Defeated.

July 7th, 2022

Max finds random hairs in his lunch box.  Tonight a strand was resting in Ella’s water glass.  They are everywhere.  Relentlessly falling out one by one every day and everywhere.

I know I’m lucky I didn’t lose it all during chemo.  I am completely aware that I am the only one that stares at the spaces where my scalp shows through.  But I thought I had made it.

I am lost.  Defeated.  The realization that there is no celebratory ending to chemo and radiation weighs heavily on me, because the side effects persist… and have even gotten worse with no definitive end in sight.  The only sure thing is that I am now entering the next phase of treatment.  One that brings rumors of havoc - drug induced menopause and losing your shit.

Since being diagnosed in November all I have been trying to do is keep my shit together.  Stay focused and positive, clear and mindful, self-aware and communicative.  But with the addition of Tamoxifen I fear I have met my match.  I have no idea how these  hormone blocking drugs will effect me.  Every benefit my body experiences from estrogen and progesterone will be denied.

I stare at myself in the mirror, eyes clinging to their 4 or 5 remaining lashes, wondering what it’s going to feel like.  How will I change?  How can I prepare?

I start to listen to Cancer videos and podcasts in the hopes of finding the information that I somehow missed during my healthy Pre-cancer life. I research the  medicinal powers of vegetables, obsess about limiting everything that isn’t whole grain and ban added sugars in my mind.  It only makes me think about food non-stop and I end up making bad choices as if in protest.  Of what, I’m not sure.  Of everything?

I had made peace with food.  I had found some kind of balance that nourished my body without denial.  I felt good about fueling myself and never feeling deprived.  But if what I did before didn’t keep the cancer away, how can doing the same thing prevent it from coming back?  Clearly there has to be something more powerful that I missed, that if I can find it, and do it, then I will up my chances of never having to do this again.

I am like a biker who starts at the bottom of the hill.  Full of energy and determination to make it to the top, but 3/4 way through I am out of breath and struggling to even turn the petal one. more. time.

Yesterday I said I would give myself 2 days to complain and pity myself.  Today is day 3 and I haven’t been able to shake it.  It is a blanket of numbing sadness, wrapped around me.  Isolating me from the people I love because who wants to hear my complaints, fears about cancer… still… again.  To them, the worst is over!  So you must feel better.  But I don’t.  And I don’t know what to do with that.