A Girl in the Curl

How often this past year, with my own ordeal of breast cancer, did I hear her voice in my head, motivating me to be strong, to stay the course, to get through it. Many times I thought of her and how bad it was for her, in the 70s, before anti-emetics existed, on the chemo.

I am not my mother. That’s my mantra. In many ways, I wish I were more like my mom (she was patient, and extremely popular…everyone loved her.) but even though I did not have the BRCA genes for cancer, it’s hard not to think that your own progression will be just like what you’ve seen happen to your own loved ones.

“You are not your mother. Your mother’s cancer is not your cancer.” I keep hearing. And I know that.

I know it in my head. But in my soul, it feels like I’m counting down now, to a possible end. And what that might be like.

I can hear my mom’s voice, just before I wake up some mornings. When I go to sleep in a complete quandry, and not knowing how to make a decisions (for example, when I was trying to decide between mastectomy and radiation) and I learned in my teens that your mom is always right. When I heard her tell me not to mutilate myself, I knew that’s how she would have felt my drastic decision to have mastectomy and no reconstruction would have been. She had to have a radical mastectomy, AND radiation, so she got the worst of both worlds. She did not have a reconstruction until the procedures for autologous donation were perfected in the 1990s.

I’ve walked this whole path, last year, of breast cancer, and thought about my mom with each step. I was 11 when she was diagnosed, and 38 when she died. She held out for me—she was stubborn like that. When they told her she had maybe a year to live, she defiantly told the white coats “no, you’re wrong.”

And they were.

So, I have much to learn from her still, and I’m trying to, but to no avail yet. She was like a zen master with her confidence and assuredness. I’m a bug that cowers in the dark corner feeling self-pity and seeing the worst of everything.

Where she had a 1% chance, and a 99% danger, she took the 1% and ran with it, whereas I have a 99% chance, and a 1% danger, and it scares me to death.

I’m thankful for those nearly 3 decades she was given, for her to protect me and take care of me from the age of 11 to 38, but more—for the role model of how to “be” and gracefully grow old and be her own woman.

She was quite a woman.

It’s been a while since I wrote anything here.
I haven’t known what to say.

Everything is always so negative, and when faced with sounding more down and morbid, I just keep to myself and say nothing. (What’s that about if you can’t say anything nice? Well, for me, it’s “you’ve already bitched and moaned about that, you can’t keep bitching and moaning about the same dang thing!”)

I finished the radiation “therapy” and I’ve been taking care of my skin and dealing with the minor pains that come with it. The fatigue from the radiation is still with me too, and I begin to wonder when I’ll ever (if ever) feel “normal” again.

I’m in the “now what” phase.

Here’s now what—I have plans to return to school in a month.
I plan on staying on leave from my work, so I can come back and work in August while on break. Then I will likely quit and return for the full blown Master’s program (a year behind, but better late than never, I guess.)

I don’t know when I should cross this goal off.
Cancer will be (sadly) part of my life forever now.
Even more than it was before.

I have to start taking Tamoxifen for five years now, a drug that will suppress the estrogen in my body and put me in chemically induced menopause. Not happy about that, but I don’t know what else to do—risk a recurrence?

Life is tough sometimes. You play the cards you’re dealt.
And that’s that.

Well, there’s nothing to do but to get together over a real bottle of chianti and celebrate EVERYTHNG :)

Em, you know I adore you, and can’t thank you enough for all the emails you’ve sent me with amazing information that has helped me make decisions about my breast cancer treatments.

I found many things on my own, but you always seemed to have the greatest articles and studies at your reach. I owe you a debt of gratitude that I can never repay.

So words do not suffice to tell you how sorry I am that I missed your b-day, but that I hope it was filled with love and laughter :)

ever your friend,
Lisa