When I was a kid, my siblings and I would try and freak out our mother by calculating and announcing our future ages. "In 10 years we'll be 20, 17, and 15 years old!" "In 20 years we'll be 30, 27, and 25 years old! And you'll be 60!" I'm not sure why we played that game...other than to see Mom quiver with fake fear of these seemingly impossible old ages (I mean those ages were SO. FAR. AWAY.)...but I vividly remember calculating our future ages. We never went higher than me being 30 though (I'm the oldest). I don't know if it was just that we couldn't imagine me being older than 30 or whether my siblings never wanted to imagine themselves in their 30s in our little game. Years later, as I rounded 25, I had the thought that I should start freaking out about 30. I was getting so close! And according to the age old adage and many staunch believers, 30 is when everything starts to go downhill. Wrinkles. Gray hair. No Metabolism. Loss of muscle, strength, eyesight, hair, memory, beauty, etc. After 30 you officially start wishing for your 20 year old body. So, I smiled and went along with the jabs about "pushing 30" in the years leading up to my big day. 30 didn't sound fun.
When I turned 28, I genuinely started to feel freaked out about my age. I mean, how many childbearing years would I have left? Even though I had the boyfriend (and we'd been together since the stone age, AKA the 90s), I felt so far from being in a place to start a family. I had work and school and the career to start. Kids would come later; I had always planned that kids would be in the picture, but down the road, in the future, later in the plan...but now I was almost 30. How long could I wait? The shocker to me was: I had already waited way too long.
One week prior to my birthday, I received the diagnosis. I was officially a cancer patient. The one with cancer in my social circles. The sick one. The problem was, I had no clue how to be a cancer patient. I know that sounds dumb. But in that week between "you have cancer" and my birthday, that was what I struggled with the most. Every night I went to bed hoping, praying, begging that this was a nightmare. It couldn't be real. It didn't feel real. It felt wrong. This could not be happening to me. Who got uterine cancer at age 28!?!?!? No, no, no. And my birthday itself loomed over me like some kind of sick joke. Would I live to see 30? Most definitely not a helpful question, but one that I tormented myself with repeatedly for far too long. So, I struggled. I struggled to accept that I was, in fact, a cancer patient and that everything now had to change.
After I came home from the doctor, after I could breathe with some regularity, after my boyfriend and I said "I love you" and "we'll get through this" (a lot), we sat on the couch. We sat so close to each other. I remember that most. Like we were trying to get every ounce of air out of the way; pressing into each other to remind us that we were both still there. I drew strength from that, from his warmth, from his physical presence that was not infected with cancer. We held hands. I could finally start talking and tell him exactly what happened, what was said, what we had to do next. He asked questions, he rubbed my back, he repeated our new mantra, "You will beat this. We will beat this. Everything will be okay." Oh how I wanted to believe him. I held on to that conviction with all my might. Even in my darkest moments, from that day forward, I would try to conjure up his voice saying "we will beat this" to give myself hope. I wasn't always successful.
During that first cancer conversation we discussed the logistics of having cancer, we made plans, and we talked about how to inform our loved ones. There were so many people to tell. Our respective families, our friends, our work colleagues. Who to tell when? How? How do you tell the people you love most in the world that you have cancer? (Spoiler Alert: It involves a lot of crying.) We planned out how we would both handle work. I needed to inform my grad program as soon as I could, I needed to set up referrals and transfers for my clients, and I needed to talk with supervisors about how to tell my clients. I needed to figure out the upcoming fall semester...would I take classes, would I take a leave of absence? What were my options? What did we want to do with the prospective options. We talked about what he would tell his work. There were appointments coming up. And not just any appointments, ONCOLOGIST appointments. This was a whole other level of reality. There was just a lot of planning on the couch that day. And a lot of planning in the days ahead.
The next few days were filled with too many tears to count and too many "I have cancer" proclamations. The same day as my diagnosis, I called and told my immediate family. Pain. Just pain. I remember telling my parents, "I'm sorry I'll never have your grandchildren." I also said that to my boyfriend. We were standing in the kitchen and I said, "I'm only ever going to say this once, but I want you to know...I'm sorry that I will never carry your children." It felt important for me to say that. It felt important for me to acknowledge, out loud, that I would never have biological children. It was my first step on the road to processing and accepting one of my new-found labels. During the conversation with my parents, I remember my mom crying more and my dad saying, "Any children you have, no matter how they come to your life, will be our grandchildren. You don't have to apologize for that, Sweetie." More tears. The boyfriend was equally supportive. For this day, at this time, there was no lack of love in my life.
In my non-quest to figure out how to be a cancer patient (I mean, who wants to figure that out?), I decided that 1) the more I said "I have cancer" out loud, to witnesses, the more quickly I would accept my new reality and 2) I needed to tell everyone I could think of personally so I could practice #1. Plus, I wanted to be doing something. I wanted to be doing something, anything, to get rid of the cancer, but, unfortunately, there was a bit of a wait on that. I couldn't get in to see the oncologist for about 14 days (seriously, didn't they know I had CANCER?!?!? How dare oncologists go out of town, EVER!). So there I was, just waiting with cancer inside of me doing heaven-knows-what with my innards. Better not to think of that. Much better to be calling people and practicing my "I have cancer" line. I freely admit that I lost my mind during that time. I was frantic. I held on to the planning and informing like a lifeline and used the conversations as a distraction from feeling frantic, hopeless, and terrified. One of the nice side effects of telling people you have cancer is, they keep calling you to make sure you're okay. Ah, more distraction, more chances to ignore the ugly stuff going on inside and focus on the external-I'm-doing-something-to-beat-cancer thing. I felt stronger. I felt more centered. I felt more sane. Unfortunately, those feelings wouldn't last.
And that is the story of how I first started to lose my mind over cancer, Little Bear.
Til next time...Always and Ever After.
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