Getting Over Myself

Every week is a chapter complete with conflict, climax and conclusion. This week I’ve felt truly at physical odds with cancer for the first time. Since June when those words, “You have breast cancer” reached my ears, it’s been more of an emotional and even abstract dilemma.  There was talk about treatment; talk about surgery and what it all meant but it was still academic.

The surgery and immediate aftermath were surreal. I came through great and had virtually no pain in the week following. That’s not to say I wasn’t uncomfortable. It was terribly uncomfortable but there was no throbbing pain. I didn’t need to take the Vicadin (I still can’t take the Vicadin). There were no humiliating calls for help in the bathroom or while dressing. I got up each day and received the wonderful outpouring of love from friends and family in the form of food, calls, cards, flowers and visits. It was a tangible sense of reaping what I’ve tried to sow. That part felt so wonderful, I almost forgot about my dilemma.

I became lulled into the notion that I would soon be “back to normal.” My normal is about 65 mph seven days a week. I’m never without an agenda and mission. 

At almost two-weeks out I took on a full day of activities, not full throttle but somewhat normal. By 10:00 PM that night I felt devastated. It was a tired that rivals that of new motherhood and the pain arrived. It awoke me around 1:00 AM. As a child when I couldn’t sleep, I counted sheep. In early adulthood I would watch vapid TV programming or even walk dark streets trying to wear myself out. I know and fear insomnia. It surely must be an element of hell. Now, I count blessings on the rare occasions when sleep evades me, like last week when the pain came. I finally drifted back off about the time I got around to thanking God for things like the chickens.  

With the pain this week, which has developed a habit of showing up around 4:00 PM and intensifying until I finally give up around 10:00 PM, came a familiar taunting voice. It’s the one that questions everything I’ve done or left undone and plants doubt, discouragement and disappointment about the past and future.

The voice was “loaded for bear.” Earlier in the week I’d gone to see the oncologist. He gave me good news about my diagnosis and made chemotherapy sound like a spa treatment. The radiologist was not so reassuring. He’d talked in a language only doctors know, but he seemed to be indicating that all might not be so peachy. I blew it off.

The next day he called me at home, again speaking Greek, but he used a word that I did understand - re-incision. 

Two days later (the day I ended up hitting the wall), I went for my follow-up with the surgeon. He comes in all smiles. I’m all business. “Before I hug you, please tell me that Dr. Murray, while an esteemed colleague, is pedantic when it comes to reading pathology reports. Speak mere mortal to me and tell me he’s wrong.”

He smoothed his beard while flipping through the pathology pages. “No, Murray’s right. From a text book stand point we should open you back up. I can do it under local right now. We’ll have you out of here in an hour.”

The silence that accompanies the aftermath of a loud explosion surrounded me.  I felt the blood pulsing through my veins and all three “incisions” were suddenly alive, as if the stitches were going to burst open.

My brain kicked in finally in all it’s brilliance. “So, you are talking about reopening this wound on my chest?”

“Sure, we’ll just take a little more, get those text book margins. It’ll take me 15 minutes.”

He reads me like a text book: “But, if you don’t wanna do it, you don’t have to. I mean it’s something like 2.5 percent... (I’m only hearing the sound adults in Charlie Brown’s world make).

We talked some more and then there was the long silence where he waited patiently about 60 seconds for me to make a decision. The Jeopardy music played in my mind.

“No.”

And that was my final answer. But, if it does come back - there will be no choices. 

I came home from “chemotherapy school” the other day with out all the handouts. Later, when the pharmacist handed me literally a bag of medications and a book filled with possible side effects, I told him to keep the book. He was already rattled from me grilling him about generics and where they were made. I said, “I don’t do drugs well, especially ones made in China.”

I don’t want my brain to know that the steroid could make me look like a jack-o-lantern or that the other drugs cause constipation, anal seepage, night tremors, psoriasis, ring worm, economic recession... 

I’m not making it up. I honestly don’t tolerate any sort of drug well. I was sick for 9 months during my pregnancy. I can’t ride in the back set of a car. I tried to explain all of this to the oncologist. He nodded and said, “You need to take all of this just like I’m telling you to or you’ll get in a hole and it will take me a long time to pull you out.”

That night I took the drug for nerve pain. It helped and I was okay. No tingling of the extremities, blood clots or sleep apnea so far.

The conclusion of each chapter seems to be about me “getting over myself.” 

I have to get over how much time this will take, get over feeling taken out of even the dug out for this season, get over my fear of medications i.e. being old and weak, get over my difficulty asking for help, get over a sense of being worthless if not producing something, anything for God’s sake. 

Maybe as a therapy for getting the full use of my arm back, I’ll revive that annoying practice of catching stacks of pennies off the forearm, like Fonzie used to do, and get in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Romans 5: 3-5

...we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.