cancer – day 46

morning

Sad, my last pre-chemo regular full work day at home. It’s a beautiful day here though, 70 degrees and perfect. A huge jackrabbit was hanging out in the yard, and Mizzou was ready to leap through the office window screen to catch it when the thing finally moved out of sight. They have such HUGE ears! What a great place to be. I know it doesn’t look like much to other people, there’s nothing fancy or impressive about my place out here in the middle of nowhere in the national forest, but I really love it here, and I’m really going to miss my house and my cats and the sound of the wind in the trees without city and people noises filling in all the space.

11PM

I wonder how many people sink into depression going through this. I can feel it coming, I think I’m holding on fine, and then Whammo! everything seems miserable. Problem being that I tried to push through and get more done instead of calling it a day when I should have to spare my body and mind today. Granted, it was a sad day to start with because I have this fear that I won’t get to be here much after this, though getting to come home at all is better than six months straight of being completely away from California altogether. But with a ton of work to do and feeling bad for leaving Chain during the busiest month of the modeling report cycle, I was in work crunch mode all day. I started working before 6AM today and didn’t stop until I could hardly focus my eyes anymore, which was around 9PM. I have myself totally stressed out with what I’ve probably overcommitted to get analyzed and written before chemo starts, I don’t feel prepared for the oncologist appointment tomorrow even though I’ve already had an oncologist appt and Mark says “it will be fine” (I get tired of hearing that without any substance behind it, today I was thinking it would be nice to hear why it’s going to be fine, but I think he just gets too busy with work or whatever to really do the comforting part if I’m not standing there in his office waiting for more). I mean, I know he’s right, it will be fine, but today I definitely don’t know how. Well, no wait, let the brain tick-tock a little, I guess I do. I’ll end up canceling on things I want or need to do, I’ll give up time I had hoped to have to rest or relax at home, time will pass, and next thing you know the first week of chemo will be over. It will be fine. But getting there, that’s not feeling so fine. So it was like 9:30PM and I was finally having a salad (cleaning out leftovers from my ‘fridge that’s about to go untouched for who knows how long) and filling out doctor forms and disability forms in front of the tv, letting a recording of So You Think You Can Dance play. Not that this is the world’s greatest show or I’m really in to the people on it or anything, but as someone who loves dance I can’t resist the opportunity to see so many styles and ability levels and the personalities that come through. On the commercials (which I normally zip skip with the DVR) I’m unloading the dishwasher and cleaning up after the cats and, you know, house stuff, though my house is still a mess because what I need to do is a weekend cleaning-fest. And, this is the weirdest thing, and if you’ve never felt depressed a moment in your life then this will be completely nonsensical to you, well, I just felt like it was getting darker. It had already been dark outside a while, and of course I don’t mean this literally. But I can feel a darkness pressing in and I know where it goes and it scares me. The emotional roller coaster of this thing has definitely gone from a pee-wee to a 48-inch-height-requirement this week. It has to be the stress of worrying about chemo and what it’s going to do to me of course, but knowing that doesn’t make it easier. There are too many things going on, I’m doing too many things at once for the level my brain is functioning right now. Six months ago, the variety and complexity and volume of what I got done today would have been no big deal but these days it feels like a ridiculously large effort to accomplish and I get frustrated with how long it takes me to do things that I know don’t take me this long, doing analysis, or writing things up, multi-tasking constantly but keeping the foreground focused to get each thing done. And this frustration is in what will probably be my best physical/mental state for the next eight months! I can’t even imagine right now how I’ll get through a day two weeks from now when I have chemically-induced fatigue, as opposed to whatever they call what I’m in right now, which is just plain stressed I guess. There’s still sooooo much to be done before Monday, things to get Mark’s house ready, things to pack and close up my house (leaving my cats behind, man that sucks, it’s been so nice to be back with them on my desk today after I’ve being gone nearly a week with travel and stuff), more doctors appointments, doing my tenacity thing to make sure they all have all the pathology reports and test results and junk they need to make sure my chemo is right and as non-heart damaging as possible, hoping they can do something about the growing numbness in my right hand, and another surgery on Friday to put in the port (port-a-cath? whatever they call the thing they’re inserting below my collarbone for them to do my chemo and draw blood through and all that), which means that even if I’m allowed to drive on the pain meds this weekend I probably won’t really be in any condition to be packing or loading things into the car to take to Mark’s. Heck, now that I think about it, I couldn’t do that ahead of time, tonight, if I wanted to, with how my right side is still hurting. And with as allergic as Mark is to cat dander, I am absolutely loathe to ask him to drive me out here again to help me (the one time he did come out here was a real mess for his allergies, though if I remember right he also had forgotten to take his allergy medicine that morning). Writing about it though, getting it out of my head, helped put it in perspective and clear away some of the foggy darkness I felt coming. Interesting. I mean, I’ve always journaled, but it’s not usually so immediately self-correcting. (You know that from how long it took me to journal and think through to decide about where to do chemo, staying at Mark’s or staying with my parents in South Dakota. Then again, that was a little more complex than a little oncoming depression.)

A lot of people have commented to me about my blog and that they really appreciate it and enjoy it and that they feel drawn in to my experience by the openness of it in the sharing of the emotional journey I’ve found myself on, but I also indirectly heard another comment that it’s too personal, too intimate. Which I understand, I’m sure we all know exactly which blog could be considered too intimate because it wasn’t just about myself and my thoughts and feelings and moments of weakness and fear, but I felt it was too important to the journey for that story/blog to be glossed over to its conclusion. At the same time, there’s definitely a list of topics that any thoughts or feelings I have about I leave in my private journal and don’t post to the blog. Obviously if I’m posting about depression tonight you can probably surmise that I’m not strongly inclined to censor the personal nature of my emotional journey in the blog. If I’m going to write about this thing, about my experience through it, then I’m going to be honest about it. Mark found a good way of saying it this weekend . . . that it isn’t the story about cancer or even dealing with cancer per se that’s compelling, rather it’s the journey I’m on in going through it. Amen, ain’t that the truth, Brother.