cancer – day 213
Ugh, this is just so Miserable! I stopped and bought cat litter at the pet store on the way back from radiation, and by the time I got here I was so exhausted I couldn’t even stand up and I just managed to get my shoes off before I collapsed in a ball on the lovesac in my office, right by the door. I couldn’t even walk to the bedroom to take my shoes and wig off first (I don’t usually nap in the wigs, they get itchy and that often wakes me up). I can’t believe how tired I am. And everything hurts, my feet and hands from neuropathy, the radiation burn and its little scabby sores, and the port surgery site and all around that (the surgery site looks pretty nasty too, the entire scar line bled into the steri-strips and you can see where the bruising goes all the way down and then deeper into my chest toward my heart, all around where the veinous tube for the port was). I ended up having this major meltdown, crying because I just can’t stand it anymore and I’m weary from trying to be the strong person everyone always knew me as when I just don’t have any strength left ( I don’t even feel strong enough to call my parents back from yesterday, because I know that hearing in their voices how much they care about me and believe in me will just start me crying again) and the idea of another three weeks of all this (or longer, since it’s not like I’ll miraculously be better the day radiation is over) is just unimaginable.
And then I get down on myself even more for giving in to it. So many countless people have cancer and go through this every day, and here I am crying about pain and fatigue like I’m the only person who’s ever suffered through it. I completely lost it on Mark a while ago and was sitting on his lap just bawling and telling him all this and he just held me and patted my back and reminded me in the positive tone that it’s only three more weeks, and eventually I calmed down. You can only cry so hard for so long before that exhausts you too and your body just doesn’t have anything left in it at all. It’s a weird kind of emptiness.
It’s lunchtime and we need to run to the store, but then it’s definitely nap time for Cynthia. Sigh. And here I was at the beginning of all this thinking I’d be strong through treatment, that I’d keep working at least part time, and I’d maybe even be able to write and research to finally finish the literature review revisions on my dissertation while I was off from Chain, but I haven’t done a darn thing. I look back over the last 213 days and I don’t know where the time has gone. Nowhere constructive, that’s what it feels like to me. Especially since, looking back, I can’t really even remember chemo (not that I really want to remember chemo, I know it was awful). But gosh, all that time just completely lost. It’s not like I learned anything, I didn’t get stronger as a person, I didn’t accomplish anything in my career or my life or who I am as a person, and after all that time of doing nothing here I am now so fatigued and worn out that I’m having a really hard time seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I know it’s there and I can tell myself it’s close, but wow, does it ever seem far away, and I wonder how I’ll get there.