helpless
July 16, 2019
...
3 years out and can still smell latex and antiseptic
3 years out and I can still feel my clammy hands shoved under my thighs to not betray me by shaking
3 years since my world imploded.
...
My parents picked me up to go straight from the daycare. I didn't even change clothes. I smelled like sweat and baby formula.
We rode in silence to the ENT office.
I sat in the high-backed black leather exam chair. They had called to say they have an answer. They knew why I had been in so much pain. They knew why I was suddenly losing weight without trying. Why it hurt to eat.
I knew something wasn't right. But as the doctor sat down and started talking it felt like trying to listen to a radio station that just won't come in clearly.
"...unusual... ... Carcinoma... ... aggressive... ... already spoken with... ...surgery scheduled... Indianapolis... ... studied under... ..radiation...possibly chemo..."
I snapped back to reality at "Do you have any questions?"
I wanted to tell him I had about 3,000 questions
"how could this happen?
I didn't have any risk factors..
I had always been healthy.
I was only hospitalized once in my life.
I had only been married six months..
I had only been at this job about four months..
I hadnt had the chance to begin building the life I wanted..
I hadn't even turned 30.
Would I turn 30?"
Trouble was, I couldn't form a sentence.
I looked from my mom, silent tears already rolling down her cheeks, to my dad whose face was a mottled grayish green and rapidly draining of color, to my husband of six months, whose grip on my shoulder tightened as he stood beside me looking nauseated and angry, unable to look me in the eye. My first clear thought was How will I get them through this? Questions wouldn't help them now.
"No. Thank you."
Ugh is that the appropriate response when someone says you have cancer? Thank you?
In my mind I needed to hold myself together. I needed to be strong. I was always the "old soul" the "quiet one" the "pleasure in class". I was the first call when my friends needed something. I was the "fixer". I felt my value was tied to my ability to fade into the background. To be quiet, steady, unproblematic. Cancer wasn't quiet, or unproblematic, and I had never felt more unsteady in my life.
In that moment, I was furious. The first tears to fall were ones of white hot rage. This cancer this stupid single cell that decided to go rogue was stealing everything I was trying to build. But the anger quickly fizzled out into fear. I remember my mom holding my hand, hugging me. I remember crying. I remember the nurse handing me a lollipop on the way out.
I couldn't eat it. It hurt to eat. But it was the only thing she could offer me, so I accepted.
The rest of the day was a haze. My parents told the family.
I had to tell my friends. I didn't want to. I was always the one to put the pieces back together for everyone else. I steadied myself and made the first call to my friend "Lilly". I don't have a clear memory of it but she does.
The second call was no easier. "Poppy" and I had been friends for over half our lives at that point. It was rare for her to cry but I still remember the silence being broken by her halting, broken sobs. She asked me if I could tell her little sister while she was still on the phone. She added her to the line and I struggled to keep calm as I explained the diagnosis and that I didn't have much information yet but I would let them know when I did.
I debated telling anyone else I was so drained. Then I got a picture from my friend "Theo" I hadn't heard from them in a bit but they were always there for me when I needed it most. I had to tell them.
Theo seemed so strong and resolute I had no idea they had any doubts until I asked point blank.
My next clear memory was sitting in a dark quiet room waiting for the PET scan to see if the cancer had spread and how large the tumor was.
It was my first experience with a sedative. I've found they don't so much remove the anxiety as force you to not care about the fact you're anxious. So I sat. Counting ceiling tiles, debating if the wonky one in the corner should count as 2/3 or 3/4, grumbling to myself that this was obviously intended for their ease of mind, not mine. The internal screams of anxiety carried on, still present, but muffled by medication.
The next day was my first meeting with the surgeon. My parents and I made the three hour drive to Indianapolis. Nobody said much. The tumor was larger than he had hoped, but it hadn't spread to my lungs. Surgery was already scheduled two weeks out from that day.
It was the first of many times in this journey I would feel helpless.
Real life is full of choices. We make them every day. Most of them are small. This coffee cup or that one? Blue shirt or green? Every once in a while you have a bigger choice. Stay at this job or apply for a new one? Buy a sedan or a minivan?
Suddenly my choice was surgery or eventual death.
So you do what you have to do.
Then it becomes treatment or eventual death.
So you do what you have to do.
Then seemingly endless check-ins with 4 or 5 doctors or risk a complication being missed.
Then rehab therapy or a life hindered by your inabilities.
Then the regular scans or risk it coming back unnoticed.
This was the last picture taken before my surgery. Standing in front of the park where he proposed.
I'm trying to smile but I'm terrified. The smile doesn't reach my eyes.
His smile is bright, relaxed and easy. You'd never guess that his wife of 6 months had just recieved the most devastating news of her life.
(I will not show his face because I will not give him the satisfaction of being known as anything but an abuser like any other.)
From the point of diagnosis, you lose the ability to make choices. You are a patient, not a person. It leaves you and everyone around you feeling unsteady.
The issue that nobody really warned me about is that you can so easily get smacked back into that feeling. Even 3 years later...
Every anniversary.
Every scan.
Every appointment.
Every time something in your body feels "off".
It's the emotional equivalent of being drug by the hair back into scared, worried, nauseated...
...
Helpless.
