It was 2:00 a.m. and I had just finished my workout, my clothes wet with sweat. I laid down on the yoga mat and closed my eyes, listening to the quiet that surrounded me. I was miserable. I pulled myself up off the floor and crawled over to my work chair, lifting my laptop to my knees. I allow the work emails to suck me back in. The work is just never ending and I’m just done. I’m desperate for some time to myself; I’ve been working for 20 years, I’m tired.
I wish I were sick, I say to myself. Nothing serious, but I wish I got strep or a cold or something that forces me to rest. That makes me take time for myself, that just gives me a break.
Closing my computer, I will myself to get up out of my chair and head for the shower. My alarm will wake me up in three hours to get the kids up for school and out the door, to start the repetition of a new day.
* **
I’m slowly counting down to November 15th, diagnosis day. Almost a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. Yet today, I feel like a boomerang, as I’m right back to where I was before diagnosis.
How? How did I get right back here?
It kept me up last night. I couldn’t sleep, trying to figure out how I have gotten myself right back to where I was in life before the cancer.
You tell yourself during treatment that if given a second chance at life, you’ll change. Life will be different. You make promises like daily exercise, making more time for your spouse and kids, taking time out for yourself, meditating daily, connecting in person with friends and loved ones.
Then you’ll find yourself cursing at traffic as you race against the clock to pick up your child five minutes past the end of Gan. With headphones plugged into a conference call, you’ll be thankful you’re on mute as you honk at the woman texting on the phone in front of you. You’ve already clocked in a seven hour day, and by the time you force yourself to walk away from work you’ll be at nine hours. Outside your closed bedroom door, the children will scream and rage for your attention but you’re on a conference call so you ignore them. Once again, you miss bedtime and don’t get to say good night to the littlest ones. Dinner is a slice of pizza, the first cheese you’ve eaten in months since switching to a plant-based diet, handed to you by your husband on a plastic plate and scarfed down quickly between conference calls.
How? How did I get right back here?
My therapist had a baby at the beginning of October so I’ve been completely on my own. We’ve funneled my therapy money to cover the cost of therapy for one of the children who needs help dealing with what she went through last year. Trapped in my thoughts, I try to focus on the positive while around me my cancer friends are dealing with recurrences and chemo related side effects. I feel the side effects most days, the chemo brain especially, when I find myself standing at my range panicking because I can’t remember how to turn it on and I need to cook breakfast for the children.
How? How did I get right back here?
They talk about slow, sustainable change. I think about the small changes I have made: the washing cup that’s now in my bathroom, going to sleep with my husband every night even if I lay awake when he is fast asleep, eating a plant-based diet 90% of the time, meditating with my phone app whenever it gets to be too much, saying yes to more writing opportunities.
But I feel it’s not enough change and it’s not happening fast enough and I fear the recurrence. I live in this constant state of fear that the cancer will come back and each time I feel stressed, or exhausted from being overworked, or overwhelmed with life, I worry that I’m opening myself back up to the cancer.
The guilt of that night tortures me. The night I wished to be sick, for an illness to come to force me to make changes. G-d listened to my desperate plea and sent me stage IV cancer. I now believe in the power of my wishes so I wish for a million dollars before going to bed each night and view the past as a cautionary tale on how not to live.
I promised myself that I would never let it get to that place again. That I will never feel so desperate and stuck that I would wish illness upon myself.
Today, I don’t feel stuck, I just feel determined. With two weeks ahead of me of doctors appointments, checkups and tests, I’m allowing myself to feel the fear while facing what lies ahead. I pray that my test results are good and I get the all clear until the next round of tests and monitoring in mid-winter.
And I’m going to focus on making more changes. I’m going to be slow and strategic and smart about these changes so that they stick. For now, I’ll just dream about the day I will be able to tuck my kids into bed every night, and continue to battle the daily cancer fears until I’m either able to move past it…or it has returned.
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