Still alive: the good and the bad (but mostly good)

It's been a long time! I'm finding it hard to put my day-to-day life into words. I'm still job-hunting - the hunt was delayed by a few health issues, though now I'm back at it with a vengeance. I'm still spending time with friends. I'm still hiking. I'm still in a strange limbo space.

I thought I'd write about some parts of the post-cancer experience:

The good: Have you ever really looked at your hands?
Not all of the life-appreciating bliss of cancer treatment has carried over into my current state, where I'm obsessively checking job sites, cleaning the house, grumbling at the lack of dish soap, and doing all kinds of mundane things I couldn't do before. While kind of sad, this also seems like a good sign that I'm finding what the cancer press calls "the new normal".

However, there are places where my focus narrows to the present moment and the mindfulness is definitely still present. Recently I heard a cancer patient say that she appreciates food so much more, and I realized that this is also true of me. Months of busted taste buds and nausea can really make a gal appreciate the subtleties of the blandest potato.

So, I get totally blissed-out by food. I drink really, really mild tea and my brain is pretty much transported to a forest full of jasmine. I also get blissed-out by sunny days, pretty flowers, a warm breeze... I always liked these things, but I get kind of overwhelmed by them in a new way. It's surprising and nice.

The bad: Recurring nightmares
So, uh. It's that thing we don't like talking about: the possible return of my cancer, which is called a recurrence. As much as I'm keeping busy and filling my life with good things, a part of me is basically waiting around to see if I make it. The first sign of recurrence is a physical pain or nausea or other symptom, which is a hypochondriac's nightmare. Local recurrence (breast recurrence) is bad; distant recurrence is fatal.

The hard part is that my body's still pretty beat up by treatment, so I'm more susceptible to random health problems. So far, I've had...

• a loss of hearing in one ear. Brain metastasis? No, just a random virus.
• knee pain, foot pain, shoulder pain. Bone mets? Nope, just my body desperately trying to get itself together.
• a terrible pain under my rib cage that is fortunately mostly gone. Liver metastasis? Nope, just my gallbladder acting up.
• redness, itching and pain at my surgery site. Inflammatory breast cancer recurrence? Nope, just a nasty infection that landed me in the hospital, a terrifying experience that I won't go into here.

And there have been so many more. You can see how this might get a little maddening. It doesn't get in my way most of the time, though typing all of this out has been hard.

The in-between: I kind of liked the old normal. Do I really need a new one?

Every day I wake up and I'm alive. I can't say how grateful I am. Some things are more frustrating to me, and other things have more weight. I love my friends so much and I'm so scatterbrained that I often forget to call. I have a hard time with my new body, though I love it so much when I'm hauling it up a steep slope and it's not tiring out.

Things are amazing. Things are sometimes bad, but the amazing parts generally cancel them out. I think it's this way for most people, and if this is my life, I'll freaking take it.

Employment, boredom and you

I'm waiting to hear back from a job, and it's making me antsy, so I thought I'd write about jobhunting and cancer.

One of the hardest parts of being a young cancer patient is that your employment status can be much less secure. I'm speaking broadly, of course; unemployment can hit people of all ages, and up until my diagnosis I was very lucky. But it's definitely a common and frustrating road block in the whole cancer-before-forty marathon.

I was diagnosed right after I finished a short-term internship which followed my MS degree. My MS was a huge life decision, and it was a big change in my overall plan. I was so excited to be heading toward what I hoped would be a lifetime (or at least a whole bunch) of fun and meaningful work.

My breast cancer diagnosis put the plan on hold. I didn't want to apply for jobs when I didn't know how I'd be able to handle treatment, which is notoriously changeable and hard to schedule around - surprise! You need extra surgery! Surprise blood clot! etc. So, for a year and a half I did nothing but survive. Now I'm healthy enough to start job hunting. And I'm hitting a few obstacles:

• I don't know if or when my cancer might recur. There's the big one. It makes me feel guilty, queasy and sometimes paralyzed.
• I'm still recovering, physically. My level of fatigue is unpredictable. Some days I'm racing; some days I'm exhausted. My brain is slowly returning to normal, but I'm not 100%.
• I'm still in treatment. I'm still getting lupron buttshots, taking tamoxifen, and getting zometa. I still get regular checkups and I still get mammograms.
• There's a 1.5 year gap in my resume. So far this hasn't been a big problem, but I worry somebody'll notice.

