Carry that weight

If I'm writing something these days, it's almost always because I'm having surgery or having an anniversary.  That's maybe not the most compelling choice of subjects, and I'll likely stop altogether after this one.  But one more time to shed some of these thoughts and share some more of the story.

So yep, surgery it is.  Still cancer-related, 8 1/2 years out.  No recurrence.

But first, I want to claim a moment of self-control and accountability.  In the last 6 months, I've lost 20 pounds of extra indulgence.  The surgery for hysterectomy/oopherectomy put me into instant menopause, and there is no magic hormone replacement that makes your metabolism return to that of a 20-year-old.  So I struggled for a couple of years, not wanting to admit that I had to make better choices to get back on track with being in the body I thought I should have.  I think there may always be an undercurrent of feeling like my body's going to do what it wants regardless of my choices, but that's not fully true.  I can take control of what I can.  So I did!

But in these years, I've also had a deep frustration that my recovery had stalled in the land of chronic disease management.  I've dealt with lymphedema, chronic pain, and recurring cellulitis.  I've had to modify my life in ways big and small.

My almost-daily compression sleeve and glove are symbols, nuisances, ugly, and so many other things.  They are hot, uncomfortable, always wearing out, a pain to keep laundering, expensive, and they get in my way regularly (handshakes, gardening, patient care, wearing gloves, cooking, interacting with velcro, washing hands, biking, holding hands, getting sun on my skin, etc., etc.).  They keep my arm and hand swelling at a moderate level, but not better than that.  Wearing medical garments makes me feel 30 years older than I am.

My arm is a constant reminder that I can't use my body the way I used to.  I used to dig holes--I had some nice guns!  I used to be strong.  I can't carry bags, travel, exercise, write/draw by hand, work like I used to.  I carry extra pounds of fluid on one side, making all my joints sore from each finger up to my shoulder.  I compensate by using my other side more, and then my whole back, neck and hips are hurting and out of alignment.  Ask my massage therapist how messed up my body can be and how quickly it can get there.

I'm grieving and bitching here.  I'm happy to have survived and moved on to a great, fortunate life, but every day I carry losses on me, and they are not light.

Thursday is surgery to hopefully help with the lymphedema.  It will be lymph node transplant (my own from another area), lymphatic bypass to small venules, and possibly arm liposuction and scar tissue loosening.  It could have a little improvement, it could have a lot.  It will likely take months to find out the full extent of change.  "Cautiously optimistic" is my go-to outlook.

I don't know what to do with that.

I don't know what to do if it doesn't really help, and I don't know how to be if it does really help.  I'm going to be really thrown more out of balance for a while, and it's going to take hard work to even out again.  The heaviness perched on my right will not just fly away.  But "cautiously optimistic"...


P.S. My effed-up other burden: I feel guilty.  Our healthcare system is so wrong that I feel guilty for taking resources to address my lymphedema.  I feel responsible for my coworkers' premiums going up.  I feel responsible for people that don't get coverage, don't get appointments when they need them, aren't offered these treatments because of healthcare disparities by race and income.  It's awful.  How f%@ked is that?!  This is a fraction of what people have to weigh out because we still treat healthcare as a privilege instead of a right.

That's what I'm sitting with, waiting for Thursday.  Thanks for reading another round.

Eight sideways

Eight years seems like a strange amount of time all of a sudden--both long and not long enough.

I sit here in a home inhabited by 2 eight-year-olds, and I think how many chapters in my life and theirs have been written in 8 years.  It's a lot.

This cancerversary finds me in a very different place than I was last year, literally and figuratively.  In the last year, I went from being on my own with Olive to moving into a home with Barry and his son.  It's a new home and a new experience for all of us.  We're here.  We're settled in but still settling in, blending our styles and habits and stuff and getting the kids to get used to the compromises that come with more people. 

Selling the house where so many giant things happened in 11 years of my life was an enormous process.  I don't even know if I can put words to it now, but there was a lot of joy and hope and grief and heartbreak in those rooms.  It was heavier than I was ready for, and I just needed to be done with it.  That's where I'll leave it.

Barry and I are 3 1/2 years into this relationship, and I think it's helping us figure out a lot of new ways of seeing ourselves and each other.  I feel like I came into this relationship with my true self pretty exposed, no modulating my persona to be what I thought my partner wanted or needed.  I say to him what I need to say when I need to say it.  It's nurturing and supportive and reconnecting in a way that is very private--I don't always know if other people hear too much about Barry and me because I do hold it close to the vest.  I guess I'm cautious about professing to have too much certainty about what the future holds.  I think I have good cause in that.  But it doesn't mean it's any less fulfilling for me.

The kids, too, are a constant force to keep moving ahead with life.  Single parent time was hard.  Blending is hard, but when it's all clicking and everyone's having fun and enjoying the moment, it's pretty cool. 

And I can say all this and focus on all this because I'm in such a different place.  The regular dread about a cancer recurrence is not part of my daily life.  Getting my oopherectomy really changed the feeling entirely and reassures me I've done all I can to stay well.  I am mentally through the hardest parts.  For now.  There is always the unknown, but it's not going to define how I view my life at this time. 

At one point, I thought I was going to know when I reached my new normal after cancer.  This may be as close a time as any, but I don't think I want that anymore--with it can come a complacency.  I had a weird moment today in the grocery store parking lot.  I don't know if you'll agree with me, but the grocery store parking lot is where some peak obliviousness was on display today.  It was just the little things, how people can move in the world with little acknowledgement of all the other humans around them.  Walking (slowly, and eating) without looking up while others wait.  Pulling out without paying attention to what's around them.  It makes those interactions cold and thoughtless when sometimes people need you to look up and give them clear attention. 

I realized that I was in a little period like that and that I needed to get clear and attentive.  I remember how incredibly heightened daily interactions were to me 8 years ago.  Everything felt threatened, everything felt precious, and I just wanted to meet head-on with the humanity in others because I needed it so desperately to get through the hardest of the time.  Then I feel like I withdrew a little into my cocoon to rebuild myself.  I got overwhelmed for a while.  Now I am trying to emerge and get back to that vital connection to the world around me.  I don't want to need something like cancer to make me stop, be attentive, be appreciative, and be clear.

I am so lucky.  I appreciate that times infinity.