Sometime in February, I stopped blogging. I stopped doing a lot of things.
I had every intention to publish a fairly optimistic blog on February 12th— my “cancerversary”, as I’d honestly been doing so well since the holidays, including giving public speeches about GIST, making my $15,000 donation to Life Raft Group after my 30th birthday and so many other things made life feel worth living again.
And then February 12th came.
And it was the worst day from the minute I woke up. I had just come off of a week of horrific abdominal cramping, a common side effect to Stivarga, my current chemo drug, so my entire body was sore. John had early meetings and my mom was working too, so I was alone in my own feelings from early in the day, a dangerous place to dwell.
I had no appetite, besides a couple dilaudid to take the edge off my pain. There was no hot water to take a shower. Nothing on TV. I stared at the ceiling of my bedroom and realized this is it. This is going to be my life forever.
After one year, there’s no change really. It’s just misery with occasional extra misery on top. What’s to “celebrate” if this is it for me? My best years behind me? Now I understand why people don’t want to fight. I understand why they want to give up. I know why they want die.
I sulked the rest of the day before getting high on medical marijuana and going to get a Chinese foot massage—the 90 minutes of relaxation I do look forward to in my week.
Two days later, I had doctors appointments basically the entire day at the Cancer Casino (my affectionately sarcastic name for Mayo Clinic, if you don’t follow me on Facebook). After spending literally 10 hours there, I hadn’t even made it home before my oncologist was calling to tell me to turn around and head back to the ER for blood transfusion.
I had an apparent significant drop in my hemoglobin in just a week. I’d been walking around with less than half the blood in my body.
A literal dead girl walking. Zombie status achieved.
At that moment, I think my spirit just broke.
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| You can see my spirit is literally broken as I waited in the ER |
Another realization that this is how I will live my whole life. In the hospital, afraid of bleeding to death, walking around like a zombie.
And so back to Mayo I went to find an unknown source of bleeding, just days after “celebrating survivorship”. I can never catch a break.
Two pints of blood, a CT scan, several clueless ER doctors later...they decided that I had a bleed from the necrotic primary tumor in my stomach, the same one that was bleeding when I was diagnosed. Oh, the irony!
Although now not actively bleeding, they wondered whether they should admit me to the hospital to worriedly stare at me and do nothing all weekend.
I looked the doctor right in the eye and said, “I have Hamilton tickets for tomorrow, so I’ll be leaving now.”
And so I was discharged. We went to Hamilton.
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| Fake it 'til you make it. |
And life went on for everyone.
Sort of.
Broken spirits can’t be mended with two pints of blood, tickets to Hamilton or a distinct pleasure in telling doctors what to do. On the outside, things seemed just fine, but inside, I was spiraling out of control faster than even I knew.
To be continued.
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