apainintheneck :: A Pain in the Neck | My experience with Hodgkin's lymphoma (& neuroendocrine tumors)

Loss and Change

This hasn’t been my week. Sunday, we lost our beloved cat Akasha, and I miss her so much. I knew her death would hurt, but I didn’t realize how heartbroken I would feel, carrying around a constant ache. There’s also the pain of waking up, those moments when you remember your loss, and the leaden weight settles into your chest. It’s been sad, but we have made it through a week without her.

On Thursday, however, I experienced a physical pain in my chest and stomach and spent all Friday in urgent care and the emergency room. Remember that mysterious spot on my CT scans that thankfully wasn’t Hodgkin’s lymphoma? The best guess was that it was something on my pancreas, and we would keep an eye on it. In July of last year, it was still showing up, and in January of this year, it had shrunk. I don’t think it even warranted a mention during my last scan. But apparently, something’s up with my pancreas, and the doctors suspect I had a bout of pancreatitis this week. Luckily, I got to go home and didn’t have to spend the night or the weekend in the hospital. Unfortunately, I did a little Googling about pancreatitis and have now scared myself after seeing people’s stories. Other things I’ve read say it’s pretty treatable, so my fingers are crossed.

Also this week I got some news about the health of a loved one and I have to take a week in October to help.

Overall, this week has left me a little shaken. I feel as if big changes are ahead. I am sad, because I liked things as they were.

For some reason, when things are good, I always have a fear of things not staying that way. I attribute this to growing up during the Cold War and being constantly convinced that I was going to be obliterated at any moment. Whenever I said goodnight to my family, I worried it would be the last time. I guess I was a morbid child. But I also try to remember good moments and times and appreciate them as much as I can—especially if they feel as if they’ll be the last time.

Last week, when both cats were on the couch with us as we watched TV, I knew it might be the last time there were four of us. When Akasha, weak as she was, snuggled up to me and draped herself across my chest and purred, I knew that it might be the last time. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the other times. I wanted to save that moment. “This is good,” I thought. It was bittersweet as she pressed her thin body into my leg as we both slept on the floor that Friday night for what I knew might be the last time.

The risk of having something good is losing it. I wouldn’t trade my time with Akasha for anything. I’ve read that nothing is permanent—and this is the case for both happiness and unhappiness. It’s personally challenging for me to appreciate a happy time fully without waiting for it to be snatched away. Or to irrationally think, “I don’t deserve this.”

As my remaining cat curls up on my lap, purrs and nuzzles his head into my arm, I am reminded that this is good, no matter what the coming months and doctors’ appointments bring. This moment is good, and I am lucky and I am happy.

Goodbye, Sweet Kitty

Today, we said goodbye to our beloved cat, Akasha. We did all we could and remained hopeful even through this morning, but we were told she was just too sick to go on. When her heart stopped this afternoon, ours broke.

On Saturday, we took her to her oncology appointment, but while the prognosis for small cell lymphoma in animals is good, the doctor said that something else must have been going on aside from the lymphoma. She was so weak by the end of this week that I spent two nights sleeping on the floor with her because she couldn’t jump on the bed anymore. Still, she tried so hard to show her love and she even snuggled next to me on Friday night, what would be her last night at home. On Saturday, weak as she was, she still put her paw on my boyfriend’s shoulder and nuzzled his face with hers. She rested her head on my arm. I think she knew it was the end. We were still hopeful this morning when they told us that she ate, but the doctor said that even if we brought her home, she wouldn’t do very well. It’s already been so hard to see her suffer all this week. It seems like every glimmer of hope was dimmed by another problem or issue. Despite everything, the vibrant personality she always had shone through and still snuggled with us when she could. In the end, she was so diminished.

This week, I’ve done so much crying the necks of my t-shirts are wet. I’ve cried for her, hating to see her suffering. And I’ve also selfishly cried for me. I miss her so much. With a loss, there’s sometimes a void, but this feels like a vacuum. Eventually it will dull to the emptiness that’s left behind, but now it’s an aggressive loss that takes the air right out of my chest and pulls at my guts.

I don’t know what to do with myself. Nothing seems right. It seems sudden and at times, I can’t fathom she’s gone.

I suppose there are some who would say she was “just a cat,” but not anyone who knew her. She was truly special. And she was my friend. I know there are terrible things going on in the world—war, displacement, the environment. When I was dealing with my Hodgkin’s lymphoma, people would sometimes apologize for complaining about what they deemed a lesser problem, but I don’t think the fact that bigger problems exist diminish smaller ones. If only there was a finite number of problems and sadness in the world.

Today I feel like I’ve lost one of my best friends and it hurts and I am so sad. And isn’t that part of what makes pets so valuable to us as friends? When the world is terrible and things seem to be falling apart, they are there as constants, as a reminder of pure good, there to comfort with a purr or a paw or a nuzzle. That’s what is so hard about losing a pet—they are not there to console you about their own passing.

Before we went to the hospital today to say good-bye, I tried to rid the apartment of things that would make me sad, like her medications and the blanket still out on the floor, awaiting her return. Usually innocuous objects, after a death, can hurt so much. Instead we have the things that remind us of the happy times with her—a portrait my talented friend Matt painted years ago, another sketch a friend’s husband made for me while I was in the hospital (Akasha was quite the artist’s muse), her collar. The hospital offered a paw print, which we now have. And I may have a few photos of her.

Akasha admiring her likeness.

Though it hurts so much now, it was worth the 15 years I was lucky enough to have with her. Even though it feels like they went by too quickly. I was extremely fortunate to have her in my life.

She was extraordinary. I could write about her for days and still not do her justice. Since she was a scrappy abandoned kitten trying to get into a grocery store, she demonstrated a big personality. She wasn’t afraid of dogs and stood up to a German Shepherd, batted at the face of a Weimaraner puppy (luckily for all dogs, Akasha was declawed), and was caught hunting the neighbor’s Yorkie, who obliviously frolicked in his yard as Akasha hid herself in the grass, ready to pounce. She loved hair ties and would tirelessly play fetch with them. She had a pink puff on a stick that she would drag across rooms and up steps when she wanted to play.

Akasha was a bird enthusiast.

I can tell you that one of the best weekends of her life was when fledgling birds emerged from recessed can lights in one of my old apartments in Ohio. One Friday, I came home, and noticed the cats were staring at the lights above the staircase. But cats are weird, so I didn’t think much of it. Then a bird stuck its head out, looked around, and disappeared back into the ceiling. Shortly afterwards, it emerged, and the cats chased the bird, and I chased the cats and locked them in the bathroom. Eventually, after nearly an hour, I got the bird out the window. The cats remained watchful that weekend, and I found them looking hopefully at the lights. They were rewarded Sunday morning, when a new bird emerged. Apparently, there was a nest in the ceiling. I got that bird to safety as well. But as long as I lived there, Akasha would look at that light fixture, ever hopeful more birds would come through.

