It is Monday, May 2, and I am now a third of the way through my six-session course of chemotherapy! I think the second session, which is now ten days behind me, hit me harder than the first, in terms of screwing up my blood counts and so forth. Never got the mouth sores or any of that last time, but I sure did this time. If, as friends tell me, the net result gets harsher each session, this could get interesting before we are done. A week ago I could do 45 minutes on an elliptical machine; this weekend, I could not last five minutes. My nose is actually bleeding this very moment. The steroids also caused some interesting muscle problems this time. It was as if someone had shortened my hamstrings a couple inches. I had to spend a half an hour each day, walking very slowly on a treadmill, to stretch my leg muscles back into their normal configuration. And more weirdness, on Wednesday, when I went to the grand opening of the new Harris Teeter grocery store, and I tried to fill out the form to get a Harris Teeter card, I could not hold a pen well enough to write my name. Very, very strange. But today I am back up to 45 minutes on the elliptical, and I can totally write my name again. The powers of the body to recover are truly amazing.
Today I am feeling so much better than I had for the last week or so, I am almost giddy. I can read! I can write! I remembered to take the groceries out of the van! I am counting my many blessings.
One thing I am noticing this week is how many of the worries that slammed me the week of my diagnosis have completely failed to materialize.
Miracle #1: My husband. As they say, this is a whole nother subject. But he is the best. Who knew he had a thing for bald chicks? The day you find out you have breast cancer, you go home and Google things. You start picturing yourself with one boob, or maybe none, and no hair, and mouth sores. You wonder if you are ever going to feel female again. Short answer: yes. Yes, you are.
Miracle #2: My friends. I was diagnosed with breast cancer on Ash Wednesday. I spent the day by myself, digesting my new status. I felt like a walking billboard for death. I thought as soon as I told people, I would start repelling them. I felt like I was the ashes on everyone’s foreheads at church that evening. I was a walking reminder of mortality and death. I particularly worried that a few of my friends at school and at church, who had lost spouses to cancer, would be made hugely uncomfortable by my very presence.
The first person I ran into that day, to whom I babbled my whole story, was my friend Ted. I remember telling him that the one thing that would really mess me up would be when my friends started hiding from me. I was terrified by the idea.
It never happened.
I think I can think of two people I seem to have made really uncomfortable with my news. Of those, one is an elderly woman who remembers people dying in agony of breast cancer in the 1960s, I believe, so I can understand where she is coming from. Other than those two persons, friendship has not fled; it has grabbed me in a bear hug.
Seriously, in the last six weeks, I have had more great hugs than in my whole previous life. I have said “I love you” to people who needed to hear it, and people have said it to me. I have gotten back in touch with friends and cousins who I had not heard from in years. I have gone out for more beers with people! I have drawings on my fridge from children who love me, and casseroles in my freezer.
I love you guys.
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