Monthly Archives: January 2019

Love in a Time of Cancer

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Ah, love, is there anything in the world at all better than a new romance? Heart pounding, constant distraction, cartoon birds tying ribbons in your hair, starry-eyed amor. It’s seriously the best! Last summer I fell all the way in love with a close friend from my grad school days, so close, in fact, that he was a guest at my wedding. In a flash of brilliance after seeing him on family vacation, it occurred to me that he was beyond amazing, and I wanted to kiss him all the time. Luckily, he felt the same way. 4 months later there we were, in the most fun and easiest relationship I’ve ever experienced (despite him living one state away, or is it because? hee hee), flying back and forth, being super happy, and really feeling the weight of the last few years lighten by the day. There’s talk of commitment, there’s talk of relocation, and then bam, there’s cancer.

While he was very aware of my history, he wasn’t here when I was going through treatment, or after, so there was a nice, abstract quality to my illness; cancer was the past and we were the future, and aside from some gorgeous scars and inconvenient side effects from treatment, it was hard to believe I had ever been so sick. But there it came, blindsiding me on an overcast Monday, 3 days before we left for a wedding in CDMX, and then the questions followed, “do I tell him now, or wait until after Mexico City? Do I tell him in Mexico City? How do I tell him? Does he need to know the scary details, or just the immediate ones?” I was single when I got cancer, found that during treatment was no time to date, and then didn’t have the bandwidth to even think about it until almost 2 years later. This conversation was uncomfortably outside my skill set, but my beau isn’t someone new to me, he’s someone I’ve known for 19 years, and to whom I’m accustomed to speaking very freely. So in the end, it took me a little over a day, but I clumsily told him what was happening followed by immediately requesting we make CDMX about the celebration, and then deal with my health after. I meant this. I had known of the engagement long before it happened, had been preparing for this wedding since summer, and I needed to celebrate the successes of my life and of my friends. In my mind it was simple, in practice it was, like most things, a little more complicated.

My closest friends are like family, and they know the cancer drill. Lots of love, lots of laughter, some righteous indignation that this has happened again, and onward to bolstering me up so much that I have no choice but to heal. My sweet guy, however, hasn’t had to deal with much illness in his life or in his friends lives. His parents are elderly and have their stuff, but that’s more expected than your 47 year old girlfriend who has suddenly grown stiff and cold (or in her inner world is bracing against unpleasant days to come). The moment I got the news of my new lesion, that starry eyed romance was put on “hold,” outside of my mental and emotional control, and every instinct went to survival. Please understand, this isn’t “preserve my life at any cost” survival, it’s “don’t let the demon drag you down” survival, and actually takes scads more focus and energy.

We met in Mexico City with me fluctuating unpredictably between joy and anxiety, my greatest joy being reserved for the events, gatherings, and celebrations of the gorgeous couple, and my anxiety lighting in the quiet moments when I had the unwanted opportunity to sit with my thoughts. These were very often also the quiet moments I was sitting with him. I was distant and uncharacteristically hard to please, he didn’t know what to say, I was a bit short-tempered, eventually he became frustrated, we continued to work it out, and I spent the time trying to figure out what was wrong with me, while he spent the time trying to be supportive in the best ways he knew how. I needed him to ask questions, but had explicitly requested we make the weekend about the festivities, and I needed him to baby me a little, but can come off as an island, giving the mistaken impression that I’ll take care of my own damn self. (But that’s not real, and in a way I desperately want to be taken care of, because life is exhausting, and who doesn’t want to be cradled sometimes with someone cooing in their ear that all will be well, but god it’s difficult to ask for that without feeling like a complete baby). I was irrationally conflicted in ways I wasn’t even aware were possible, and failed miserably in verbalizing this to him.

There were little light bulb moments when I heard the chorus in my head that I’ve taken great pains to mute, and it was telling me that even if the docs say it won’t hurt as much, it will still hurt, and you can’t share that pain with anyone. You are alone in the full knowledge of the ways in which your body, and mind, can ache, and no one can take that on for you, nor would you let them. I was able to recognize that all my surplus reserves of positive energy were now being directed towards me, and how it must feel to him to no longer be on the receiving end of an adoring light that had been shining his way for months. And I finally acknowledged that cancer triggers me, and the emotional scars I’m carrying need some tending, too. This is tricky, tricky, tricky business, and it’s even trickier to share it with someone you’re intimate with. What if he stopped seeing me as his super fun bedmate, and started seeing me as someone who is sick? I couldn’t take that, and even if this was an old friendship, it is a relatively new relationship, and I want that to stay gold for as long as possible, and have since learned that it still can even without the illusion of smooth waters.

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CDMX November 17, 2018 at arguably the finest wedding I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. And I got to go with him which is kind of the best thing ever.

In the end, the weekend will be remembered as one of our best, and exactly what I needed to fortify my desire to bounce back vigorously from yet another surgery, because the highs were so high, with the lows being easily attributable to what I was processing. And while we didn’t figure it all out in those 4 days, we did break the ice on how to (and often how not to) talk about my personal boogie man, which apparently I had been avoiding, because I wanted to keep what was quickly becoming one of the best things in my life from the worst. My surgery went well, I woke up in recovery thinking that if he were holding my hand it might hurt less (the upper lobe did hurt less than the lower lobe), I was lucky to have doctors who listened to me about my preference in pain meds (and at this point I certainly have one), I healed with the same efficiency I have in the past, and I celebrated the new year at Taos Ski Valley, barely short of breath at 9,000 ft.

It was in Taos that a conversation with my oncologist, and my thoughts about what it means to live well, finally solidified into an experiment of sorts for the new year and set my course for 2019.

