The glass spilled…

I haven’t written since I bragged about what a positive person I am. I guess you could say I’m being tested. (Spoiler alert: I’m still cancer free so it’s not that.) This holiday season has felt surreal. I’ve been thinking a lot about this past year and my cancer. As I’ve been going through all the motions of getting and decorating the tree, making cookies, moving the elf, sending cards and attending festive events I keep thinking “When I did this last year I had cancer growing inside me. How did I not know?” Sometimes the reality of it hits me so hard I just want to bawl. And I’m not sure why this is happening now. I’m healthy. I’m here. I played in the snow with J last week (which is one of the things I was afraid I’d never get to do again). I got my life back. All of the things I prayed I’d get to do again – I’m doing them. So why am I feeling like this? I think maybe it’s all just finally sinking in. I think I was on autopilot during treatment. My goal was to just plow through it and not think too much. So now I’m thinking – and it sucks.

Also, I’ve been volunteering for a program called “Survivors Teaching Students” where myself and a couple of other ovarian cancer survivors tell our stories to medical students. The hope is that putting a face and a story to this disease will help with earlier diagnosis and better outcomes. I did this yesterday and the 2 other women I presented with have each had recurrences. One of them at 18 months post treatment and the other at 4 years. It makes it harder to believe (or hope) it won’t happen to me when I’m meeting people it has happened to. On the plus side, each of these women beat it a second time and they’re still here. There’s a Q&A portion at these talks and one of the med students asked us how we faced the possibility of death. It was a tough question. I wanted to say “I didn’t”. But the truth is, I did. So, I told the truth. I said, “I have a really strong faith and I think I would have been able to come to some sort of peace if it was my time to die. I really think I could have done it. But I could never and will never accept the fact that it would leave my daughter motherless and my husband without a partner.” I was expecting a strictly clinical conversation and I wasn’t prepared to revisit those thoughts.

As if this all wasn’t emotional enough, here’s the really tough part. My Luna will be starting radiation next week for an infiltrative lipoma. Lipomas aren’t technically cancer in that they don’t metastasize to other parts of the body. But sometimes they grow rapidly and invade – so this one might as well be cancer. She had it surgically removed last year but it’s back…with a vengeance. It’s on her hip and is pressing on her bowel. Surgically removing it with clear margins would require amputation. None of us are ready for that. So, we’ll try radiation. Every weekday for almost 4 weeks. She’s going to get a port too. Like me.

When I told Rick he said “I don’t know why God keeps testing us”. I said “I don’t think it’s God doing it. But maybe we keep getting tested because we keep passing every test with flying fucking colors”. Luna’s our 3rd vizsla and the 3rd one to get cancer, or it’s equivalent. Flynn had hemangiosarcoma and our rescue Kulshan had lymphoma. Now Luna has this. I mentioned our vizsla cancer history to the veterinary oncologist and she said recent studies have shown that up to 80% of dogs will get cancer. 80%! What are we doing to poison our dogs? And if we’re poisoning our dogs we’re obviously poisoning ourselves too. The percentage of people who will get cancer is almost 40%. And by the way, that damn cancer causing compressor station has been approved and will be going in down the street from where I grew up. This kind of thinking can really send one into a downward spiral. So you see, I’m not always sunshine and rainbows. The glass spilled. I’ll pick it up and it will be half full again. But right now I’m just going to stare at the spill for a while and think WTF!