Akasha loved shoes.

Akasha loved great shoes and all men. She would regularly cuddle with female friends’ boots and heels when she wasn’t draping herself across their boyfriends. She was a shameless flirt. Her favorite man, however, was my boyfriend. I was practically a third wheel around here. After he moved in with me, a few male friends who had since moved came back to visit, and immediately they greeted their old feline flame. “Akasha, my sweet!” exclaimed a friend who stayed with me for a few months. “Come here!” He scooped her into his arms. They spent so much time together when he stayed with me that she smelled like his cologne. When another friend who spent a lot of time with her came to visit before moving to Europe, he immediately said “Hi, lover!” at the sight of her. She was never short of admirers. She was as beautiful and smart as she was sweet.

Akasha loved my boyfriend.

Once we came home from a trip, and my mom had called my cell phone to tell me that my answering machine message was just meowing. When we played it, we heard Akasha meowing, with Maceo meowing in the background. I have so many stories about this loveable cat. I know anyone who met her was also often charmed.

I know that if there were reincarnation, we would be reunited, but Akasha would be a woman and I would be the housecat of her and my boyfriend. Maceo would still be a cat, I think.

She really loved my boyfriend.

This past week, I was also sick and stayed home from work for a few days. One day, Akasha snuggled next to me and rubbed her head into me even more than usual, as cats do to claim someone. But even without the cat scent, we will always be hers.

Thank you so much for your support on her GoFundMe page and for sharing your memories of Akasha. So many of you have told me what a special kitty she was. She’ll always remain in our hearts.

I would apologize to Auden for my take on his “Funeral Blues” poem, but I read that he actually wrote this as a parody. So I apologize for nothing. Goodbye, sweet Akasha. I love you so much.

Akasha’s Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, take the phone off the hook,
The silly dogs bark without her disapproving look.
Silence the cat collar bells and with muffled sighs,
Let us weep and mourn and say our goodbyes.

As the super blood moon rises overhead
It matters not for she is dead.
Put bows round the succulent necks of unbothered mourning doves
Let go of the mice, catnip and everything else that she loves.

Whatever the problem, she had a velvet soft ear to lend
More than a cat, she was a valued friend.
Her sweet meow and purrs my favorite song,
My love will last forever though she is gone.

Shut down the internet; no more cute photos to share.
Pack up all cardboard boxes, toys and ties for the hair,
Empty the oceans of tuna, let the birds be,
For there will never be another cat as beloved as she.

Maceo and Akasha as kittens.

My Cat Has Lymphoma

This week I was blindsided by another lymphoma diagnosis, but it was not mine—it was my cat’s. Akasha, one of my two cats, had been throwing up with increasing frequency, so we took her to the vet a few weeks ago. Blood tests were inconclusive, showing only a slightly decreased red blood cell count, so they advised we keep an eye on her before moving to an ultrasound. She had, however, lost a few pounds and a little bit of back leg strength, but they say that’s not unusual for older cats.

By Tuesday morning of this week, she looked visibly uncomfortable, so we scheduled an ultrasound at the local animal hospital for Saturday. That evening, though, she looked weak and tried to jump on the bed and missed. (This isn’t unusual for the other cat, Maceo, who is just clumsy.) At this point, I was pretty upset so we called and scheduled the ultrasound for the next morning at 11 am. She was in really bad shape and I barely slept. At one point, I slept on the floor to be near her and my boyfriend set up the fold-out sofa bed, which is a lower jump for her, so she could sleep near us. Weak as she was, she snuggled with me, burying her head in my chest, and I worried it would be the last time.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally took her to the animal hospital Tuesday morning and waited. And waited. I had been concentrating so much on 11 am that I could keep it together only until that time and not much beyond that, as it turned out. By 11:45, I was a wreck—as was Akasha, who had fluid coming out of her nose. We admitted her to the emergency care portion of the clinic to be examined.

At first, it seemed as if the ultrasound showed an obstruction in her bowels—maybe a ribbon or hair ties, we assumed, since she has a penchant for trying to eat those. We try to keep them away from her, but she’s mischievous and isn’t above knocking over a trash can or jumping up on a desk to find something to get into. She also had fluid in her belly. We agreed to a surgery to remove the object and drain the fluid that was making her uncomfortable once they re-hydrated and stabilized her. In the evening, we got the call that she was out of surgery. They didn’t find any objects, so they thought it had moved to the colon and was on its way out, but they had noticed some red irritated spots and took a biopsy just as a precaution. She was recovering and could come home Friday.

My boyfriend visited her Thursday morning. That afternoon, I got a phone call from the vet, who reported she was still doing well, but the biopsy results had come back sooner than expected. It showed lymphoma, low-grade so caught fairly early. The next step would be some drugs with little side effects, something that usually gives the cat a few more years.

Akasha offering comfort when I had painful phlebitis.

Though my own lymphoma is in remission, I feel as if it continues to haunt me. Just when I thought I was almost done—if my next scan is clear then I don’t have to have another unless I feel something is wrong—cancer has come back to claim my cat. Whenever I tell people who know that I also had lymphoma, there’s a pause as they process this cruel coincidence.

I know it seems silly to be so upset that she may have only a few years left as she’s 16. I shouldn’t be shocked that my cat is going to die one day, but having a timeframe put on it made her age very real. I can no longer pretend she’s immortal, like the Anne Rice vampire for whom she is named—a link to my goth girl past.

To have a pet at all, you generally have to put aside the knowledge that their time is most often shorter than yours. And it will always seem too short, no matter how long it is. But you also know that time that you spent with them—and the tail wags, the purrs, the snuggles, the companionship—will be worth the eventual and inevitable heartache of losing a creature who becomes a best friend.

We both visited Akasha that evening, though she seemed a little out of it, her pupils dilated. (She reminded me of how I was post stem-cell transplant, when I was on a morphine drip, waking up to say nonsensical things that I knew didn’t make sense and then nodding off.)

On Friday, my boyfriend picked her up, but they warned us she could have fluid in the chest cavity and to bring her back if she had difficulty breathing. I was finishing dinner with a friend who has been in town when he called me to let me know that he was taking her back to the hospital. She had been vomiting and was having a lot of trouble breathing. I was simultaneously upset I hadn’t been there and relieved, because I would have been hysterical to see her that condition. I rushed to the hospital and she was readmitted so they can stabilize her digestive tract. We expected her home yesterday but they want to keep her for the weekend.

We stopped by to visit her yesterday and it was hard to see her with a tube up her nose and a cone around her neck, with bits of food she’d thrown up on her cone, which we cleaned up. She seems more alert and since my boyfriend was eye-level with her, she put her front paws on his shoulder to snuggle with him. The best part was that she purred.

I will no longer submit Akasha to humiliating costumes, no matter how cute she looks.

I find myself wrestling with some of the familiar feelings that I experienced when I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in February of 2013. Could I have found out she was sick sooner? The answer, in this case, is probably no, since the doctors noticed the red areas when she was in surgery and did the biopsy only as a precaution. It’s hard not to wonder, though, if you could have done anything differently.

