"I will take the ring to Mordor. Though, I do not know the way." -Mr. Frodo
Every third week, I get a break from chemo. I’m sure there are physical benefits to this, but I’m most appreciative of the mental break. I’m a real shit-ass when I don’t feel good and this break ensures an entire week of not feeling like crap, so it’s usually when my mood is the best. It’s probably also nice for Joe to have a week off from me acting like a grumpy teenager.
There’s a nature reserve south of us, between Tacoma and Olympia, that we love, and we’d been wanting to go back for a visit. We hadn’t been since before the pandemic started, and I’d been itching to go for one reason: migrating duck species stop there in the winter months and I wanted to see ALL OF THEM.
Our visit needed to coincide with the following: I had to be feeling well enough to go, the weather couldn’t be too crappy, and high tide needed to be during daylight hours (and not too early because getting up early now makes me want to cry). This finally happened late last week, which was perfect timing to take our minds off of my upcoming CT scan, which will be the first scan since starting this new chemo treatment. I’m fairly certain that the chemo has been effective in my mouth at least, but I can’t see my lungs, so I have no idea if it’s been helpful in that area. I’ll find out tomorrow.
“I’m feeling pretty calm about it,” Joe said as we were driving toward Weird Duck mecca. “How about you?”
“I feel numb, honestly,” I said. “Like I feel nothing? But I’m sure it’s affecting me in ways I’m not currently aware of.”
Usually what happens after a scan is, no matter how calm I thought I was feeling prior, some previously unknown bad feeling goes away afterward and I realize just how stressed I was. But for right now, I feel numb. Which is a nice break from feeling EVERYTHING.
Though the calm is nicer than being a ball of anxiety, it does lead to feeling a bit disconnected from everything. I’m pretty used to that at this point. I often feel disconnected, from people around me, from people not around me, from the world in general. I wonder if I’ll always feel slightly detached from everyone and everything. Cancer is a lonely disease and the treatment for this one makes it even lonelier. Sometimes I feel like an alien trying to pretend to be human around all the other normies. It was bad enough when it was right after treatment and I thought the cancer, at least, had been eradicated. Now that the cancer is back forever, it’s even worse.
This is partly why I’m dreading the move back to Ohio a bit. I haven’t seen most of the people there (in person) since before all of this happened, back when I was “normal,” and I don’t know my new place. I don’t know the new me, really. Sometimes people tell me, “don’t worry, you’re still the same person,” but the truth is I’m really not. And that’s OK. In fact, hearing people insist I’m the same person just makes me feel…sad. Because I’m not. There are parts of me that are still the same, but there are other parts that have been irrevocably broken, and there are all these brand new parts. Some of them are good, but most of the new parts are prickly and angry and sad and I don’t know how any of them fit in yet with who I used to be. I feel disconnected from even myself.
For as long as I can remember, my dad’s side of the family has been getting together the Saturday before Christmas to celebrate. We used to all gather at my grandma’s house but, when she died, the celebration shifted to my Aunt Karen’s. Last year, we all met virtually because of COVID, which honestly made me feel a lot better at the time. I wasn’t well enough to travel and the thought of missing Christmas with everyone was just another thing making me incredibly sad. I felt less like I was missing out, though, since COVID was affecting everyone’s holiday plans. At the time, I thought that surely we’d be able to travel home the following year. Obviously by then, COVID would be over and I just assumed I’d be cancer-free, like, forever. (You know what they say about what happens when you assume…)
This year was tougher, because everyone was healthy and vaccinated and so got together in person once again. Joe and I FaceTimed in for a bit, and it was nice to at least be able to see everyone and feel like we were there, even for a moment. We also learned that my family was sending an incredibly generous gift our way and…I can’t really put into words what it feels like to be the recipient of gifts and acts that you know you’ll never be able to repay. I don’t know how to adequately say thank you, for the gift and for the connection, which was there and strong despite being so far away. It was an important reminder that, as disconnected as I may feel most of the time, no matter the situation, my people keep pulling me back in.
One of my little cousins (my cousins may be full grown adults now, but I’m 10 years older than the oldest of them and babysat all of them when they were wee children, so they’ll always be little cousins in my mind) wrote me the sweetest note afterward, reminding me of all the ways I’m still connected to family even when I’m not present. How we’re all connected in ways we aren’t always aware of and how this connection serves us, in good times and bad.
It made me think waaaaaay back to when I was first diagnosed, when I wondered whether or not I should publish my every thought and feeling on this blog. How it meant people would see me in ways I’d never shown them before, and what it might mean to have people know me in that way.
Long story short (HA!), I'm so glad that I decided to share this with everyone. For one thing, I don’t REALLY tell you every single thought and feeling (you’re welcome) but sharing what I have has led to so many connections I may not have had otherwise. I can’t tell you how valuable that’s been, especially during COVID, when sometimes this virtual connection is all we’ve had to rely on. I truly cherish all of the words and thoughts and prayers and positivity that’s supported us through all of this, and that’s still supporting us as we continue down what feels like a never-ending path.
The next stop on that path is my scan tomorrow. It’s dark and scary – hidden behind a tangle of gnarled trees that are probably full of spiders, and not the nice spiders I let live in the corners of our apartment during Seattle Spider Season. I don’t know what lies beyond it. I don’t know if I’ll get a bit lost again before we get all the way through it. But I know that, whatever the outcome, we’ll be OK, because we have all of you.