What I Wish For

There is a reality to having cancer that most people can't see daily.  It's the hidden part that nobody knows about, one that I an informed may not even be the case for all cancer sufferers.  I was in the ER since very early this morning.  I had been having the most foul diarrhea and vomiting I have had in my lifetime.  To the degree that what  I vomited was not simply last nights dinner--it was exactly what my body was excreting at the opposite end--fecal matter.  The side effects of such an event are the most debilitating stomach cramping, and bowel twisting pain I have ever felt.  I screamed in the bathroom as the diarrhea came out in heaps, which triggered a vagal response that sends one throwing up into the waist basket beside them--two ends losing it at once.  No one will believe you alone as a patient, but when my husband arrived the the ER and confirmed that I indeed as vomiting fecal matter, because he got to clean it up--lucky fellow--heads turned and looks of why were given.

I love the way I look below because it hides me from how I really look. I look broken, hurt, confused.  I look completely opposite of the young vibrant girl who had a pep in her step and song in her heart years prior.  It hasn't only been the cancer which has done this to me--it's been a 4 year battle with my declining health.

So this is almost who I am....a lot less hidden, and a lot more bare....

And this is one step closer to vulnerability.  You can see without the edit, tears are pouring out of my eyes like they do are on a very real day....almost daily.  Actually, since I have been diagnosed, I believe they have poured from me daily.  I m hurting so bad most of the time that there are moments I doze off because of the pain meds they have me on and I believe I have just held my baby, or my husband has asked me to check his diaper to assure it is still okay to be sleeping in,  then, I wake up realizing I'm living between mini dreams and reality in some days.  The doctors tell me it shouldn't be this painful, but what do they know?  With all the vomiting and diarrhea, it shouldn't be this bad....but what do they freaking know?  I wanted to scream at the on call doc who fights me each night as I have symptoms flare at night, and he says, "It is not likely that taxol will do this to you.  It is impossible. "  I ended up hanging up on that doctor and sat in my kitchen crying, trying to tell my husband the entire story.  I went to bed hopeless that night as he took over the following morning to fight his but off for me, his weak and failing wife.  I did finally have a doctor tell me today that everyone takes to chemo differently and sadly, I'm taking to it on the level of extreme.  I have what they call grade 3 chemo induced diarrhea, where there is only one more grade--grade 4 which is associated with death because you lose fluids and electrolytes so rapidly that you can't keep up with it and you die...  He finally treated me, kindly and with an utmost respect to me and my husband.

Those area some of the physical associated side effects of chemo.  There are many more.  The cuts that have developed at the end of my finger tips...oh, the pain they induce.  You can't soothe them away with the greatest hand ointment because that greatest hand ointment can't do just what I need it to do--speed up the recovery time my body needs instead of slowing it down with this toxic chemo they are pumping into me.  I know it's attempting to save my life, but is there a more ethical way to do it?  Has there been, but no one tells us?  I don't know.  What I do know is I'm hurting more than I thought humanly possible--but I'm still here, hanging on.

Tonight, what I wish for, just days after this magical holiday we call Christmas, is that you will all love your fellow family members more, your friends more like family, and your enemies more like friends,  Life is fragile.  Don't get lost in the stupidity of grudges and hatred.  I wish you would just love.  When I am vomiting fecal matter, my husband rubs my back and he just loves me.  JUST.  LOVE.

Goodnight my friends.  Goodnight

Fetal Position

I recall learning a concept when I was in nursing school all those years ago.  Yes, I can say all those years--because technically it has already been a decade from some point in that crazy journey to now.  I recall learning that when people of all ages feel like they are falling apart they return to that one position that they innately know, and will always know.

It's no lie.  I am falling apart.  My hair is falling out in clumps, I look like a ravaged cabbage patch doll that has been joined to a very adventurous fun loving, no harm seeking, little girl with a pair of scissors in her hand.  I mean look at me and laugh for once.  I look like that poor doll every little girl has ruined and then went off crying to their momma because dolls hair doesn't grow back.  

I found myself in a very critical position the other night.  Without too many details, I was in a fetal position in my bed, middle of the night, rocking back and forth telling myself who I am, what I am facing, and that I want to live.

Turns out that nursing instructor was right on.  We turn to the one position we knew before our physical air breathing journey began--the fetal position--when life gets too hard.  I did.