There’s also the same feeling of bad news continually getting worse. (A few years ago, for me, what I thought was a dislocated rib turned out to be cancer, and then the “good kind” of cancer ended up not going away. Then there was the disappointment of the trial drug not working and the subsequent hospital stays and stem cell transplant.) It feels as if I waited a year and a half for good news. This too seemed like a relatively straightforward, if expensive, fix. But the news continues to not be what I hoped.

The cats were very comforting when I was sick. This was taken not long after I got out of the hospital after my stem cell transplant.

The vets also found a heart murmur, so she is having an echocardiogram on Monday to see if she can even withstand the lymphoma treatment. My own heart is a little bit broken. Sometimes I find myself absentmindedly clutching my chest as if that will help me keep it together.

I know that with all the cat’s current health problems I might seem like a weird cat lady who is trying to selfishly keep a cat alive when it’s time to go. But that’s not the case. Until the past few weeks, she has been energetic and mischievous and much the same as she’s always been. A few years ago, the vet said she had the body of a cat one-third her age.

However, I don’t want her to suffer. When we had the surgery done, I thought she could recover and go on as she always had. I want her to have a good quality of life. I know tough decisions are ahead at some point. I just don’t want it to be now.

Akasha and I spend a lot of time together.

Akasha and I spent a lot of time together when I was sick.

For those who say she’s “just a cat,” well, I’m a cat lady. Since I worked from home for years, I spent a lot of time with the cats. I often worked with her snuggled next to me.

For those of you who know Akasha, you know that she has a lot of personality, whether she is playing fetch with hair ties, standing up to dogs twice her size, snuggling with visitors’ shoes or shamelessly flirting with any man who enters her territory. She has a charisma and charm that often wins over non-cat people as well. I have to advise people are allergic to cats to steel themselves against her whiles, because I often hear the same story from wheezing guests excusing themselves to go home early: “She was just so friendly, I couldn’t resist petting her a little…” At parties, she’s at the center of activity, flitting from group to group until she eventually sneaks her way to an unguarded part of the food table for a stolen snack.

I don’t know how 15 years have passed since I drove to pick her up as a 1-year-old kitten. A friend had forwarded an email from another friend who found her in November of 2000, but couldn’t keep her because of his wife’s allergies. They had found the little cat dumped in the parking lot of a local supermarket. Whenever the automatic doors opened for shoppers, she would run into the store and employees had been removing her all day. I admired her spirit.

After spending most of the night writing a story about reclaimed wood (way before it was trendy, I might add), I drove to pick her up before work. She stuffed her face through a hole in the box in my car’s backseat and protested her confinement. When I brought her to my apartment, Maceo hissed at her. After a defiant glare in his direction, she calmly walked over to his food bowl and started eating. I got home from work and tried to take a quick nap before a Dandy Warhols concert, but was interrupted by a neighbor oddly borrowing my toilet brush. I left the cats staring at each other and when I returned from the show, they were still staring at each other, in the same position.

Akasha enduring the humiliation of a “Breaking Bad” tortuga costume.

Since then, she has seen me through several moves and jobs and my own lymphoma treatment. She is featured in many of the blog pictures, snuggling, enduring a “Breaking Bad” themed costume and even putting her paw on my hand and offering comfort when I had a painful blood clot. Akasha has been of great comfort to me and, now that the tables are turned, I would like to help her as much as I can and make her remaining time the best it can be.

I have been a wreck—yesterday my stomach hurt and today my throat hurts. I think I might actually be coming down with something, or it’s a side effect of the vaccination shots I got on Friday. I had been so consumed by the cat’s health that I had completely forgotten about the blood tests they took on Friday when they called to tell me to continue my medication for hypothyroidism from radiation.

Akasha looking at an image that looks familiar.

Akasha looking at an image that seems familiar somehow.

My boyfriend set up a GoFundMe page to help with vet bills. Kind words and thoughts are invaluable. More than anything, though, I want her to get better just to have more time with her.

In a way, I feel selfish. I’ve already had so much time with her. I’m so lucky. But don’t we all want more? More luck? Who will attempt to bathe my face in the middle of the night with a scratchy tongue or push a wet nose against mine? I miss her and want her home.

A Year Later

This wasn’t the post I was going to write when I planned to mark the one-year anniversary of going to the hospital for my stem cell transplant. This was going to be a post about how much has changed since a year ago today, on the eve of entering the hospital for one month for an autologous stem cell transplant. I was planning to have people over to celebrate and watch the new Game of Thrones and celebrate my half-birthday, with my cats dressed up as dragons.

I want to preface this by saying that I’m OK, and, as far as I know, cancer-free. Yet I’ve been having some problems breathing and spent seven hours at MSKCC urgent care on Monday evening. I never wanted to have that hospital bracelet on my wrist again. The diagnosis was walking pneumonia, yet I still can’t breathe and there’s still a little doubt as to what’s wrong. I’m seeing a pulmonologist.

This started last Saturday, when I noticed it was a little hard to take a deep breath. It worsened throughout Sunday, and by the time I climbed the two flights to my apartment after an Easter feast, I was coughing, panting and gasping for air. (And it wasn’t just all the ham, sausage, potato salad, deviled eggs and desserts I’d just ingested that slowed me down.)

The problem was I’d signed up for a cycling class Monday morning and it was too late to cancel without incurring a $20 fee. I went to class and informed the instructor I couldn’t really breathe—problematic for a cardio class. He told me I could reschedule, but I just took it really easy through class and somehow made it. I scheduled an appointment with a general practitioner close to work and left for a 3 pm appointment. I didn’t come back that day.

After I saw the doctor around 4, and told him about my medical history, he wanted to send me to urgent care to rule out a blood clot. (That was before I told him I had already had a pulmonary embolism, and then he was certain we had to rule out a blood clot.) He wanted to send me to NYU Langone, but I thought I should go to MSKCC since they knew my history and since I have a pulmonary function test slated for this Friday. In retrospect, I realize this was a mistake, but…hindsight.

I arrived at urgent care around 5, and I’ve never seen it so busy. I knew it would be a long wait, because a blood clot could be serious, but I was still mobile and feeling OK and it was a ruling-out situation. The doctor there listened to my lungs and said it was good that the other doctor wanted to rule out a blood clot. I had a CT scan. I got out at around 1 am. The good news is that there was no clot. Officially, she said there was “something” there and they thought it was pneumonia. Not as much info as I would have liked after 8 hours, but she told me to call my MSKCC doctor for more info about the scan the next day. I got Levaquin antibiotics and took a cab home.

I was surprised at how much having that hospital bracelet on my wrist affected me, after being free of it for so long. It was like shackles. I was sad and scared, not knowing what was wrong. For nearly a year and a half, I was in a zone—keeping my head down and getting through something. After getting back to “normal” life, I felt ill-prepared to deal with tests and the pain of the contrast injection and the search for a good vein for an IV. My armor was rusty, my coping mechanisms as buried as my beat-up veins.

