Part of my one year treatment plan is this thyrogloblin stimulating injection. It's two injections, one each day for two days, and then a blood draw within 5 days. From this link, apparently this test will tell me if I have cancer.
Handy. And a little scary.
Friday, August 30, 2013
1-year Endo appointment
Well, I met the 'new' endocrinologist. Turns out she's on a contract and may not renew, so that sucks, because she's pretty darn cool.
So here's the scoop, friends. My lymph nodes are swollen and she thinks I need an ultrasound to look at my neck again.
For some reason, I thought I'd have to go in and fight and convince, and when she touched my neck she made a face and started 'thinking' (as in, making a face of deep thought lol) which surprised me. I figured that whoever I saw would chalk it up to "you're fighting something off and don't know what it is yet", and that I'd have to really plead for an ultrasound. Turns out she was concerned enough on her own to just think it's a good idea.
Which, you know, scares me even more. The right lymph node under my jaw has been swollen for a couple of weeks now and not painful to the touch necessarily, but feels 'pinchy' a lot like it did before I had my thyroid removed. The last three days there is a lymph node in the right side of my neck, behind my ear (I don't know how better to describe it) that is swollen and painful, to the point that sometimes it hurts when I turn my head. Today, feeling good, hopefully it stays that way.
So these things are concerning. She didn't feel any masses but they didn't feel the 1.1cm mass in my thyroid when it was in there, either, so that doesn't mean much. We're going to alter my medication and do bloodwork in 6 weeks, I'll have an ultrasound sometime in the next couple of weeks and hopefully by the end of hte month we'll know enough to either relax and be grateful, or develop a new plan.
So that's that.
How am I feeling? I think for a few hours I felt very reflective and a little sad, a little taken aback by the whole thing, honestly. I thought the pain my lymph nodes would prove to be 'all in my head' and I'd feel like a dork but have nothing to worry about. Here I am, not feeling like a dork and still hoping I have nothing to worry about but not quite convinced anymore that that is true.
If you're reading this, you'll know what's up. I'm not posting it, I'm not really telling anyone other than my few peeps, and I'm pretty much just trying to let this slide into the back of my mind as much as possible. It doesn't mean you can't talk to me about it, it just means I'm not posting this on FB or anything until there are definitive things to say. Right now it's just feelings and speculation.
Onward we go.
So here's the scoop, friends. My lymph nodes are swollen and she thinks I need an ultrasound to look at my neck again.
For some reason, I thought I'd have to go in and fight and convince, and when she touched my neck she made a face and started 'thinking' (as in, making a face of deep thought lol) which surprised me. I figured that whoever I saw would chalk it up to "you're fighting something off and don't know what it is yet", and that I'd have to really plead for an ultrasound. Turns out she was concerned enough on her own to just think it's a good idea.
Which, you know, scares me even more. The right lymph node under my jaw has been swollen for a couple of weeks now and not painful to the touch necessarily, but feels 'pinchy' a lot like it did before I had my thyroid removed. The last three days there is a lymph node in the right side of my neck, behind my ear (I don't know how better to describe it) that is swollen and painful, to the point that sometimes it hurts when I turn my head. Today, feeling good, hopefully it stays that way.
So these things are concerning. She didn't feel any masses but they didn't feel the 1.1cm mass in my thyroid when it was in there, either, so that doesn't mean much. We're going to alter my medication and do bloodwork in 6 weeks, I'll have an ultrasound sometime in the next couple of weeks and hopefully by the end of hte month we'll know enough to either relax and be grateful, or develop a new plan.
So that's that.
How am I feeling? I think for a few hours I felt very reflective and a little sad, a little taken aback by the whole thing, honestly. I thought the pain my lymph nodes would prove to be 'all in my head' and I'd feel like a dork but have nothing to worry about. Here I am, not feeling like a dork and still hoping I have nothing to worry about but not quite convinced anymore that that is true.
If you're reading this, you'll know what's up. I'm not posting it, I'm not really telling anyone other than my few peeps, and I'm pretty much just trying to let this slide into the back of my mind as much as possible. It doesn't mean you can't talk to me about it, it just means I'm not posting this on FB or anything until there are definitive things to say. Right now it's just feelings and speculation.
Onward we go.
Monday, August 26, 2013
Turning to trees
When I go to births, I pray that I will be a tree. On the drive to the birth when my adrenaline runs high (what if I don't make it? What if something dreadful happens? What if it's a loooong birth? Did I forget anything? So excited!!!) I pray to be a tree to help ground myself. I pray that my roots will deeply tap into the earth, to the Source of All that Is and that I will have the energy I need to tend this family. I pray that my trunk will be strong but flex in the winds that will come our way, changing things, but allow me to hold them up as they make decisions they may not have anticipated having to make. I pray that my branches will reach out far and wide, so that my vision is broad and that I can see all possibilities.
This brings me comfort and helps me connect with the work I do, to stay compassionately detached from the family so that they can have their journey and not a recreation of mine in some backward 'healing' of my own wounds.
When I was having the biopsies last year, I closed my eyes, not allowed to swallow or talk as needles were pushed into my neck, I prayed to feel the bark enclose all around me, protecting me from fear and from anxiety, from the stress of holding very still while something that hurt happened to me.
I went to the Redwoods (the Holy Church of Trees) after my cancer treatment and I slept among the Old Ones. Great anxiety arose in me, I developed my first ever panic attack- my body moving giant energy up and out all at once. It felt like an emotional vomit. It set me off course a bit, made me feel vulnerable, but revealed, and open too. I created an altar on one of the trees in our campsite that had been cut down in just such a way as to create the perfect place for me to hold that space. I walked among the big trees and laid flowers at their bases, in gratitude.
I don't know why the trees talk to me, but they do. I don't mean with mouths and voices, but my heart stills and wisdom comes through when I walk in the trees. The Redwood forest is a home for me, but one so intense that I can't stay for too long, or go too far without returning. I feel the call right now, so intensely that when we went down to Oregon it was even physical, the urge to continue driving south to touch the trees, my family. Steadfast, wise, and breathing, only ever needing to be what they are and nothing more, supplying food and air and homes to beings of all kinds just by growing.