“We are stronger in the places we have been broken.” – Ernest Hemingway

 

 

Again?!?

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The last post I published was in September of 2017, three and a half months after my first cancer recurrence. If I’m publishing again, while it could mean many things, it probably only means one. Now, before anyone takes this too seriously, as of Monday morning, November 26th, I was out of surgery for a fast growing tumor to the upper lobe of my right lung, and am once again NED (cancer talk for “no evidence of disease”). At this point I’m feeling qualified to say that every time I’m diagnosed with cancer, it’s a different experience. The first time, I charged in with the beautiful, naive optimism of Joan of Arc, certain that fearlessness and fortitude were all I needed to knock cancer soundly on its ass. The second time, soul weary and not quite recovered from round one, I muddled through in a haze of depression and defeat. This time, the third, has shown itself to be something altogether new, because now I’m starting to develop cancer wisdom, or as I’ve taken to saying, I’m a frequent flyer in a super sucky miles program with questionable rewards.

Since January of 2017, I’ve gotten a CT scan every 3 months. In the beginning, it was to follow the sketchy speck that became my first cancer recurrence, and afterward, to err on the side of caution. From July of 2017 to November of 2018, I had 6 clean scans. Nothing to see here, not a single change, not a twinkle in my tumors eye. Life was good, and I was going like gang busters. My schedule in the studio picked up to relatively full time, the prescriptive exercise pilot I presented to the LIVESTRONG Cancer Institutes at Dell Med School was moving forward, and I was strong, happy, and in love. I got comfortable, so comfortable in fact, that when my oncologists office was running painfully behind the day I was to get my most recent scan results, I abandoned their waiting room to go to the studio, and told them to leave a voicemail if I didn’t answer. Their voicemail went something like this, “we would still like to offer you the chance to come in to get your results in person, anytime you are available. You can call ahead or walk in.” A voicemail like this from any doctors office is the equivalent to being moved into the private room with a view following your colonoscopy, bad news is on its way.

I got their voicemail about 4 hours after leaving the office, and like any sane person, I drove straight to Neiman Marcus to get my gown for a close friends wedding the following weekend in Mexico City. What did you think I was going to say? That I went screeching into Texas Oncology? It is very important in life that one knows how to prioritize, and if you’re going to get crap news like having cancer again, then knowing there’s a brilliant dress hanging in your car really does soften the blow. After I picked up my dress I drove down the road to my oncologist office. And then sat in the parking lot deciding whether or not to go in. You can’t hide from the truth forever, but it never hurts to try for a minute.

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This is the back of said gorgeous dress. The front will come in the next post when I describe how I learned what it’s like to deal with this disease in a somewhat new relationship. I’m sure my boyfriend will be super psyched about that. (just imagine the hanging strap peaking out from the back tucked all the way in).

So there I was, by myself/alone/flying solo in the waiting room for the first time in nearly 3 1/2 years (someone who loves me had always insisted on coming with), and for the first time ever in that waiting room, I wept. Having never cried before when I got the news, this felt like a somewhat delirious luxury, to let emotion spill out and be a little angry that my cancer won’t just go away and leave me the fuck alone. I didn’t cry because I was afraid of what was coming (I’m not scared of much anymore besides snakes), but because of what I knew would be coming: pain, fatigue, recovery, rehabilitation, more scar tissue, and one more, hopefully mild, bout of depression. I was crying because I was getting prepared, and I was crying because my life is about staying prepared. I was crying because having cancer sucks.

A perk in oncology is the speed with which they give you news. I think I waited all of 5 minutes before being ushered back to Dr. Yorio’s office (which means my cry in the waiting room probably lasted about 3 1/2, no need to drag these things out), and then maybe waited 2 minutes for his soft tap on the door. In the last 3 months, with no warning, a small lesion had flourished in my lung, growing to the small size it had taken its predecessor almost a year to reach. Previously, my cancer had been described as indolent, meaning it was slow growing, a bit lazy. There was comfort in this, probably because it gave me the illusion of time. That buffer was nonexistent when my oncologist told me there was a 1 cm lesion in the upper lobe of my right lung, and we needed to schedule surgery. 0 to “here we go again” in 30 seconds. The speed with which the new cell had grown threw me, and continues to throw me, for a real loop. It was new, and I’m learning that when it comes to my cancer, I don’t like new.

This was 3:45 pm on the Monday of one of my most anticipated weekends in years. On Thursday of the same week, many of my best friends in the world and I and my beau (heart hands), were leaving for the wedding in CDMX, and returning late the following Monday, which just happened to be the week of Thanksgiving. Fast growing lesion, time to celebrate, Thanksgiving holiday. What do you do? Go numb, act quickly. I had an appointment with my thoracic surgeon less than 48 hours later, and a wedge resection scheduled for the Monday following Thanksgiving. He assured me that this lesion was better located for removal, they had better eyes on it, and this should be an easier surgery to recover from. Walk in the park? No. Because even with easier lung surgery, lung surgery is lung surgery, but less bad is always good.

Here’s what I knew, I was much stronger than I had been when I had lung surgery in 2017, in a far better place mentally and emotionally, and reasonably knew what to expect. I was as prepared as you can be when you’re unprepared. What didn’t I know? How to share this news with my relatively new suitor who is also an old friend, or how this diagnosis triggers me in a way that I can’t hide so well from the person sleeping next to me. This was as new as my fast growing lesion, and I’m not entirely sure I was very good at it.

 

*Welcome back, friends! I’m going to try an experiment in keeping this blog updated in 2019, some posts I will share to social media, and others will just go up, so if you have any interest, check in on occasion.