Because Mad Men is on again, I thought of the words of Don Draper in season one, “It will shock you how much this never happened.” (I feel like that about the last few seasons of that show. I can barely remember the plot. Will it ever get good again before the end? But that’s another post.) It’s not that I feel like cancer never happened, it’s just so separate from me. It’s lucky, I realize, that it hasn’t had many lasting physical effects. I’m surprised when I have a follow-up appointment. That might be another coping mechanism.

During the months of depression after recovery, as I tried to adjust, I was in a weird middle area—no longer a cancer patient yet not ingrained into regular life yet. I don’t know if there’s a way to strike a balance.

When I was discharged Monday, the doctor said it was probably walking pneumonia but she wanted someone else to look at the CT and I should talk to my doctor before continuing with the Levaquin. I called Tuesday but didn’t hear back, so I took the antibiotic. On Wednesday, I called again, and they said it was “atypical pneumonia.” My general practitioner wanted a follow-up on Thursday.

Wednesday night, my elbows started itching, followed by my ankles. Then blotches appeared on my cheeks. A trip to the ER was advised by my doctor if anything changed or happened, but I wasn’t interested in spending another eight hours in urgent care. I went to sleep and my rash had disappeared by morning.

The doctor sent me for X-rays on Thursday, and though the front desk told me I could go to any location on the sheet, only one did X-rays. After huffing all the way across town in the cold, I broke down and took a cab to the other location. My breathing wasn’t getting any better, and sometimes, I would wake up gasping at night. I would be panting so much by the first flight of steps that I could hear my downstairs neighbor’s dog rush to the door, thinking I was another canine.

Later that day, I had an appointment with a pulmonologist. While sitting in his waiting room, the tops of my feet started burning and a rash started spreading up my legs. It was the end of the day, and I rejoiced when the other patients left so I could scratch at my ankles to my heart’s content.

This doctor took me off the Levaquin because of the rash, and prescribed a Z-pack. The X-ray didn’t show any pneumonia, so it’s a mystery why I can’t breathe. He said something on one side is elevated, but he wants to see the CT scan. I came home and slept for 12 hours.

I called Friday and had to fax a request for a CD of the results. My boyfriend went to the mailing center (presumably to use a time machine to go back to when fax machines were relevant) to fax a form that I printed out and then he switched his work hours to go to the hospital to pick up the CD and take it to the pulmonologist’s office. Still, it was hours before the weekend, and now I must wait.

I cancelled my plans and have been trying not to breathe too deeply. My boyfriend thinks I sound a bit better, but I think I’ve become better at not exerting myself. The real test is tomorrow when I am out and about.

So here I am, a year after packing my bags and checking into the hospital for a month. The experience seems so far away. Yet spending this weekend cooped up, convalescing and taking it easy reminds me of all that time I spent in various stages of illness, in a limbo, waiting to be well again.

There’s no finite amount of illness you have in your life, but I’m mentally done. Logically, it doesn’t make sense, but just one more day not on my terms feels like it’s being stolen from me.

I was speaking to someone about cancer this weekend after hearing a few other experiences. You always try to focus on the positive, but the thing is that there’s no “good” way to have cancer. It’s always terrible and it’s always supremely unfair, no matter how old you are or the circumstances. While it’s good to be positive, it’s also important sometimes to acknowledge this, especially as I supposedly had the “good,” easy-to-cure cancer.

I have had a lot of time to think—more time than I would like—after being woken up gasping for air this week, or waiting for the itchy rash to calm down. There was more I wanted to say, but I’m still not sure how to put some of the things of this past year into words.

As for the breathing, I am, of course, worried. I hope it’s nothing chronic or serious. Right now, all I can do is continue to make my cats’ dragon wings.

Though I cancelled my get-together, I am still making the dragon costumes. (If you’ll recall, I also made them Tortuga costumes for the Breaking Bad finale and they were the cutest disembodied heads on turtle shells that you’ve ever seen.) Tonight, I’ll put aside my pulmonary worries and instead focus on the fate of the seven kingdoms and Don Draper.

Phew!

I was so prepared for bad news about my scan, I didn’t even know how to react when I heard it was clear. It took at least a minute to register. In fact, it’s still sinking in.

Not since the summer of 1994 have I been this pleasantly surprised and flabbergasted by good test results. One day, I answered the phone and it was Mrs. Bergen, my history teacher who called to say that I scored a four (out of four) on the A.P. U.S. History exam. “Four?” I repeated suspiciously. “Are you talking to the right person? This is Josie.” She laughed, and said, “Yes, I know.”

My doctor was happy to deliver the good news. In fact, she thought I’d already known the results so the big reveal was a little anti-climactic. I hadn’t thought to ask the nurse, who came in first to ask me some questions. I’m not sure why. I wasn’t thinking clearly and I didn’t know if she was allowed to tell me. She seemed cheerful, but she’s always a lot of fun to talk to. When she talked to me about getting re-vaccinated the next time I come in, I thought the news might be good, but still, I didn’t ask. (Since I have a new immune system, I have to get all my vaccines again.) After she left the room, my boyfriend mentioned that she wouldn’t be talking about vaccines if my scan hadn’t been clear. I was so terrified to allow myself false hope, I still didn’t ask.

When the doctor came in, she said something about the clear scan, because she thought I’d already known the results. I could have looked online, but I didn’t want to misinterpret the results, especially because I have that troublesome weird spot.

As for the mystery blob that shows up on the scans, it’s gotten smaller. So it’s not cancer, but it’s still not clear what it is. My boyfriend thinks it’s bottled up anger that’s dissipating. He compared it to the part in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, when the Grinch’s (spoiler alert) heart grows three sizes, but instead, the ball of anger that resides in my pancreas is shrinking. I have noticeably less ire.

I do have some radiation-related inflammation in my lungs, but the doctor says it’s even less than she would have expected. As she flipped through the scans on the computer to show me the results, I was still in a state of shock.

I also learned that I might be the only person who wears my MedAlert bracelet that I was told to order when I left the hospital. If I ever need a transfusion, it’s to make sure I get irradiated blood. I asked my doctor how long I have to wear the bracelet, and she said that no one had ever asked her that or mentioned the MedAlert gear. My boyfriend, who loves to interject information while I’m at the doctor’s office, piped up that I’m a goodie-goodie. This is true. It didn’t even occur to me not to do as I was told. I was given a MedAlert order form that was already partially filled out when I was discharged after my transplant and I thought it was mandatory. Also, my friend who analyzes blood gave me a really good explanation of why I need irradiated blood.