It's what we all do for each other, only we think we need to teach others the right way to be. All we ever have to do is be true to ourselves, and in so doing, we teach others - we create opportunities for other people to learn of themselves, and to teach us in return.
Right now, I go back to being a tree, of just being- breathing, being Kristina, speaking the truth as I know it, and being in that space of Nothing Else But This. I'm heading in to my endocrinology appointment and I'm not nervous per se, I feel pretty relaxed in general. That old feeling in my lymph nodes is back though, the one I had after my infection, and before I found out about having cancer. I don't think about cancer until this feeling pops up and then I think, "Am I creating this feeling?"
I worry more that it's all in my head than I worry that it's not. I do not want to manifest that kind of stress in myself, and I am open to all possibilities, so while I'd rather not have cancer again thankyouverymuch, I know it's not the end of the world if I do. I know it's okay. I know I have support.
So I don't know that I'm as 'anxious' about it, anxious enough to create these symptoms that do cause me concern- and I go back and forth wondreing if I should be concerned or just let it go and get the information I need? What if I worry people for nothing, what if I tie people up for no reason in my story and waste their time? Best I keep silent until I know more.
Even when I found out I had cancer, it was hard for me to tell people. I felt like I was bothering them, dropping bad news like this. There's no simple way to do it, and there are no 'rules' that tell you when to drop news, or when to keep it to yourself. I figured people would rather find out from me than someone else.
So now as I approach this appointment, I cling to the trees- but instead of becoming a tree, I am wrapped around it in a giant surrender - to let myself be held up this time, so that whatever is coming, I can put the tree to my back and face it. So either I'm crazy, or something's wrong, and I guess either scenario, I'll work it out.
This brings me comfort and helps me connect with the work I do, to stay compassionately detached from the family so that they can have their journey and not a recreation of mine in some backward 'healing' of my own wounds.
When I was having the biopsies last year, I closed my eyes, not allowed to swallow or talk as needles were pushed into my neck, I prayed to feel the bark enclose all around me, protecting me from fear and from anxiety, from the stress of holding very still while something that hurt happened to me.
I went to the Redwoods (the Holy Church of Trees) after my cancer treatment and I slept among the Old Ones. Great anxiety arose in me, I developed my first ever panic attack- my body moving giant energy up and out all at once. It felt like an emotional vomit. It set me off course a bit, made me feel vulnerable, but revealed, and open too. I created an altar on one of the trees in our campsite that had been cut down in just such a way as to create the perfect place for me to hold that space. I walked among the big trees and laid flowers at their bases, in gratitude.
I don't know why the trees talk to me, but they do. I don't mean with mouths and voices, but my heart stills and wisdom comes through when I walk in the trees. The Redwood forest is a home for me, but one so intense that I can't stay for too long, or go too far without returning. I feel the call right now, so intensely that when we went down to Oregon it was even physical, the urge to continue driving south to touch the trees, my family. Steadfast, wise, and breathing, only ever needing to be what they are and nothing more, supplying food and air and homes to beings of all kinds just by growing.
It's what we all do for each other, only we think we need to teach others the right way to be. All we ever have to do is be true to ourselves, and in so doing, we teach others - we create opportunities for other people to learn of themselves, and to teach us in return.
Right now, I go back to being a tree, of just being- breathing, being Kristina, speaking the truth as I know it, and being in that space of Nothing Else But This. I'm heading in to my endocrinology appointment and I'm not nervous per se, I feel pretty relaxed in general. That old feeling in my lymph nodes is back though, the one I had after my infection, and before I found out about having cancer. I don't think about cancer until this feeling pops up and then I think, "Am I creating this feeling?"
I worry more that it's all in my head than I worry that it's not. I do not want to manifest that kind of stress in myself, and I am open to all possibilities, so while I'd rather not have cancer again thankyouverymuch, I know it's not the end of the world if I do. I know it's okay. I know I have support.
So I don't know that I'm as 'anxious' about it, anxious enough to create these symptoms that do cause me concern- and I go back and forth wondreing if I should be concerned or just let it go and get the information I need? What if I worry people for nothing, what if I tie people up for no reason in my story and waste their time? Best I keep silent until I know more.
Even when I found out I had cancer, it was hard for me to tell people. I felt like I was bothering them, dropping bad news like this. There's no simple way to do it, and there are no 'rules' that tell you when to drop news, or when to keep it to yourself. I figured people would rather find out from me than someone else.
So now as I approach this appointment, I cling to the trees- but instead of becoming a tree, I am wrapped around it in a giant surrender - to let myself be held up this time, so that whatever is coming, I can put the tree to my back and face it. So either I'm crazy, or something's wrong, and I guess either scenario, I'll work it out.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Cancer days
Life putzes on, new joys, new stresses, adjusting to old joys and stresses- the days happen around you no matter what is going on in your life. Which is great- it's the dynamic force of change that keeps us from becoming moldy before it's time.
The cancer dance, just when you think it's over... not quite. It's not always that cancer has come back physically, but sometimes it comes back energetically. Sometimes you're thrown right back into that wacky fear that makes you a little neurotic and needy. I'm kind of there right now.
I can hear about cancer any time and while a teeny portion of me goes back to my own experience, I don't get terribly triggered by the day-to-day mention of it. Like anyone, sometimes I get a little emotional but really I feel the experience is fairly integrated.
Recently I discovered that a friend of mine has had cancer return. It made me so angry to hear it, and then it absolutely terrified me. I learned this just a few days ago and in a way I am adjusting, and still reeling- we are capable of feeling so many things at once, it's marvelous sometimes. I spent the evening in the bath tub with a drink, pondering how safe I have felt on the 'other side' of cancer. In my head, I know that it can come back. In my daily life however, I'm on the other side, never to return. This was a sharp detour sign not meant for me, but that reminded me that there could be curves ahead and not to get too comfortable at the wheel.
I was surprised and immediately buckled when I woke up on Saturday morning feeling a familiar sensation - the lymph node under my right jaw was swollen and felt like it was infected. It's not the same feeling as when you are sick and your lymph nodes get swollen. Energetically it feels like.. illness. I don't know how to describe it. It's a sharper, yellow sensation that is very distinct (I know, you're asking, yellow? Just go with it.) I could feel the node on my left side flaring a bit too and I immediately thought, Oh shit. It's back.
