A Series Of Unfortunate Compromises

In the first three months after I was diagnosed, I was a basket case. For three months, I really only spoke to my husband and my mother. And many of the conversations with my mother were often unilaterally angry (poor woman). Occasionally I'd also talk to my father and my sister but only if I really had to. And I have a good relationship with my father and a pretty good one with my sister. So for me to barely speak to them both for a good chunk of time just shows how scrambled my brain was. Friends were ignored completely in that time. They were so supportive though; giving me space, happy to keep a sporadic one-way conversation going until I was ready to talk.

As much as I was mentally in turmoil then, one thing became apparent to me very quickly: my life was now severely compromised and would be until I died. At the time, I could barely breath. My mother had to cook and clean for me. I could barely shower, I was so breathless and so in pain. My working life was over. Life closed in overnight. It was an exceptionally difficult reality for a 31 year old woman to face and accept. Before I started experiencing the pain and breathlessness that led to my diagnosis, I used to cycle everywhere, sometimes with a backpack full of heavy groceries on my back. It was so hard to accept that that part of my life was now over.

My treatments have all worked well for me and that has helped to expand my world a little since that awful few months three year ago. I can now cook and clean and shower and have been doing so for more than two years now. But compromises are still there and these still restrict my life and always will. Because I am married, I am ineligible to receive social welfare because my husband's quite modest income is taken into account. The threshold is very low. This leaves us very badly off. Compromise. My husband proposed to me in a hospital bed at my lowest ebb. I'm not the most girly girl but I did dream of a romantic, happy proposal. Instead, I was hairless and in mental turmoil. Compromise. The medications I take make it really difficult to lose weight and therefore I am not happy with my appearance. Compromise. I felt and looked really unattractive on my wedding day. Compromise. Because of our low income and the sky-high rents where I live, we must stay in our rent-controlled apartment even though it doesn't really suit us any more. Compromise.

Compromise, compromise, compromise. I could go on.

And this is forever until I die. And my husband's life is also compromised too. That heaps guilt on top of everything else. I think this early realisation exacerbated my initial period of mental turmoil. I felt so trapped and found it so difficult to get my head around the fact that my life was now so constrained. The lives of my friends and my sister were taking flight: new jobs, romantic proposals, houses, savings. My life could not have been more different and it was for good. And I still struggle with that gulf between me and them. It has become a little bit easier to deal with, mainly because I compartmentalise my feelings when a friend tells me of exciting developments in their life. But it is still hard.

And there are no easy answers. There's no neat resolution. It just is what it is. I will be broke and fat and my health will decline and then I will die. That's how this plays out.

I told my husband the other day that if I could choose one word to describe my feelings towards cancer and what it has done to my life, that word would be: disappointment. That's the overriding feeling. This is it? This is what I get? What was it all for? I always struggled with existential angst and being diagnosed with a terminal illness has only heightened that. I really felt the universe was laughing at me when I was diagnosed. I had wasted my life wondering what the point of it all was and it was as if the diagnosis was underlining it all: there is no point!

A bleak entry today and I apologise for that. But I guess part of the purpose of this blog is to try and express some of the thoughts that crowd my head at times. I'd like to say I feel better after writing this but as I said, this is something that will not resolve. It's an open-ended problem that I get to grapple with every day. Yay!

Things That Make Me Glad To Be Alive #2 - Beautiful Iceland

Photos from my September visit - sadly there too early to see the Northern Lights. I'm not a travel bore but I really, really recommend visiting this wonderful country. And if you have your wits about you, it's not too expensive. Plus the food is of a very high standard. All photos are unfiltered.

The Graceless Cancer Patient

The consultant leads me into a private room at the periphery of the outpatient day ward. I sit on the bed.

"We have the results of your CT scan and I'm afraid the news is not so good."

I hold my breath. I quickly decide to ask him if it's the worst case scenario, not believing it would be and thinking that we could then work back from that. "Is it cancer?" I blurt out. He hesitates and immediately, I am cast into panic-mode.

"You have a breast mass and we see some shadows on your spine".

I burst into tears at once and wail about the mammogram that I missed two and a half years prior. I know that this is bad, very bad. My symptoms had been so bad for so long that I know in my heart that this is what I will die of. I pace the room and push the consultant and registrar away when they ask to feel the lymph nodes in my left armpit. I alternately sit and stand and pace, rambling and hyperventilating, my mind racing. I am immediately truculent and angry. That anger will remain undiluted in me for the next month.

The above was my immediate reaction to being diagnosed with terminal breast cancer 29 months ago at the age of 31. I was not brave. I was not accepting. I was not stoic. I felt so different from all the terminal cancer patients I read about in blogs, who seemed to be so courageous, pragmatic and philosophical when they received their diagnoses. I did ask "Why me?". Many times. I did feel sorry for myself. I railed angrily against my diagnosis. Why could I not deal with this diagnosis with grace like others had done? It was like I now had something else to feel guilty about, as if there wasn't enough guilt already weighing down on me. I couldn't understand how others could be so zen about having their lives cut short so abruptly.

Since then, I have slowly become more accepting of my situation. Slowly. Back then, I thought I would never enjoy anything again. But, for anyone out there who is in this place now, I can quite confidently say that this too shall pass. To an extent. Life will never be the same, and I still cry daily. But I genuinely have plenty of moments where I do not think of cancer and where I can immerse myself fully in enjoying something - a film, a play, swimming in the sea. I've realised that everyone has their own way of getting to the point of acceptance. None of these different paths is wrong. Letting out all that emotion was what I needed. Feeling sad and angry at losing my future is nothing to be ashamed of. I am a curious person and it anguishes me still that I will miss out on so much.

So, if you are newly diagnosed and you feel that you are not handling it all with grace and stoicism, realise that you brain is doing whatever it needs to in order to normalise the situation as much as it can. Don't be distracted by how others are handling it. Ride it out.

This too shall pass.

Finding My Voice

Welcome to the Crazy Cat Cancer Lady blog! I am a 33 year old (as of July 2017) woman who is living with stage IV breast cancer. The purpose of this blog is to record my musings on living with a terminal illness. I'm not sure what form this will take yet hence the blog post's title. Hola, blogosphere! o/