The answer to my question about wearing the bracelet is, as it turns out, for the rest of my life, unless I get a wallet card or something. The rest of my life is now a big, exciting thing instead of a question mark. Sure, I know that the cancer can come back. I’ll always have that little question mark in the back of my head. (Or, I suppose, in my pancreas.) But I’ve been given the gift of another six months, at least—possibly a lifetime—of not having cancer. I’m really on the other side of this thing. When I think about it, I sometimes get lightheaded. My life has been on pause, and I can resume it.

When I look back at the past few years, what upset me wasn’t the actual treatment. The chemo, the IVs, the hospital stays, the phebitis—these were tough. But the worst part was having to put my life on hold.

We can’t plan, really, for the future. I don’t know what it holds for me. In fact, after my scan results, I was certain I would be struck by a bus or hit on the head by a falling anvil (the kind that reside in the sky to unfairly take people out who have just received good news). My cynicism has returned. But I can actually move forward right now. I can think in the long term, like everyone else. Yesterday, I thought of vacations. I can go to the beach with my boyfriend’s family. I can plan to go to Europe and meet my best friend’s baby, who was born while I was going through chemo and is now a toddler. It’s as if my life has been in the hands of cancer and I’m finally being given back the controls. It’s wildly exhilarating.

I could steal a police car and drive down to D.C. for a friend’s birthday party, but I think the police work stoppage is over. And I am a goodie-goodie. And I hate driving. So there you have it. The craziest thing I did yesterday was at The Vaselines show we went to in the evening. One of the band members, Frances, was at the merch table and I bought a T-shirt and wore it right then. At the show! That’s a big concert faux-pas. You can’t wear the shirt of the band you’re seeing at the show. But after I bought the shirt, I said, “I’m going to wear it.” And Frances said, “You should!” So I did. That’s about as crazy as I get these days.

I didn’t complete my bucket list yesterday. The free pizza place was too crowded, and after the doctor’s appointment, we were too hungry to make the detour to Roosevelt Island. We went to lunch in our neighborhood and ordered an antipasti plate. The man dining next to us happened to be looking at me, of course, as a piece of prosciutto fell from my fork. I felt his eyes upon me as I looked down at my lap puzzled and didn’t see my renegade ham. I then saw his gaze fall to the floor, where the proscuitto lay. I picked it up and put it to the side on my plate, vaguely embarrassed.

I thought that maybe after cancer, I would be different somehow. Braver. Maybe not as shy. But I’m still essentially the same. When I was back in Cleveland for the holidays, I went to the old Metroparks area where I had spent so much time as a teenager with my friends. I hadn’t realized how lucky I’d been growing up a few minutes away from such a beautiful spot. I hadn’t been much in the winter, and it was particularly lovely with a dusting of snow. Being there with my boyfriend was meaningful—I hadn’t realized I’d never visited the park with him. A friend’s memorial bench sits in the park. I’d always felt guilty somehow for losing touch with him before he died. You always think there will be more time. But as I had time to reflect on mortality this past year, I wouldn’t resent people I lost touch with. In the end, I would value them as much as part of my life, even if it were in the past. People had time to reach out to me, since my situation was years long. I put my guilt to rest that day and smiled at the inscription that’s serious but funny at the same time, as I remember he was. It says he “came here…a lot.”

A lot of things clicked into place during that cold walk, being in a spot where I’d spent so much time as a teen, dreaming how my life would be. I had meant to write it down in a blog, but time got away from me. That’s one thing that I’ve promised my boyfriend I would do if I got a good scan—work less and do fewer 12-hour days and make time for fun.

I’m sure this experience has changed me in some way, but I’m still figuring out how. I still do things like drop ham into my lap at nice restaurants.

After lunch, I celebrated with a nap that spanned the entire afternoon to make up for the previous week’s restless nights. I feel as if I’d been holding my breath for the past few weeks and that I can finally breathe.

It’s easy to get wrapped up in oneself in general, but especially when you’re dealing with cancer. While feeling especially supported by those around you, you’re also really alone. I tried to wrap up all my anxiety within myself, but when I made my announcement that my scan was clear and got responses, I didn’t realize how many people were holding their breath with me. It’s as if Friday’s gusts of wind that swept down the streets of Manhattan on my way to the train after receiving the good news was just the collective sigh of everyone I knew.

Before I left the doctor’s office, I called my mom. Her palpable happiness has one of the best things I’ve ever heard. My boyfriend’s mom, my friend’s mom—does anyone feel things as deeply as mothers do?—sent happy missives, cried, did joyful dances. My boyfriend gave me a big, relieved hug after the news. Friends sent me messages. I had somehow forgotten how much my own story affects others, after two years of people telling me how much they cared about me.

That’s the good thing that came out of all of this. As I’ve said before, I’m not one of those people who thinks things happen for a reason. But I do think you can learn from what happens. During my post-cancer depression, I really hit some lows. Everyone was so happy for me, yet I couldn’t join them. Now I can. I’m finally ready to start celebrating—and living—again, on my own terms.

Goodbye cancer. Finally. Maybe we will meet again. I hope not.

Scanxiety

The other day, as we ate dinner, my boyfriend finally asked me, “What are you doing?”

I was sitting at our dining room table with my hands under my armpits, Molly-Shannon-as-Mary-Katherine-Gallagher-style. “I’m feeling my lymph nodes,” I replied. It was then requested that I refrain from doing so at the dinner table.

Truthfully, I don’t know what my lymph nodes are supposed to feel like, but I’ve been checking in on them a lot lately. I feel under my ears and press on my upper chest, where the troublesome bump showed up two years ago. Tomorrow I get the results from my second post auto-transplant scan.

In December, I felt little pangs and twinges that went away. They’ve been back lately—a pang here and a twinge there—but they’ve been especially bad this past week.

On the bright side, sometimes scan anxiety or “scanxiety” brings on phantom pains. I have had so many pains leading up to the big cancer-or-not reveal, when I am optimistic, I think that they have to be brought on by my imagination. I may have cancer of the tricep and the ankle, if I am to believe the pains.

That’s when I’m being optimistic, which isn’t all that often. I’m more terrified now than I’ve ever been. If there was a bright spot to having refractory Hodgkin’s lymphoma, instead of relapsed, it’s that I never received the news that the cancer went away. It was present for every single scan, stubbornly refusing to leave. I never had a celebration or the chance to breathe a sigh of relief. For a year and a half, it was always cancer, still cancer, still cancer and finally a big question mark.

The question mark is how things ended in July, after my last scan. There was still a spot near my pancreas that continued to light up after chemo, radiation and the stem cell transplant. The doctor didn’t think it was still cancer, and he told me not to worry about it. And I haven’t, for the most part. Until now.

I haven’t really celebrated remission, because I’ve been uncertain if I have anything to celebrate, and I had a lot of recovering to do after the transplant. Once I recovered, I felt weird and depressed for months. Now I’m pretty much back to normal—or as normal as I get—and now I’m certain that this must mean the cancer will return to pull the rug out from under me again. (That’s probably a good sign at least for my mental state. It seems my outlook on life has once again returned to that of a wary cynic.)