After I'd found out I had a lump in my thyroid and before my biopsies, I had a lymph node under my jaw become infected. Full on high fever, antibiotics, the whole shebang. I didn't even know lymph nodes could get infected, but this was very obviously the case. Dr. Googe said, "If there is cancer nearby..." so it gave me a chance to consider that maybe I had cancer and my body was giving me the heads-up, so to speak, before I got the diagnosis. It was helpful to get to try it on but it scared the living shit out of me too, because there was so much still I didn't know. Don't know why I had an infection, but I did have cancer, so in my mind, the two are irrevocably connected.
Saturday morning, waking up with this sensation, it shook me. It has still left me shaken, I don't know where to catalog things that were around cancer- Before Cancer, and After Cancer, and Signs of Cancer. I'm sure there are other buckets to plop things into, those are just the ones I'm working with right now. On the heels of the giant detour sign I drove past in my friend's experience, I wasn't exactly on watch but this particular 'sign' was too large to ignore. It cut past my defenses, my cognitive dissonance.
I had to do henna all day at a festival and my lymph nodes were hurting off and on all day. Late in the afternoon, a delicate soul walked into my booth, with her new hair painted pink on her head and eyebrows. Bright pink. Her spirit was so very fragile, she was recently on the other side of a second bout with cancer, her second bout with chemotherapy, and her hair was just starting to come back. She wasn't strong yet, but she would be, she will be.. she's still very delicate. Her friend accompanying her sat her with me and left while we worked out what she wanted done. She wanted flowers on her face. She said she'd freaked out her husband by dying her new hair pink and she really wanted to get him by having henna on her face. We chatted briefly and she shared bullet points of her story. She sat with me for maybe five minutes, but we got to talk a little about a cancer retreat where she could go with her husband and be tended and fed for a while.
Her friend returned to pay me and asked me what I required, I said, "It's on me, my pleasure." It was such a small amount of work and my heart was cracked open so deliciously just meeting her- I truly had already been amply compensated. He took money out of his wallet and paused, and said, "Wait a second.." He pulled a larger bill out and put it in my tip jar and looked me right in the eye very intentionally and said, "That's for you. Thank you." And they walked away.
Even writing that little story, it makes me cry. I don't know why. I was gifted so beautifully just by her being her, and me being me, that the money on top felt so generous and made me feel seen and appreciated. Still, what I am stuck with is that two people who walked a similar journey, granted, hers far more challenging than mine, we touched each other for that moment.
I kept hearing the word cancer all day for some reason, and it was triggering me deeply. It felt like a billboard from the Universe. I went to bed that night and had weird dreams. I developed a little fever, which broke in the morning. I felt better. A little shaken still, vulnerable, but more steady.
Sunday a dear friend of mine was visiting from out of town and we were walking in the park when I ran into my Sistah, Leah. Leah had leukemia and found out right after I did that she had cancer, so we've been pillars of laughs and frank honesty for each other over the last year. Whenever we run into each other (and we do, OFTEN), one of us cries. This time it was my turn, and honestly, it scared me again to have this new reminder of CANCER! screaming me in the face. Our bond is because of cancer. We went to high school together and have common friends, but cancer was what really brought us closer, into a no-maintenance-high-appreciation friendship. Seeing her fills my heart and breaks it at the same time, I'm sure that it goes both ways.
Leah and I parted and Erin and I continued to walk through the park and she looked at me and said, "Are you going to call your doctor?" I'd tossed it around a bit but it just seemed very bold-faced-in-your-face-font which was great, it allowed me to just address the question without all the feelings of not wanting to be a pain in the ass.
I have an appointment coming up, my lymph node isn't bothering me as much but it is still bothering me, so I'm going to just get a little peace of mind and ask for my ultrasound six months early. It's a new doc so we'll see what she says. I hate to think I'm setting the stage that I'm high maintenance right out of the gate, and at the same time, I'm paying for this, and I had cancer, and it's okay if I'm high maintenance, damnit.
Hopefully there is no follow up needed. :)
The cancer dance, just when you think it's over... not quite. It's not always that cancer has come back physically, but sometimes it comes back energetically. Sometimes you're thrown right back into that wacky fear that makes you a little neurotic and needy. I'm kind of there right now.
I can hear about cancer any time and while a teeny portion of me goes back to my own experience, I don't get terribly triggered by the day-to-day mention of it. Like anyone, sometimes I get a little emotional but really I feel the experience is fairly integrated.
Recently I discovered that a friend of mine has had cancer return. It made me so angry to hear it, and then it absolutely terrified me. I learned this just a few days ago and in a way I am adjusting, and still reeling- we are capable of feeling so many things at once, it's marvelous sometimes. I spent the evening in the bath tub with a drink, pondering how safe I have felt on the 'other side' of cancer. In my head, I know that it can come back. In my daily life however, I'm on the other side, never to return. This was a sharp detour sign not meant for me, but that reminded me that there could be curves ahead and not to get too comfortable at the wheel.
I was surprised and immediately buckled when I woke up on Saturday morning feeling a familiar sensation - the lymph node under my right jaw was swollen and felt like it was infected. It's not the same feeling as when you are sick and your lymph nodes get swollen. Energetically it feels like.. illness. I don't know how to describe it. It's a sharper, yellow sensation that is very distinct (I know, you're asking, yellow? Just go with it.) I could feel the node on my left side flaring a bit too and I immediately thought, Oh shit. It's back.
After I'd found out I had a lump in my thyroid and before my biopsies, I had a lymph node under my jaw become infected. Full on high fever, antibiotics, the whole shebang. I didn't even know lymph nodes could get infected, but this was very obviously the case. Dr. Googe said, "If there is cancer nearby..." so it gave me a chance to consider that maybe I had cancer and my body was giving me the heads-up, so to speak, before I got the diagnosis. It was helpful to get to try it on but it scared the living shit out of me too, because there was so much still I didn't know. Don't know why I had an infection, but I did have cancer, so in my mind, the two are irrevocably connected.
Saturday morning, waking up with this sensation, it shook me. It has still left me shaken, I don't know where to catalog things that were around cancer- Before Cancer, and After Cancer, and Signs of Cancer. I'm sure there are other buckets to plop things into, those are just the ones I'm working with right now. On the heels of the giant detour sign I drove past in my friend's experience, I wasn't exactly on watch but this particular 'sign' was too large to ignore. It cut past my defenses, my cognitive dissonance.