I know I'm so lucky to have made it this far; I'm grateful that I feel good and I can think about the future. Also, holy cats am I grateful that my husband can support us right now. But do I ever wish a nice part-time job hugging adorable animals would just fall into my frail post-treatment arms.

Calendar girl

Tiptoeing along

I've been trying to think of what to write for a while now, and I think the only solution is to just start typing.

It's now been a year since chemo ended. A year ago this week, I was between surgeries. Between surgeries #3 and #4 out of about 7, that is - but I was getting ready for the most devastating surgery. This year I'm planning on getting a tattoo on my mastectomy scar that says "brave", once the danger of skin metastasis has faded.

I'm feeling physically good. I've been busting my butt on the elliptical, and hiking long distances. I look healthy; I'm more than ten pounds up from chemo. I'm no longer sleeping all day.

Everything is so deceptively normal, in fact, that I've started beating myself up for not getting more work done, for not having more strength - and then I remember why. It's goofy, but nice. Luckily I have parents, a husband and a support group telling me to be gentle with myself. They say it takes two years to recover, and I'm only halfway there.

Every day that passes ups my survival odds. It's still so, so scary. This morning my husband got sad, all of a sudden, in a coffee shop - that's how it happens. I told him he was tough. He is.

Being married to this man is the coolest thing.

I've been thinking about the changes I've made since cancer; I've been patiently working on fixing up little parts of how I live. I clean the house all the time (I used to be insanely messy). I dress more comfortably and attractively, which sounds so shallow but it goes a long way toward feeling more at home in my new body. I feel so much more grounded when these little things are organized.

Anyway, I'm doing the best I can with the body I have, as it slowly heals and simultaneously dives into menopause at 31. Last weekend I tromped through the woods with some nature nuts looking for tiny butterflies, and I was totally in my element. Cancer was the farthest thing on my mind (trying to remember a million tiny field cues for eentsy butterflies was probably my main thought), and it felt good.

Surthrivorship

In a week or so, I'll be 31.

There were moments during treatment that I didn't believe I would live to see 31. But I will. I'm slowly shifting from living day-to-day to the terrifying, wonderful world of planning for the (immediate) future. Brains are neat.

I don't have much to say that's important, but I've got some new hiking boots and have been stomping around, reveling in botany ID, listening to birds, and generally enjoying being alive.

Heartbreak and tea

It's been a really awful week for many of my friends. Like, a shockingly awful week. People passing away, people getting sick, so many people that I'm actually having trouble keeping track of which friend I need to call. And most of it is because of cancer.

It's hard to move on with the recovery process when the very real pain of cancer is everywhere, slamming headlong into the lives of heretofore healthy people. I know that saying "It's not fair" is kind of ridiculous, but dammit, it's not remotely fair, and it makes me so angry and sad.

But there are some good things. I've got a second interview! MY SISTER IS GETTING MARRIED! I've taken friends out to enjoy the spring salamanders. My husband and I went on a date night tonight, and absolutely stuffed ourselves at a restaurant. I have people I care about, and I'm being a little more social than normal (though, let's face it, during treatment I set the bar pretty dang low).

Overall I've been happy, though these losses and illnesses keep reminding me how quickly things can go so terribly badly, and I'm scared.

Bad news can slow me down, and I'm learning to go with it. I'm measuring my days from tea to tea. My husband brings me green tea in the morning, and then I go out and drink some iced tea, or some herbal chai or hot mint tea. I breathe and do everything I can to relax. I let myself regroup, and helps so much.

This is kind of a disjointed entry because I'm not sure how to describe a mix of happiness, peace and laughter, mixed with absolute crap - but then, that's been my problem with this blog all along! Tomorrow is my 6-month checkup with my onco-nurse. Hopefully I'll get some drugs to combat these hot flashes that are currently bathing my body in ridiculously toasty waves.

Hot hot hot

Well, my abrupt descent into chemically induced menopause has hit a rough patch. My hot flashes have changed from an occasional, mildly adorable annoyance to an hours-long frustration.

As soon as the sun goes down, and until about 11am, my body switches from boiling hot to freezing cold every half hour or so. I'm having trouble sleeping. I feel dopey and zombie-like.

I don't want to tell my doctor about this because she'll take me off the Lupron. I like the (possibly goofy) feeling that by staying on it I'm protecting myself just a little bit more.

The wackiest thing is that the hot flashes don't mean an actual raise in body temperature. My husband's hand on my forehead is invariably hotter than I am, even when I'm convinced that the house is on fire. Once or twice I've actually had him verify that the apartment isn't so hot that the pets will keel over.