I want more time being well. Now that I’ve had a taste of it, I don’t want to go back. When I went in last week for my PET scan, returning to the hospital and having the IV put in again reminded me of that year-and-a-half. It was just eight months ago when I lived at the hospital, full-time, and I’d nearly forgotten it. The scans, the IVs, the tests—everything seems blurry and dream-like now. (Well, some of it was blurred by morphine.)

I don’t want to go back.

During that time, I felt as if I had to shut off a part of myself to deal with it. Now, I feel as if I’m finally coming back to life. Still, I feel like I can’t plan. Someone asked me today if I had a vacation planned in the spring. Not until I get my scan results.

Everything is on hold until tomorrow, yet I also don’t want to know what tomorrow brings. I would rather stay suspended here in ignorance, even as I torment myself. Is this my last meal before knowing I have cancer again? Is this the last evening I have before knowing I have cancer again?

I’ve been making deals with myself, the kinds of weird superstitions you count on when you have no control over what’s going to happen. If I stay in this yoga pose the whole time, I won’t have cancer. If I make it to the corner before the light changes, I won’t have cancer. My head is a weird place right now.

The very best news I expect tomorrow is that only the weird spot has grown and they’ll want to take a look. Whatever has been going on, the random pains in the spot area seem to be real. And then what? What if it’s something worse? What if, what if, what if.

Regardless of the news, I decided to do something fun to take my mind off any bad news if there is any. I wouldn’t say I have a bucket list so much as a few things I’ve been meaning to do. One of them is to take the tram to Roosevelt Island, and the other is to go to a restaurant in my neighborhood that offers a free mini-pizza with a beer. (Free pizza! My ambitions are low, but delicious and affordable.) No matter what, by this time tomorrow, I will at least have accomplished my life’s more attainable goals. Not having cancer is the main one, but that is not within my control.

Uncomfortably Numb

Since I’ve been battling post-cancer depression, I’ve made cursory efforts to cheer myself up. I have a lot of goofy T-shirts. For instance, the one I’m wearing right now has an illustrated rendition of the classic banana knock-knock joke and I find it hilarious. The only problem is that when someone smiles at the joke, they’re rewarded with a bewildered look, because I rarely remember that I’m wearing a funny T-shirt.

I need the shirts to combat my face. When I look sad, people do double-takes and I feel my sadness spreading like something contagious. Years ago, I was feeling pretty bad and a homeless man stopped in his tracks and told me a joke in an effort to cheer me up. A man carrying all his belongings on his back felt sorry for me.

I have been spending a lot of time at home, so as not to contaminate others with sadness, though I can usually keep it together in public.

The other day, fighting off a bout of sadness, I worked out wearing my “Powered by Optimism” T-shirt that was a gift from my boyfriend’s aunts. I’m not sure if the shirt and the workout-related endorphins cheered me up, but the shirt makes my boyfriend laugh when he sees me in it, because he thinks I’m a pessimist.

Then I put on the Howard Jones shirt I got at the Retro Futura tour last month that proclaims “Things Can Only Get Better.” My boyfriend sent the link to the song when I was in the hospital, recovering from the transplant, and it’s in my Stem Cell Transplant Soundtrack. (An aside: If you ever get a chance to see Howard Jones, do so.)

I even wore my “I am awesome” socks, also a gift, created by a company called Notes To Self, even though I always wonder why these positive sock messages aren’t called footnotes. I worked out in my “I Love My Life” T-shirt that I got at an Intensati fitness event.

Outwardly, I’ve been trying to stay upbeat, but feel unmoored and have been drifting into some pretty dark places lately. It’s as if I turned off part of my emotions to deal with the cancer and all that went with it, and now I can’t activate them again, except for a pervasive sadness. When I have to do anything, like get out of bed, I feel like Bartleby, the Scrivener. I would prefer not to. (An aside: We watched a short film version in high school English in 1994, and it doesn’t translate well to this medium, so it was unintentionally hilarious. It’s also the first time I heard of Moby; our teacher gave us a photocopy of an article about him because he’s related to Herman Melville. Looking back, it was sweet of her, but we weren’t cool enough to know who he was then.)

According to speculation (and Wikipedia), Melville wrote Bartleby when he was feeling a bit down on his writing career. Maybe that’s why it strikes a chord. I’m still freelancing, but without steady work, I might be spending too much time inside my head. (Actually, before the hospital, it was nonstop working.)

Come to think of it, the last time I was sad and didn’t have a job, I was 15. I spent my summer vacation painting a lot of my furniture black and listening to the Cure and Nine Inch Nails. I shouldn’t be left to my own devices.

Of course, this is bigger than teen angst. I realize I should be happy. I should be savoring life with a newfound appreciation, like good survivors are supposed to. But I know that “should” thinking isn’t healthy.

I have a lot to look forward to. I’m heading “home” to see friends and family—some of whom I haven’t seen in nearly two years. I need to plan the gatherings, but this depression makes me feel as if I’m moving through molasses (but not as tasty). I owe a lot of people invitations and emails. I’ve been lagging behind.

But I don’t think I’ve been much of a downer in person. Even with my sad face. I’ve been keeping tabs on my depression, and if it starts to get too much, I’ll figure something out. Or I’ll paint all our furniture black.

Boo-hoo

The other day, if you’d passed the intersection near my street, you would have found me standing in the road, middle fingers raised at a car trying to run the red light and run me over.

No one would ever say I’m a delicate flower.

Someone did see this, and, as he crossed the footbridge, he comforted me with, “They’ll get theirs someday.”

I wish I could be that calm. My mom, too, has recently comforted me with assurances that everything works out. I used to believe that, but I’m struggling.

I have a hard time dealing with injustice and, despite my occasional street rantings, I’m really very sensitive. In this unfair, harsh world, you can imagine how things work out for me. I took that Briggs-Myers psychology test, and I’m an INFP (Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceptive). I’m sure there are successful people out there with this personality designation, but they’re mostly tortured artist types. I have no artistic talent—no sonnets to write, no brilliant novel within, no symphony to compose, no masterpiece to create. I don’t have the creative genius to excuse being bad at important aspects of life.

I don’t want to focus on the negative. I did realize during my treatment and with subsequent friend visits that I have a lot of amazing people who care about me, so I must be doing something right. But day-to-day existence has always been hard for me. Balancing finances and dealing with bureaucracy can easily lead me into the depths of despair.

I recently read something about how cancer patients often experience anxiety over their changing physical appearance. The baldness didn’t bother me that much. Partially, I think this is because I used to try to stand out, so looking like a freak is old hat. But I also realized, now that my hair has grown in—not to mention my eyelashes and eyebrows—that in a perverse way, I didn’t mind looking the part of a cancer patient, because I had hoped people would be nicer to me.

In the same way that looking weird and dressing in all black told people to stay away, in hopes they wouldn’t bully or be mean to me, I felt the same comfort with my bald head for all to see. It was like wearing a sign that pleaded, Please be nice to me. I have cancer.