I had to do henna all day at a festival and my lymph nodes were hurting off and on all day. Late in the afternoon, a delicate soul walked into my booth, with her new hair painted pink on her head and eyebrows. Bright pink. Her spirit was so very fragile, she was recently on the other side of a second bout with cancer, her second bout with chemotherapy, and her hair was just starting to come back. She wasn't strong yet, but she would be, she will be.. she's still very delicate. Her friend accompanying her sat her with me and left while we worked out what she wanted done. She wanted flowers on her face. She said she'd freaked out her husband by dying her new hair pink and she really wanted to get him by having henna on her face. We chatted briefly and she shared bullet points of her story. She sat with me for maybe five minutes, but we got to talk a little about a cancer retreat where she could go with her husband and be tended and fed for a while.
Her friend returned to pay me and asked me what I required, I said, "It's on me, my pleasure." It was such a small amount of work and my heart was cracked open so deliciously just meeting her- I truly had already been amply compensated. He took money out of his wallet and paused, and said, "Wait a second.." He pulled a larger bill out and put it in my tip jar and looked me right in the eye very intentionally and said, "That's for you. Thank you." And they walked away.
Even writing that little story, it makes me cry. I don't know why. I was gifted so beautifully just by her being her, and me being me, that the money on top felt so generous and made me feel seen and appreciated. Still, what I am stuck with is that two people who walked a similar journey, granted, hers far more challenging than mine, we touched each other for that moment.
I kept hearing the word cancer all day for some reason, and it was triggering me deeply. It felt like a billboard from the Universe. I went to bed that night and had weird dreams. I developed a little fever, which broke in the morning. I felt better. A little shaken still, vulnerable, but more steady.
Sunday a dear friend of mine was visiting from out of town and we were walking in the park when I ran into my Sistah, Leah. Leah had leukemia and found out right after I did that she had cancer, so we've been pillars of laughs and frank honesty for each other over the last year. Whenever we run into each other (and we do, OFTEN), one of us cries. This time it was my turn, and honestly, it scared me again to have this new reminder of CANCER! screaming me in the face. Our bond is because of cancer. We went to high school together and have common friends, but cancer was what really brought us closer, into a no-maintenance-high-appreciation friendship. Seeing her fills my heart and breaks it at the same time, I'm sure that it goes both ways.
Leah and I parted and Erin and I continued to walk through the park and she looked at me and said, "Are you going to call your doctor?" I'd tossed it around a bit but it just seemed very bold-faced-in-your-face-font which was great, it allowed me to just address the question without all the feelings of not wanting to be a pain in the ass.
I have an appointment coming up, my lymph node isn't bothering me as much but it is still bothering me, so I'm going to just get a little peace of mind and ask for my ultrasound six months early. It's a new doc so we'll see what she says. I hate to think I'm setting the stage that I'm high maintenance right out of the gate, and at the same time, I'm paying for this, and I had cancer, and it's okay if I'm high maintenance, damnit.
Hopefully there is no follow up needed. :)
Monday, June 3, 2013
Unrecognizable
I know I only really write when I'm stressed, and I don't want to give the impression that I'm always in some negative place- I'm not. Writing helps me process and unload and unfortunately if you're an audience here you get a birds eye view of mostly my hard, raw moments.
Have you ever woken up and parts of yourself that you'd carefully cultivated were suddenly no longer a part of your personality? That you were capable of saying and doing things that the day before (and the many days before that) you'd never have imagined? Imagine things flying out of your mouth before your brain can catch up and warn you against it, before the exhale comes, giving you a chance to think about it, to reframe, to be clear and succinct, or to not speak at all. Imagine going from being soft and yielding, to having fuzzy boundaries and being overly accommodating of other people and their need to process and work through, even if it means you set yourself aside - to someone sharp and full of edges that are sharp and blistering at the same time, who doesn't look back and say, "I wish I hadn't said that," but rather thinks, "I guess they'll let me know if I hurt them."
This is me. I hate it.
And I love it.
And I hate it. It's embarrassing. It feels cruel.
And liberating.
It feels cold and too far off the edge of who I know myself to be.
And I let go of the things that don't serve me, and it makes me harder.
I don't want to be harder, I don't want to be so harsh.
At the same time, I am liberated by it, that I speak the truth without pausing to give myself permission. That I don't pause because the truth might hurt, but rather trust that if it hurts, we'll work it out.
I don't need permission to feel the things I feel, there is no permission needed EVER to feel. You just feel, or you don't. No one has the right to give you permission to feel what you feel. No one.
I sometimes think I am no longer fit for public. I often want to retreat deep into the woods, into a place of solitude, to regenerate my broken heart, to discover myself again because I am a stranger now, to learn where my edges are instead of constantly cutting myself on them. To learn to remember what gratitude felt like, what unconditional love felt like - because now what I feel most is intolerance, impatience, rage, apathy and an absolute unwillingness to make it more comfortable for YOU.
I feel bad for the hard things I say, for only a second, I feel bad, and there is no filter there any more. Whatever it was that stole the soft, understanding, compassionate parts of me that knew how to talk about feelings, knew how to address hard issues with grace and tact - whatever lifted those qualities from me, lifted my filters as well.
I am completely uncomfortable in this skin and I am literally incapable of being another way right now. 100% unable to shift it. There is no where to be but here. If I could change it, I would. Maybe someday I can, but for now, I just want to be able to look at myself in the mirror, emotionally and spiritually, and be someone that I recognize. So far, I am still very much a stranger to myself.
Have you ever woken up and parts of yourself that you'd carefully cultivated were suddenly no longer a part of your personality? That you were capable of saying and doing things that the day before (and the many days before that) you'd never have imagined? Imagine things flying out of your mouth before your brain can catch up and warn you against it, before the exhale comes, giving you a chance to think about it, to reframe, to be clear and succinct, or to not speak at all. Imagine going from being soft and yielding, to having fuzzy boundaries and being overly accommodating of other people and their need to process and work through, even if it means you set yourself aside - to someone sharp and full of edges that are sharp and blistering at the same time, who doesn't look back and say, "I wish I hadn't said that," but rather thinks, "I guess they'll let me know if I hurt them."
