Something you realise when this happens. You are really all alone. A lot of friends care about you on the surface, but they aren’t really going to be there for you when times are bad and their life is more interesting and busy. They’ll tell you they are going to tea with this friend, or they are on a staycation and I guess that is as it should be, after all, maybe it’s just hard to hear because you think, it’s never going to be the same for you, enjoying it at the moment. Maybe those are the ones I’ve neglected too, in the past.
This week’s session, I hit a wall. I woke in the morning having slept badly and my mind was a mess. Melissa Khoo told me that Tong Qi, one of our seniors from Stanford moved to be head of private banking, at Standard Chartered. Her comment was more along the lines that she didn’t think it would have interested him. On any other day, I think this would have passed me by.
I told her it was probably to do something new, which the consultant doesn’t want an ambitious corporate job, and tied into his work on banks within McKinsey. But in truth, I feel he and his social-climbing wife are so competitive (in fact the whole group of friends), and so invincibly gossip magazine material, from the new jobs to the shophouse living to the hugely styled sip and see for their new baby.
And I felt, you know, what cancer patients, especially young ones hope for on their birthday, another cancer-free year. And to be happy. It left me feeling hollow like somehow my own ideas of what is possible were curtailed. These are people who forward plan. I didn’t and couldn’t relate. But it made me feel like people keep telling you this is a speed bump, but I think it redefines your life. What if you do fight it easy and soon and again in life? And that came back to the central worry of what life can you put back together and what your priorities are. That everything is different and yet going back to the land of the living you’ll find everything the same.
The sessions are not typically bad. But this one, I was a wreck even before the session. Dr Nair, our gynae fertility doc, is doing renovations to move in down the corridor to the onco centre and today the whole place stank of the renovation smell and paint. I walked past thinking this was all unnecessary, it was unsuccessful, it didn’t work, I put myself and my body through so much for nothing, for this, for everything now that I don’t understand. I hate this place.
Then we spoke to the doctor who confirmed basically that given the good response which confirmed the chemosensitivity of the typology and the lower hormonal reactivity (30% estrogen positive as opposed to say 80-100%), finishing the tougher AC chemo for another three months is the way to go and would take out the maximum of the existing tumour or lymph involvement, so fewer effects from subsequent surgery producing lymphoedema.
I guess this is all science to him, whereas to me it’s a million days of mind fucks. He said he doesn’t expect the harder course to be much harder given I’ve already got used to this course (how the hell would he really know) and my physical stats look solid. The benefits to finishing up the full chemo is the lowering of recurrence rates and protection from that, the marginal risk, given you’re young, doesn’t justify not doing it. There are tough cancers that don’t respond to chemo, or respond then bounce back, he thinks given the steady downward sizing, he’s not concerned. But I always feel he’s quite positive. OK maybe that’s my own negative bias.
By the time we got to actual chemo, I was clutching my hands. All the nurses could tell I was anxious and tired. On the first attempt, the nurse hit a valve. Painful. She had to stop, apply pressure but bruised hugely anyway, and then go again on the other hand. Throughout the session, which I hadn’t felt before, I was disorientated, almost light-headed, hoping to hell I wouldn’t get an allergic reaction. Sometimes sessions seem very quick and the meds go in easily. This wasn’t one of those. I felt full in the chest kind of like when you drank too much.
Zhan actually had to spoon lunch for me for the first time. I couldn’t make decent conversation which I usually can. It was pretty miserable. Then the side effects, aches, tiredness, and fatigue started straight away. I flattened into bed at home and stayed there for hours. I couldn’t figure out why day three symptoms were happening on day one (I guess this is what is meant by chemo is cumulative) and I didn’t have the strength to go up stairs, nor to hold things without using two hands.
The weeks seem to be passing slower and tougher. I think part of this is because during Dec, there were more public holidays and festive dates when people were around or at home. Now that the new year has started, it feels like I don’t know what to do with myself, even as the cumulative physical effects are getting more tiring.
I went through a period of anxiety, just panic attacks thinking about what happened, what it means, being fearful of the future, being obsessed about relapse, being angry about what I could have done better or earlier, watching my life go up in smoke or being needy and dependent. I realise now that this is because in part I haven’t accepted what has happened, I don’t want to admit to myself that it’s irreversible or that I don’t feel invincible, physically or otherwise anymore. I didn’t want to go to a support group, yes, in part because it was a physically bad day and far away but also because I didn’t want to be part of it and feared what I would see reflected in the people there.
So I’m sleeping a bit better, though I can’t say it’s well or deep or long. But I can at least fall asleep, which even, I was fearful of in previous weeks. I don’t think any of this is surprising, I mean, there are heaps of friends, especially some work ones that I haven’t told, who have been concerned with my absence and for the same reasons, I couldn’t bring myself to format that email again and again.
Who wants to revisit the pain, or be in pain, you know? This is a lesson in many ways, that you can’t understand it, you just, trust in something and keep going forward. But that’s easier to say than to do, it’s like you keep wanting to make it better, make it right and part of you just doesn’t even know if there’s a right or better that it could be. It’s just there, in every facet, not a speed bump but a life changer. And you never know how it will end, so even if you don’t try to anticipate it, how do you make it better, is there a better?