And for the most part, people had been. But lately, I’ve had several disappointing experiences where it felt like people were being only temporarily nice to me, because I had cancer—and then they made a mental note to mistreat me at a later date. It’s been like I’ve been on the receiving end of rain checks for unkindness. It’s been made clear to me that in some cases, no matter what people say, it’s all about the bottom line.

I knew this day would come, when people would stop feeling obligated to be nice to me. I don’t expect special treatment. I worked through cancer and never wanted to use it as an excuse to be lazy or to be a jerk. I just want people to be decent.

As a kid, I was bullied. I was chubby and had no friends for several years. I was the weird, overweight, pimply girl with glasses who wore funny dresses. There are lots of movie and book characters based on this girl, so you can imagine how it went for me. Some people say I’m pessimistic, but I just prepare myself for the bad in people.

I wonder why it is that we always focus on the bad things we hear about ourselves. I’ve probably forgotten beautiful moments throughout my life but will always remember the group of girls a year younger than me who tormented me on the playground almost every day. Billy Ocean’s “Get Into My Car” was popular at the time, and one day the girls came up and sang, “Get into my car—if you can fit!” I’ll always remember that.

In eighth grade, I was at the mirror putting on makeup and some other girls wanted to use the mirror. “Why is she using the mirror?” one girl hissed to another. “She’s a loser.” They wanted me to hear. So now I remember. I still remember their names. Not long after that, I realized there wasn’t any point in wearing makeup, so I stopped for more than a decade. I wore black. I didn’t weigh much. I wanted to disappear, so people just wouldn’t be mean to me.

I guess I should have developed a thick skin, but I feel as if it’s still paper-thin. I’m back to wanting to evaporate. I feel like that bullied kid again, but instead, these discouraging words are from an unlikely source—myself.

During my beautiful, perfect vacation, the bartender at a Long Island brewery criticized our tip of $4.80 (on $24, on a credit card). “Who does that?” she said to her friend next to us. “Why didn’t they just leave me $4?” Her offhand comment ruined a good portion of my day, even though she didn’t mean to. I wrestled with melodramatic thoughts. Why did I bother to get through everything only to let this stuff hurt me so much? In some ways, it felt worse that she didn’t know I was the “bad” tipper. I wondered what every person ever has said behind my back until it was so much that it exploded within and dissipated, and I couldn’t even be sad anymore.

I hate it about myself that I’ll forget some aspects of my perfect friend-and-family-filled week but I’ll remember that.

I’ve been wrestling with a lot of self-loathing, especially with recent events. Am I really incompetent or cheap? I think I may have survivor’s guilt to some extent. When something small happens, I think, Why me? Why did I survive cancer and not somebody who has a job? Why doesn’t somebody with kids survive? Sometimes I feel like it’s unfair that I’m in remission. I feel like I don’t deserve it, and as I said before, I hate unfairness. When I’m exposed to life’s tiniest bumps, I now feel terribly hurt, then ungrateful, and then I just shovel all that into the self-loathing machine chugs along next to me almost all the time these days, waiting for me to feed it.

I know that, today of all days, my problems are trivial. I have to re-learn how to live in a cruel, unfair world. (Boo-hoo, I say to myself. Get it together.) For my part, I’m going to try to be kinder to people, because I know how much the alternative can hurt. (Unless they run red lights near my street.)

Recently, I have been explaining to people that I waited so long for the light at the end of the tunnel and now I feel like I’m standing at the end, blinking, unsure of how to live on the outside. Sometimes, on days like today, I want to crawl back in. But I know I have to move forward, even if the real world’s sun is so bright that it burns my thin skin.

Photo note: This is a photo of a fish from my vacation.

Control

I felt a wave of optimism yesterday as I left my apartment to go grocery shopping—mostly about the weather, which seemed to have shifted from a ceiling of gray, ominous clouds to blue skies dotted with puffy clouds. I put on my new lion espadrilles that aren’t supposed to get wet and set out, noticing along the way the old Poland Springs plastic water bottle half-full of urine I’d seen a few weeks ago. I wasn’t sure if this was a good sign or not.

The urine bottle, oddly, made me think about how much I’d miss New York if I left. Everyone seems to be leaving or talking about leaving these days, in light of how expensive it’s getting to live here. I looked up an apartment I saw for sale in my neighborhood, just for fun, and it cost a million dollars. I’m not using that as an exaggeration, like when I talk about how much a pint of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream costs here. This apartment really cost a million dollars. For that price, area urine should be discarded in Voss bottles.

This is one of the only places I feel really comfortable. I enjoy the balance here. For every bottle of urine, there’s something beautiful and unexpected. For every time there’s the smell of rotting garbage or urine (unbottled, I presume), there’s a linden or chocolate cake breeze. And vice-versa. I find it oddly comforting.

Halfway to the store, I felt several drops of rain and looked up to see a lone gray cloud above, making a few half-hearted attempts to rain only on me, as if I were an unlucky comic strip character. It seemed like a physical embodiment of my recent post-cancer depression—sun and beauty all around, and a small, plaguing sadness trying to descend upon me.

If it started to really rain, I thought about ducking into a store that sold shoes suitable for rain if I came across one. I wasn’t too upset about the threat of a small shower—I’d figure out what to do about my shoes.

In fact, a good percentage of my clothing is bought out of necessity—rain jackets, hoodies, comfortable shoes. I consider weather for which I’m inappropriately dressed a cosmic sign to buy necessities I’m loathe to purchase. I couldn’t control the weather, so I’d make do.

I usually think of myself as pretty easy-going, not a control freak. But recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about control, and lack thereof.

Tuesday, amid the flurry of news feed posts about Robin Williams’ suicide (which also got me thinking about control, but so much has been said on this subject, I’m just going to let the man rest in peace), another story caught my eye. New York Magazine posted a link to a story called “Avoiding the Breast Cancer ‘Warrior’ Trap” by Peter Bach, the doctor who months ago wrote an honest, poignant piece about losing his wife to cancer. It was teased with, “Let’s get real: Cancer doesn’t really make you stronger.”

In the column, Bach talks about being at a Gilda’s Club luncheon, where Good Morning America anchor Amy Robach spoke about her recent breast cancer screening and treatment. In his opinion, she oversimplified two complicated, controversial issues: the mammogram effectiveness debate and her decision to have a double mastectomy. I’m going to leave those topics to the doctor and the breast cancer community.

What struck me was that Bach was troubled by Robach’s assertion: “I kicked cancer’s ass.” Labeling people who end up in remission from cancer as warriors, Bach argues, negates those who die from the disease.

It’s not the first time this has been brought up. In Pink Ribbons, Inc., a documentary about the corporatizing of breast cancer, the filmmakers talk to women with Stage IV breast cancer about how the “survivor” label implies that those who don’t make it didn’t fight hard enough.