This is me. I hate it.
And I love it.
And I hate it. It's embarrassing. It feels cruel.
And liberating.
It feels cold and too far off the edge of who I know myself to be.
And I let go of the things that don't serve me, and it makes me harder.
I don't want to be harder, I don't want to be so harsh.
At the same time, I am liberated by it, that I speak the truth without pausing to give myself permission. That I don't pause because the truth might hurt, but rather trust that if it hurts, we'll work it out.
I don't need permission to feel the things I feel, there is no permission needed EVER to feel. You just feel, or you don't. No one has the right to give you permission to feel what you feel. No one.
I sometimes think I am no longer fit for public. I often want to retreat deep into the woods, into a place of solitude, to regenerate my broken heart, to discover myself again because I am a stranger now, to learn where my edges are instead of constantly cutting myself on them. To learn to remember what gratitude felt like, what unconditional love felt like - because now what I feel most is intolerance, impatience, rage, apathy and an absolute unwillingness to make it more comfortable for YOU.
I feel bad for the hard things I say, for only a second, I feel bad, and there is no filter there any more. Whatever it was that stole the soft, understanding, compassionate parts of me that knew how to talk about feelings, knew how to address hard issues with grace and tact - whatever lifted those qualities from me, lifted my filters as well.
I am completely uncomfortable in this skin and I am literally incapable of being another way right now. 100% unable to shift it. There is no where to be but here. If I could change it, I would. Maybe someday I can, but for now, I just want to be able to look at myself in the mirror, emotionally and spiritually, and be someone that I recognize. So far, I am still very much a stranger to myself.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
One year later
An hour ago I was thinking about how my 'cancerversary' is coming up - the anniversary of the moment when I found out I had thyroid cancer. I was trying to figure out how many days away it was, so that I could think about whether I wanted to mark the day in some way, to sort of assess my feelings.
I realized with a start that it's tomorrow.
Ever since a year ago, I do this. I know some emotional date is coming and in my head, it is far away. When I think about it, starting to wrap my mind around it, I realize that it's tomorrow and I feel terribly cheated in my chance to prepare, wrap my mind around it, think about what it all means. I'm an analyzer, it's what I do.
So one year ago today, I was hovering between the worlds of biopsy and results, knowing I wouldn't have them until tomorrow, a quiet unknowing in my heart. Looking back does not feel like a wistful celebration, it feels dense and bitter in many ways.
"Ever since you've had cancer, you've changed. You're more harsh than you used to be, there's an edge to you now." A friend said this to me not long after my surgery, and it has proven increasingly true over the last year. I was really angry when she said it, I can't say I'm not still angry sometimes, but mostly because it's true. Also, because life changes us, and not always in ways we like. I am harsher, and I spend a lot less time now crafting what I hope are the perfectly tended words to get my points across. I'm not as delicate in my language, I don't tiptoe gently behind someone's defenses to be heard.
Conversely, I have a whole new vocabulary for what it means to go through, survive, and be reborn by a trauma. This is not a bad or sad thing- life is full of traumas and we discover who we are, who we are capable of becoming, in the face of them. We are swept off our feet by the flash floods of life and must find new ground, testing for stability, trusting our hand holds. It's hard work, and it requires us to stay in the moment in order to survive.
I found out that I was capable of facing down cancer but not in a fight, but in a dance. I never would have imagined it until I was in the moment! All my pre-cancer life, I imagined that cancer was a fight, a battle, a war - you win, you lose, you conquer or surrender. I discovered that cancer could be a gift, a great expansion of ones-self. I found a great, deep intimacy with a friend who also had cancer- something that people who haven't had a serious illness can ever truly understand, because their bodies were not assaulted by the word Cancer, and by cancer treatment, and by the emotional battery of it all. It is a private, exquisite experience that defies words, and it broke open my ability to feel compassion greatly.
I've learned that it feels really weird, almost selfish and embarrassing, to announce that you have cancer on Facebook, even after all those important calls are made. I learned there's no easy way to tell people who love you that you have cancer, and that I still couldn't help but be the 'strong' one in that moment. I laughed, I joked, I tried to put people at ease, and days later I lost my shit driving down the highway and almost drove myself to the crazy hospital because I thought I was going insane. It passed. I was going insane, but not the quick kind of crazy people want to give you meds for- the slow kind that everyone else is suffering, too.
I learned that a lot more can forge a marriage together than fights that are behind you, adventures you've had together, parenting children into hopefully healthy adulthoods- and that not all of the crises of cancer needed discussion. Sometimes I just needed to look at his face and know that absolutely no matter what, he was there for me, that he would witness and hold, and encourage and be the space where I could fall apart, and never ask a single thing for himself, even when I begged for him to. I saw a strength in my husband I had seen glimpses of over our 20+ year friendship, but this took us to a place of revelation I don't know that much else could have accomplished. He is truly the best man I have ever known, in ways that words can never capture. I limit him when I try.
I learned that I can love myself a lot, and still not like parts of myself that grow like weeds in the garden I thought I'd so carefully cultivated. Tenacious things, I pull at these parts of myself and they come back thicker and deeper until I relent, and make room for them. It's a hard lesson, to accept things about yourself that are not who you knew yourself to be. "I see that you love yourself, but that you don't like parts of yourself. I see that." Another friend reflected to me recently after I raged about my new impatience with things, my intolerance for 'bullshit'. I don't want to accomodate little things anymore, I don't want to do the dances I once was so fluent in. I don't want to baby a situation. I make harsh faces now, where I used to be softer. I don't want to be touched like I once did. I feel more masculine in many ways.
I was at ComiCon this year and met this amazing artist. Looking through his work I felt things, and I came across this one. I don't love this painting, it doesn't necessarily appeal to my eye. However, if my heart was cut out and flayed open, this is what it would look like. The person is flipping off the butterflies, the empathy - for the sake of peace, the shadow ahead saying, "FUCK YOU". I get it. I truly get it. I bought it and it sits right in front of me now, where I can look at it often and ask myself, "Am I still there?" Yes, I am. I don't have time for empathy anymore, I need serenity, I can't take care of you, because I have to take care of me. I have to let go, I'll be there when you fall but I won't be your cushion anymore.
