Stuck in cancer time

Hi friends and Happy Monday! (I am calling out the day right from the beginning so I hold myself accountable to finish these thoughts in one day. I think they deserve it.)

I find myself just a few days after my last blog post. One I was proud of for many reasons. Mostly because it is a very easy topic for people who have cancer to keep to themselves and not be 100% honest about. I wanted to stop the silence on that. Secondly I was proud because I posted a picture of myself on the internet where I was my most vulnerable and I was not ashamed of myself at all. That is not easy for me, nor is it normal for me. So here I am, post- "confidence post" feeling very vulnerable and struggling. So I decided I wanted to come here, my new safe space and admit my feelings to all of you, my followers.

I promised from the beginning I was going to be open and honest along my journey. I wanted to be able to not only have healthy mental health while in treatment but I also wanted to create a journal that could someday serve as a survival guide for another pink warrior. This is one of those posts that if I was reading I would have very easily allowed myself to mistake honesty for a request for pity. I now am the one experiencing these stories and I think they are important for two reasons. One: if you are one of the chosen ones to hear a cancer diagnosis, I do not want you to not be ready when things like this happen to you. Two: we can all learn something from someone else's pain.

Update to now is I am 4 of 16 chemos in. I have done 4 AC combos (the red devil) and now I am going to do 12 taxol chemos. I am waiting on my genetic counseling consultation which will help us start making some decisions about what kind of surgery I will be having after chemo (which should end in July). I overall handled the first kind of chemo well and I am ready to get out walking and enjoying the lake with my kids. I have been working mostly from home and are very anxious to get back in the salons and feeling more on top of things. I officially have no hair, anywhere minus my brows which by some miracle have not fallen out yet and some stray eye lashes which again I am thankful for. I have gained some weight, thanks to all the meds, which I am not happy about but it is better than the alternative. I love my cancer team and I am very confident in my treatment still!

The part of cancer I was not warned about or read about was that time feels like it's standing still. Your schedule is now at the mercy of your doctors. You have a laundry list of expectations and most of them are set for you. (For the record, I 100% had the choice of making this list of expectations and I did so in taking my time picking my care team.) You feel as though you cannot make plans without checking with your oncologist first. This was something I felt right away but shortly after announcing to the "world" I had cancer this feeling was subsided by all the love my village showed me.

I am going to go on a small rant here and just make sure I state something for the record. I am 110% forever in debt for the love my family has been shown in the last two months. You all and so many strangers gave my family a great big virtual hug and never let go. I feel the prayers, I read the cards, I eat the food, I smell the flowers, I re-read the cards, I could just go on and on. I will never be able to thank our village enough. I know that if I picked up the phone right now I would have at least a dozen contacts that could solve my problem. I am so lucky! THANK YOU!

Back to being stuck in time. Here I am, 12 freaking weeks from the chemo finish line and stuck in a holding pattern. All our friends are planning summer vacations and walking about what adventures lie ahead in the summer months. And I am stuck making plans like "well chemo on Monday so hopefully by Friday I will feel human again". That sucks! But as I said last week and I remind myself daily, it's a slow moving train! So while in the holding pattern I discovered, people closest to us, sometimes forget I have cancer. I know this sounds silly and somewhat unbelievable. But it's true. It's something that has been coming up more frequently as time has moved forward. It's not just plans, but other simple things like getting sick. I have to ask those closests to us to be even more careful than normal.

So then arrives the question, am I asking for too much? When I was first diagnosed I took the normal approach to the news and was sad most of the time. Something as simple as my alarm going off made me burst into tears. It was not uncommon for me to schedule myself visitors from morning till night. Well the diagnosis wore off and the chemo schedule started and those offers for visits are farther apart. Is it too much for me to want my friends to offer to visit with me? If i say "no thank you" to needing something this week will I not be offered again? I do not want to offend anyone by not taking up what is offered but I am still a working mom of three and the show must go on. And I will say the thing no woman wants to say. sometimes it is just easier for me to do it myself than try and tell someone else how it is done! The questions you ask yourself when relying on others are in abundance.

So how do we (the patient) tell our co-survivors about these feelings? I do not yet have my opinion on this but my advice is to put this post in your memory bank and remind yourself of it when in fact the time comes. The cards and prayers are, in my opinion, an easy thing you can keep doing periodically for your patient. Keep reminding them that they are being thought of. But the time is where it gets harder, you of course have a life to keep up with and we would never want you to give up things to benefit our things. But how do we still get the emotional support we need because we are after all fighting cancer? I suggest offering up your commitment from the start. I would like to shoutout my bestie Kodi again because she nailed this one. From the start of chemo Kodi rearranged her life so that she was mine on Wednesdays. It is up to me to tell her what I want that week's day together to look like but overall it is the day she is available to me. No matter my needs. She has bossed around my kids while I napped. She has sat and listened to me. She has cleaned the dishes and put away the laundry. She has even put me in the car and drove me around until I had all the driving I could take. I look forward to this day and it is one of the biggest blessings I have received to date. Good job Kodi-Girl! You the bomb!

Overall as I try to end my thoughts on this point and move forward, a good lesson learned, I feel both confident in sharing my thoughts and hopeful that this "lesson" will help a friend be a better friend to someone in the future. That was one huge run on sentence but I like it and I am leaving it. (My sister Jenn is dying over this) I am thankful for being open enough to share my feelings. I know it is not easy for others to put these experiences into words. I am also very thankful for the support of those around me. I really never want someone to read my honest feelings and think I am ungrateful. I appreciate every single kind gesture. I would never have the courage I have without the support of my fluffle. But even the toughest of us have shortcomings. I am very confident I am right where I should be sharing just as much as I should be. Xoxo