutal and aggressive.  We lost her just after a year.  My mom's breast cancer recurrence was slightly more livable, giving mom a pretty good quality of life for another two years before she decided she was done.  I had never had someone so close to me die and it rocked my world.

The feelings after 'something big' are surreal.  It colors every aspect of your life.  Nothing feels 'normal'.  Every other breath comes with thoughts of the changes the event has wrought.  All of your thoughts and ideas, both looking back and into the future, are filtered through it.  It's the first thing on your mind when you wake up and the last thing you remember thinking before you fall asleep, and then you dream about it. And then one morning you don't think about it until you are brushing your teeth, or eating breakfast.  You don't realize this at first, but your psyche is starting to heal and move forward, past the event.  Through time, a new 'normal' emerges.  It will NEVER be like it was, but you eventually start to feel comfortable in your new normal and the healing process is complete.

Facing death, whether by illness, accident or circumstance is most often a life changer.  From reading and talking to other cancer patients, many of them make major life changes after going through this.  For some it's all about health.  For others, their new goals orbit around living life to the fullest.  Relationships are healed, work takes a back-burner to family, people are motivated, priorities change and most folks who survive say that the biggest plus to cancer is the 'wake up call'.  Earlier in my blog I touched on this, feeling as though I'd hit the reset button.  I'm not sure I still feel that way.  The drama and emotion of being diagnosed, going through major surgery, having chemo etc. has given way to a much more mundane actuality.  I find myself mostly back in my old life.  Broken down and decrepit, but still thinking the same thoughts, doing the same things and reacting the same ways to my stimuli and environment.  (With the possible exception of the addition of frequent periodic shucking of clothes because of the hot flashes.) To be sure I've enjoyed the ability to say no to stuff, which was skill I sorely lacked before.  But as I am able to do more and more I find myself starting to take on the same responsibilities I had before I was sick.  It filled me with a maniacal sense of power to say "NO! I will not be room parent!  I have CANCER!! (Tee hee!)"  But I'm not so sure I will be able to maintain that semblance of control over my life as I move forward.  

Intellectually I know that carrying extra weight puts me at greater risk of cancer and other health problems, but it's not stopping me from making homemade peanut butter cups.  (And, yes, eating them.)  I'm a good 30 pounds overweight but I'm not motivated to change my lifestyle to address this.  My muscles and joints are in rough shape, but I'm not consistently doing what I need to do to fix them.  It's a pain in the butt that I can't reach a towel in the shower because they are on the left and my left arm no longer does that motion.  But I'm not doing my PT.

I am exceptionally task driven.  I have a really hard time living in the moment or enjoying the journey.  Cancer has not changed this.  I still plow through my day with little joy.  For me, satisfaction comes when the laundry pile is decimated, not when my kids giggle with me.  I hate that about me but can't seem to change it.  If there was one gift I could take away from this whole experience, I would want it to be that I would see the joy and blessings in my life as I'm experiencing them and sharing them with those who I love.

My therapist indicated she wanted to explore how my life has changed since my diagnosis and I've come to the conclusion that it really hasn't changed at all.  I suspect it's because before we had genetic testing and MRI results I was in an initial mode of panic, but once we figured out what stage the cancer was at, I did not ever think this cancer would or could kill me.  This was not a brush with death.  It was more like I saw death sitting across the restaurant but when I got up to go to the restroom, I realized it was just pain in the ass, not death.  Big difference.