It's a weird, strange, powerful, dark, masculine, wonderful, liberating place to be.
"What does the anniversary mean to you? Why do you mark it?" I really had to think about it when my friend asked me this recently, when I told her that May 23rd was coming, and that I was feeling tender and easily bruised. She was curious, not judging, and I had no answer.
I realized today as I made my bed and tried not to cry that the anniversary marks that I have lived for 365 days past an event. I grew up thinking I wouldn't grow up- I have had an entire adulthood never imagining growing old, anticipating that I would die at any moment, rather than that I would live a long time. I still don't think forward from now. Rather, I take a curiosity stance- I wonder if I'll see that baby born? I wonder if I'll actually get into midwifery school? I wonder if I'll actually see the ribbon cutting of this business I'm in? I wonder if I'll see my oldest graduate, or my youngest get married? I don't know. I don't assume so. I just hope for it, and wait to see what happens in between.
How does any one event change you? It's impossible to know, because it happens immediately AND over time- it touches every event in your life directly following it, and those change you too, so you can't possibly tease out what one thing caused, versus another. I try to unravel who I was before I had cancer, before my mother died, and I find myself shocked that as I think about facing tomorrow, I am wishing my mother was alive so that we could talk about it. I have not felt that since her death. I don't want her to be alive, but I wish that of all people, I could visit this milestone in my life with the woman who brought me forth - learn how it touched her, too.
The last thing I'll say is that my cancer gave me the gift of anger. I used to say that if I ever let myself feel the full spectrum of anger that I had tidied into little boxes in my self-awareness-defense-mechanism, that someone would literally extinguish from the earth. I'm pretty sure that on the other side of cancer, I began to feel the anger- not that I had cancer, but just at the helplessness, at the painful experiences, at the fear in the eyes of people I loved, at the minimization of my experience as 'just' thyroid cancer, at the desire to make it bigger than it really was because it felt enormous to me, even if the world said it was small. Small cracks began to appear and vents formed- I started speaking honestly about feeling angry and stopped feeling that I needed to apologize for it. Rather, I just stopped giving a flying fuck what anyone thought about my feelings because damnit, they were mine, and i had a right to them, and I earned them, and therefore protected and defended them. I don't have to explain to anyone what cancer meant to me, I don't have to dial it back or feel less intensely because it made other people uncomfortable. That was an incredibly powerful discovery - that I can feel the full range of emotions, stretch into the full skin of who I am, and that no one would leave me, no one would cease to exist in the way I had always thought.
In some ways I am still in between the worlds, still grieving the loss and death of who I was Before Cancer. There are things I know now that cost me, but many things I've learned that I waited a life time to know. You can't have one without the other, and that's one of the more profound lessons, I think.
I realized with a start that it's tomorrow.
Ever since a year ago, I do this. I know some emotional date is coming and in my head, it is far away. When I think about it, starting to wrap my mind around it, I realize that it's tomorrow and I feel terribly cheated in my chance to prepare, wrap my mind around it, think about what it all means. I'm an analyzer, it's what I do.
So one year ago today, I was hovering between the worlds of biopsy and results, knowing I wouldn't have them until tomorrow, a quiet unknowing in my heart. Looking back does not feel like a wistful celebration, it feels dense and bitter in many ways.
"Ever since you've had cancer, you've changed. You're more harsh than you used to be, there's an edge to you now." A friend said this to me not long after my surgery, and it has proven increasingly true over the last year. I was really angry when she said it, I can't say I'm not still angry sometimes, but mostly because it's true. Also, because life changes us, and not always in ways we like. I am harsher, and I spend a lot less time now crafting what I hope are the perfectly tended words to get my points across. I'm not as delicate in my language, I don't tiptoe gently behind someone's defenses to be heard.
Conversely, I have a whole new vocabulary for what it means to go through, survive, and be reborn by a trauma. This is not a bad or sad thing- life is full of traumas and we discover who we are, who we are capable of becoming, in the face of them. We are swept off our feet by the flash floods of life and must find new ground, testing for stability, trusting our hand holds. It's hard work, and it requires us to stay in the moment in order to survive.
I found out that I was capable of facing down cancer but not in a fight, but in a dance. I never would have imagined it until I was in the moment! All my pre-cancer life, I imagined that cancer was a fight, a battle, a war - you win, you lose, you conquer or surrender. I discovered that cancer could be a gift, a great expansion of ones-self. I found a great, deep intimacy with a friend who also had cancer- something that people who haven't had a serious illness can ever truly understand, because their bodies were not assaulted by the word Cancer, and by cancer treatment, and by the emotional battery of it all. It is a private, exquisite experience that defies words, and it broke open my ability to feel compassion greatly.
I've learned that it feels really weird, almost selfish and embarrassing, to announce that you have cancer on Facebook, even after all those important calls are made. I learned there's no easy way to tell people who love you that you have cancer, and that I still couldn't help but be the 'strong' one in that moment. I laughed, I joked, I tried to put people at ease, and days later I lost my shit driving down the highway and almost drove myself to the crazy hospital because I thought I was going insane. It passed. I was going insane, but not the quick kind of crazy people want to give you meds for- the slow kind that everyone else is suffering, too.
I learned that a lot more can forge a marriage together than fights that are behind you, adventures you've had together, parenting children into hopefully healthy adulthoods- and that not all of the crises of cancer needed discussion. Sometimes I just needed to look at his face and know that absolutely no matter what, he was there for me, that he would witness and hold, and encourage and be the space where I could fall apart, and never ask a single thing for himself, even when I begged for him to. I saw a strength in my husband I had seen glimpses of over our 20+ year friendship, but this took us to a place of revelation I don't know that much else could have accomplished. He is truly the best man I have ever known, in ways that words can never capture. I limit him when I try.
