Fall is a stressful time for me. I think it is for most people too, because as a child it represented going back to school and giving up the freedom of summer. Even as adults, there's just something about the cooler mornings and shorter days that bring about feelings of melancholy, especially when you start thinking about scraping car windows and shoveling snow (Missouri winters) or seemingly endless rain (Louisiana winters).
For me, though, fall represents one of the most difficult times of my life. It was when I was deep in the throes of cancer. Technically I had surgery in late summer, but chemo dominated the fall. So for me, fall is cancer weather. Driving three and a half hours to St. Louis, waiting. Getting my blood drawn, waiting. Seeing the doctor, waiting. Checking in for chemo, waiting. Going back to the chemo area, waiting. Starting the IV and hanging the IV fluids, waiting. Hanging the first bag of poison, then the second, then waiting to make sure I didn't have a weird reaction. And then finally, escape. Two of my chemo days I drove up the day before and stayed in a hotel and then drove back after chemo. One day we did it all in one day (the longest day EVER!!) and one day we drove up on chemo day and then stayed the night in a hotel and came back the next day. That trip was the most fun because it involved a lot of eating and shopping.
I had breakfast with my friend BeBe the other day and of course, as girls do, we talked about all sorts of things. She reminded me of some things I'd forgotten about that happened while I was sick and while I was recovering. I mentioned that I'd come across a notebook where I'd written down possible blog topics. Sadly, most of the topics are things that I don't remember the stories that go with them.
So if I ever ranted to you about something that happened during that time but you didn't see it mentioned in the blog, kindly drop me a note and refresh my memory. I'd like to fill in the blanks of the story. I'm tossing around the possibility of making an eBook out of it. Plus, I'd just like to know what happened! After all, it happened to me!
I spent some time the other day rereading my blog. I didn't go all the way back to the beginning (at some point I will) but rereading words I'd written a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, all I can say is, wow. Some of it was funny, a little of it was deep, most of it was crap.
And some of it was hurtful.
If my friend was going through cancer treatment and I read her blog and saw that she'd written something that I thought was about me and it was less than flattering, my feelings would definitely be hurt. I hope I'd wait till she was feeling better to say something. I'd hope that I'd understand that her negative feelings toward me were her point of view at that time, in the light of what she was going through. That maybe she was lashing out in anger, that a wealth of things seemed wrong but she only focused on a few. The easy ones. The low hanging fruit so to speak.
So...if you ever read my blog and said WTH? Did she really just say that? Was she talking about me? Just know that I was coming from a place of INSANITY. Cancer will do that to you. The unknown of whether you will live or die, whether you'll be sick or cured, whether the cancer will be eradicated or it will come back will absolutely make you crazy. And the crazy part about it is, you may not even KNOW you're crazy!!
Factor in a dose of cyclothymic (mild bipolar) disorder with the false anonymity of the Internet and it's a recipe for disaster. It's seriously a wonder that my friends and family are even speaking to me.
But they are. They showed me grace by forgiving me.
As I was rereading, there were parts that I cringed at. Ugh, I really said that? Parts that I'd like to take down, parts that were poorly written or used more salty language than I'd like to admit that I've used (and sometimes, in spite of my best efforts, still use). Parts that were hurtful, complaining because things weren't going my way. Whining. But it's what I went through. And if someone who's going through cancer reads it, they need to see the whole thing. Not just the nice parts. The ugly parts. The ugliness deep down in my soul. Inspirational stuff is nice, but what kind of person do you feel like if every cancer blog you read is all nice and all you have are black thoughts? I was angry. About losing my job, about getting cancer, about having to have multiple surgeries and go through chemo and take these awful drugs that put me into menopause. I was angry about hot flashes and not feeling attractive and not being able to go anywhere because my white count was too low or I just didn't feel like it. I was angry that I'd gained weight, my clothes didn't fit, my hair was coming back in and it looked awful.
In retrospect, I could have handled a host of things differently over the past three years. But, I didn't. And what's in my blog is what happened, at least from my point of view. I wish it wasn't my story. I wish my story was all happiness and inspiration.
If you read Little Women...I wish I could have been Beth. But most of the time I was Jo or Amy.
Alright, enough retrospection. It's time for a little change.
I'm going to go back through my blog and remove the posts that have nothing to do with cancer. I'll be moving these to a new blog that I'm calling The Secret Life of a PTA Mom (I'm sure there will be some disappointed pervy web surfers that discover it's not a porn site).
I'll still blog occasionally here about cancer, a subject that I hate and wish would go away. But the reality is that at this point cancer is no longer consuming my life and that's a good thing.
RDG
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