I learned that I can love myself a lot, and still not like parts of myself that grow like weeds in the garden I thought I'd so carefully cultivated. Tenacious things, I pull at these parts of myself and they come back thicker and deeper until I relent, and make room for them. It's a hard lesson, to accept things about yourself that are not who you knew yourself to be. "I see that you love yourself, but that you don't like parts of yourself. I see that." Another friend reflected to me recently after I raged about my new impatience with things, my intolerance for 'bullshit'. I don't want to accomodate little things anymore, I don't want to do the dances I once was so fluent in. I don't want to baby a situation. I make harsh faces now, where I used to be softer. I don't want to be touched like I once did. I feel more masculine in many ways.
 |
| Decline of Empathy to Appease Serenity, by Nigel Sade |
I was at ComiCon this year and met this amazing artist. Looking through his work I felt things, and I came across this one. I don't love this painting, it doesn't necessarily appeal to my eye. However, if my heart was cut out and flayed open, this is what it would look like. The person is flipping off the butterflies, the empathy - for the sake of peace, the shadow ahead saying, "FUCK YOU". I get it. I truly get it. I bought it and it sits right in front of me now, where I can look at it often and ask myself, "Am I still there?" Yes, I am. I don't have time for empathy anymore, I need serenity, I can't take care of you, because I have to take care of me. I have to let go, I'll be there when you fall but I won't be your cushion anymore.
It's a weird, strange, powerful, dark, masculine, wonderful, liberating place to be.
"What does the anniversary mean to you? Why do you mark it?" I really had to think about it when my friend asked me this recently, when I told her that May 23rd was coming, and that I was feeling tender and easily bruised. She was curious, not judging, and I had no answer.
I realized today as I made my bed and tried not to cry that the anniversary marks that I have lived for 365 days past an event. I grew up thinking I wouldn't grow up- I have had an entire adulthood never imagining growing old, anticipating that I would die at any moment, rather than that I would live a long time. I still don't think forward from now. Rather, I take a curiosity stance- I wonder if I'll see that baby born? I wonder if I'll actually get into midwifery school? I wonder if I'll actually see the ribbon cutting of this business I'm in? I wonder if I'll see my oldest graduate, or my youngest get married? I don't know. I don't assume so. I just hope for it, and wait to see what happens in between.
How does any one event change you? It's impossible to know, because it happens immediately AND over time- it touches every event in your life directly following it, and those change you too, so you can't possibly tease out what one thing caused, versus another. I try to unravel who I was before I had cancer, before my mother died, and I find myself shocked that as I think about facing tomorrow, I am wishing my mother was alive so that we could talk about it. I have not felt that since her death. I don't want her to be alive, but I wish that of all people, I could visit this milestone in my life with the woman who brought me forth - learn how it touched her, too.
The last thing I'll say is that my cancer gave me the gift of anger. I used to say that if I ever let myself feel the full spectrum of anger that I had tidied into little boxes in my self-awareness-defense-mechanism, that someone would literally extinguish from the earth. I'm pretty sure that on the other side of cancer, I began to feel the anger- not that I had cancer, but just at the helplessness, at the painful experiences, at the fear in the eyes of people I loved, at the minimization of my experience as 'just' thyroid cancer, at the desire to make it bigger than it really was because it felt enormous to me, even if the world said it was small. Small cracks began to appear and vents formed- I started speaking honestly about feeling angry and stopped feeling that I needed to apologize for it. Rather, I just stopped giving a flying fuck what anyone thought about my feelings because damnit, they were mine, and i had a right to them, and I earned them, and therefore protected and defended them. I don't have to explain to anyone what cancer meant to me, I don't have to dial it back or feel less intensely because it made other people uncomfortable. That was an incredibly powerful discovery - that I can feel the full range of emotions, stretch into the full skin of who I am, and that no one would leave me, no one would cease to exist in the way I had always thought.
In some ways I am still in between the worlds, still grieving the loss and death of who I was Before Cancer. There are things I know now that cost me, but many things I've learned that I waited a life time to know. You can't have one without the other, and that's one of the more profound lessons, I think.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
How are you doing?
My Sister-in-healing, Leah, asks me how I'm doing. We keep running into each other around town and when I see her face, the way she stands with one shoulder down and both kind of rolled forward, the smile cracking across her face but not fully, it's like seeing myself in another body, another time, another cancer. We see each other and we both laugh because we always circle unknowingly around each other, we keep bumping into each other, and the timing is always just right.
"My cancer-versary is coming up." I am standing in the middle of the Olympic College student center and I start to cry, even though I never cry. Crying is hard, but somehow with Leah it never fails to be easy. "I don't know how I am."
It's so much more than just that I'm about to reach one year of knowing I had cancer, the day that this blog started unfolding, the day that I died right on the spot and have had to be reborn anew, over and over ever since. It's so much more than that.
I go back and forth between wondering if I'm broken, unfixable, if I'm different now from who I was and if I will ever know that girl again. She feels young and naive to me, the Before-Cancer-Kristina, and far away and in a way, fictional. Today I feel darker, grittier, like I am holding on with my teeth and swinging with my fists. Sometimes I feel like I am lost in the Underworld and will never find my way back out, and other times I revel that this is the new normal and that maybe this normal can be as delightful as the old one was.
These last few days, I feel that the layers of myself are being peeled back by an invisible hand. I spent the weekend with people for whom I care very much at the Oregon coast. The raw beach landscape covered with basalt, ancient lava flows that carve and shape the edge of the world. In a way I feel that this is a physical manifestation of me, something that will be strong enough to hold, but will cut you at the same time, with the never ending facelift the ocean provides so that I am always renewed, dead and reborn. There was a moment when I had about 45 minutes alone and I realized how taxed I'd felt, pouring out energy all weekend long. I realized how much I wanted to climb back into myself, into quiet and safety and retreat, and that startled me.
Ever since I notice how much less I want to talk, and how much less I want to be around the energy of others. I find myself turning inward like an introvert, a word I'd never dreamed would ever, ever be associated with me, and yet here it is. Groups tax me. Intimate interactions require a lot of me. My dream life is vivid and intense. I want to be in the woods with the quiet strength of the trees and I fear if I cry that someone might hear me and step in. I want to be able to say that I'm going crazy without someone saying, "Oh no, you are not crazy." I am crazy, which isn't a bad thing, but it's true.
I look around and I realize I do not know myself, I do not recognize this person who is more masculine, who angers easily, who grows irritated with people and situations for reasons I can't figure out no matter how hard I try, who doesn't over think nearly as much and figures that people will either get me or they won't, and that it's their job to pursue clarity, not mine to preemptively offer it. It's like I've been flipped inside out in a way.
Whenever I think about a situation in a new way, a post-2012 kind of way, it makes me angry for a while. Who is this person, this new Kristina? I still don't know. I still have familiar traits but I wonder what the people around me who have known me on either side of last year truly think about who I am now. Do they grieve who I was the way I do? Do I seem overly distracted with this? Do they think I'm being dramatic or silly or making a mountain out of a molehill? And do I fucking care? Actually.. not really.
As every day passes I am not actually thinking too much about May 23rd. Its sort of hovering around my tender edges. When I talk about things, I go instantly to the heart and I cry, right in the restaurants I'm sitting in. Today I talked about how I know I need to get help taking care of myself, because we aren't meant to take care of ourselves alone, and I started to cry because I don't know how to do anything but that. I don't know how to let other people in their skills care for me. I don't know how to lay on a table, vulnerable, and trust someone to touch my body in a healing way, to be in my space. It terrifies me and makes me feel like I will come apart at the seams, or disassociate, or break, and that it will be too much for me, and for them. I justify staying ill (in my head, in my body) because it's too scary to get well. It's scary to lose weight. It's scary to see my body change, to let go of the insulation that this body provides me from the emotions of others, and from being as big outside as I feel inside.
In a way I knew that if I ever felt the anger that was inside, if I ever let it out, someone would literally cease to exist, they would blink out of this life. The Universe could not hold my anger without a cost. That proved to be true, but in reverse- the life was taken and the the anger came, and I can't stop it. It has left me rough around my edges, people bump up against me and walk away bruised and cut sometimes, and I can be indifferent to that because in some way, this is life. It hurts. Maybe I am one of those things, where I never was before, that leaves a mark and challenges your coping skills, or maybe I am broken in half and you slide between my sharp edges. I don't know.
I just know that it still feels like it's awkward to talk about it all. It feels hard to reach out to someone who could actually probably really help me. It feels terrifying to think about healing, because it's a place I don't know and I'm just starting to get my bearings here.
How am I doing? I'm doing. That's all I know.
"My cancer-versary is coming up." I am standing in the middle of the Olympic College student center and I start to cry, even though I never cry. Crying is hard, but somehow with Leah it never fails to be easy. "I don't know how I am."
It's so much more than just that I'm about to reach one year of knowing I had cancer, the day that this blog started unfolding, the day that I died right on the spot and have had to be reborn anew, over and over ever since. It's so much more than that.
I go back and forth between wondering if I'm broken, unfixable, if I'm different now from who I was and if I will ever know that girl again. She feels young and naive to me, the Before-Cancer-Kristina, and far away and in a way, fictional. Today I feel darker, grittier, like I am holding on with my teeth and swinging with my fists. Sometimes I feel like I am lost in the Underworld and will never find my way back out, and other times I revel that this is the new normal and that maybe this normal can be as delightful as the old one was.
These last few days, I feel that the layers of myself are being peeled back by an invisible hand. I spent the weekend with people for whom I care very much at the Oregon coast. The raw beach landscape covered with basalt, ancient lava flows that carve and shape the edge of the world. In a way I feel that this is a physical manifestation of me, something that will be strong enough to hold, but will cut you at the same time, with the never ending facelift the ocean provides so that I am always renewed, dead and reborn. There was a moment when I had about 45 minutes alone and I realized how taxed I'd felt, pouring out energy all weekend long. I realized how much I wanted to climb back into myself, into quiet and safety and retreat, and that startled me.
Ever since I notice how much less I want to talk, and how much less I want to be around the energy of others. I find myself turning inward like an introvert, a word I'd never dreamed would ever, ever be associated with me, and yet here it is. Groups tax me. Intimate interactions require a lot of me. My dream life is vivid and intense. I want to be in the woods with the quiet strength of the trees and I fear if I cry that someone might hear me and step in. I want to be able to say that I'm going crazy without someone saying, "Oh no, you are not crazy." I am crazy, which isn't a bad thing, but it's true.
I look around and I realize I do not know myself, I do not recognize this person who is more masculine, who angers easily, who grows irritated with people and situations for reasons I can't figure out no matter how hard I try, who doesn't over think nearly as much and figures that people will either get me or they won't, and that it's their job to pursue clarity, not mine to preemptively offer it. It's like I've been flipped inside out in a way.
Whenever I think about a situation in a new way, a post-2012 kind of way, it makes me angry for a while. Who is this person, this new Kristina? I still don't know. I still have familiar traits but I wonder what the people around me who have known me on either side of last year truly think about who I am now. Do they grieve who I was the way I do? Do I seem overly distracted with this? Do they think I'm being dramatic or silly or making a mountain out of a molehill? And do I fucking care? Actually.. not really.
As every day passes I am not actually thinking too much about May 23rd. Its sort of hovering around my tender edges. When I talk about things, I go instantly to the heart and I cry, right in the restaurants I'm sitting in. Today I talked about how I know I need to get help taking care of myself, because we aren't meant to take care of ourselves alone, and I started to cry because I don't know how to do anything but that. I don't know how to let other people in their skills care for me. I don't know how to lay on a table, vulnerable, and trust someone to touch my body in a healing way, to be in my space. It terrifies me and makes me feel like I will come apart at the seams, or disassociate, or break, and that it will be too much for me, and for them. I justify staying ill (in my head, in my body) because it's too scary to get well. It's scary to lose weight. It's scary to see my body change, to let go of the insulation that this body provides me from the emotions of others, and from being as big outside as I feel inside.
In a way I knew that if I ever felt the anger that was inside, if I ever let it out, someone would literally cease to exist, they would blink out of this life. The Universe could not hold my anger without a cost. That proved to be true, but in reverse- the life was taken and the the anger came, and I can't stop it. It has left me rough around my edges, people bump up against me and walk away bruised and cut sometimes, and I can be indifferent to that because in some way, this is life. It hurts. Maybe I am one of those things, where I never was before, that leaves a mark and challenges your coping skills, or maybe I am broken in half and you slide between my sharp edges. I don't know.
I just know that it still feels like it's awkward to talk about it all. It feels hard to reach out to someone who could actually probably really help me. It feels terrifying to think about healing, because it's a place I don't know and I'm just starting to get my bearings here.
How am I doing? I'm doing. That's all I know.
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