I’m not sure how I personally feel about the survivor label. You have definitely gone through something and survived. I feel as if I’m in the middle as someone with refractory Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I survived…for now.

I think the more nuanced point that Bach makes is that there’s an erroneous implication that surviving cancer is based on how hard you fight, that you can somehow control the outcome more than you can.

I would agree with him there. People fight very hard and still lose. In the case of relapsed and refractory Hodgkin’s lymphoma, you emerge from battle only to discover you didn’t win the war and have more fights ahead.

Cancer is extremely unfair. In that aspect, I think the war/battle analogy is accurate. Do we say that those who don’t survive are any less brave?

If there’s a battle comparison to be made, a friend who read my last blog about post-cancer depression said that since I’d been fighting cancer for so long, my depression was like the emptiness of missing battle.

It’s true. Instead of a proud returning war hero, I feel more like the soldier in The Hurt Locker, disconnected with a day-to-day routine, unsure of how to live in the world.

A few phone calls to the department of labor turned me into a quivering mess of emotion and despair, though I suppose dealing with bureaucracy has always turned me into a sad Kafka-esque figure, pained by the absurdity of human existence. Even a glance at a tax form or a health insurance explanation of benefits quickly sends me to the depths of existential despair.

I feel as if in the last year and a half, I’ve lost control over too many things. I swing from struggling for control to recoiling from taking it back. I don’t roll as easily with the punches.

I think that the idea of being a “cancer warrior” is a label that’s meant to be helpful and empowering, but it also can add unnecessary pressure when you’ve been shown just how vulnerable you can be. I think people are looking for control, when so often in the case of cancer, there’s frighteningly little of it. Your own body has tried to kill you. Is the illusion of control helpful or harmful?

Everyone deals with things differently. I’m sure some people feel invincible after cancer, and I don’t begrudge them. I only envy them. I thought maybe once I’d faced cancer, I would feel braver, but if anything, I’ve felt more unsure of myself lately. I’ve been struggling to re-acquaint myself with living in a world I’ve always had trouble fitting into to begin with.

My boyfriend asked why, when I complained about having so much to do, I prioritized working out. I do want to get stronger and do activities to maintain a healthy heart and lungs that put up with a lot of potentially damaging treatment. But the underlying reason is there: The need for some control, even if it’s misguided. It’s been a way of trying to re-assert some control over my traitorous body, a way to say, “I’m still in charge of some things around here.”

I’m not sure if I agree that cancer doesn’t make you emotionally and mentally stronger in some ways. Though now I feel weakened, I hope I’ll show some strength in the long run.

I’m not sure that I feel proud to have survived cancer (for now). Just relieved and still shaken.

In this life, we have such little control over some things, like cancer or the weather, and also a terrifying—often daunting—amount over how we react to the things we can’t control. As I flail and falter, I hope to find my balance once again.

Photo note: The wise cat knows not to take my espadrilles in the rain and wears them only indoors.

Depression

People often ask me how I’m feeling, following up with, “You look great!” My hair has returned and has grown in just enough to the point where it looks like it could be an intentional short cut. A few weeks ago, a punk rock girl passing by me as I waited for the bus told me that she loved my hair.

My eyebrows and eyelashes are back. My mustache also has returned. My minimal beauty routine is back to involving mostly hair removal.

“Great!” is my usual response to the query about how I’m feeling. Physically, I’m almost back to normal. I still have a few joint aches left from losing muscle quickly during my hospital stay. I have a few surgery scars along my neck and a tiny bump from the chest catheter, but otherwise, I feel no worse for the wear.

Truthfully, though, I’ve been battling some post-cancer depression. It’s been nearly two weeks since my doctor told me that it was “all good news,” despite the remaining spot lighting up on my PET scan. I feel as if I should be out jumping for joy and painting the town red.

But I feel as if I have that lead weight of depression banging around and sinking in the middle of my chest. I wish it would land on the troublesome pancreas spot and blot it out, and then all my issues would be solved. It’s not a crippling depression or that I’m incapable of being happy. The weight is sometimes buoyed by good feelings and events, yet the gnawing feeling keeps coming back. Sometimes, I don’t feel like getting out of bed.

It’s frustrating, because I’ve spent so much time—more than a year and a half—longing for things to return to “normal.” But I don’t know where that place is anymore. It’s as if, by trying to return to some sense of normalcy too quickly, I have the emotional equivalent of the bends.

It’s somewhat comforting that this is normal, and that cancer patients often put some of the scariest feelings away while in treatment, only to have it come back later. It’s odd, because I felt as if I was dealing with my emotions through treatment, but I feel as if some things are finally hitting me now.

I’ve also found it helpful to talk to people. A lot of people have been through depression at least once. Like panic disorder, people just don’t tend to talk about it much. Depression often makes no sense from the outside. It often seems to strike when things seem to be going well. Those who have dealt with depression know that it’s not a simple matter of cheering up.

So even though I know this is normal, it’s still hard not to beat myself up a bit for feeling bad. (Also a normal thing, if not constructive.) I’m (probably) cancer-free! I have an amazing life. What do I have to be sad about? It’s difficult not to apply the Bob Newhart “Stop It” therapy to yourself. (Hyperbole and a Half has an excellent description of what it’s like to beat yourself up about feeling depressed and about slowly emerging from it.)

I’ve also had a little bout of my old companion, anxiety. A few weeks ago, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen. I’ve been trying to deal with the old fear of fear, a vicious cycle I’d like to not get caught up in again.

I’ve been trying to stay busy and push away the depression and anxiety. A few weeks ago, we went to brunch with a friend and didn’t return home until the evening. I kept trying to find new things to do so I wouldn’t have to be alone and still long enough for the lingering gloom cloud to descend upon me.

When thinking about returning to normal life, I feel a little overwhelmed. Sometimes small decisions leave me incapacitated. Not that I’ve ever been very capable of making decisions. Every choice I make is full of deliberation. It drives my boyfriend crazy.

Last weekend, four people who have known me for a long time happened to be in town, and that helped me shake off a little bit of my depression. It was good to see and talk to people who knew me long before all of this happened.

What struck me was that after surviving something, there’s this pressure. Whether you think you’ve been spared for some reason or have to live life to the fullest, there’s a new pressure, a self-imposed stress. My own demon has been a feeling that I have to get back to normal, work-wise, which is impossible. Last year, I lost my full-time job while undergoing chemotherapy and, before my hospital stay, I was taking on as much freelance work as possible to prepare for not working. So I feel as if I should always be working now, but that’s not normal.

Taking some time off when friends were in town were therapeutic. I’m also taking a weeklong vacation soon. It’s going to take a while to restore balance to my life.

I have been feeling a little bit better, though the melancholy found its way into my dreams. The other night, I had a dream that I went to a high school reunion, but it happened really fast and I didn’t feel as if I had time to talk to anyone. In the dream, while everyone happily chatted and went on their merry ways, I was overcome with melancholy.

I know dreams don’t always mean something. I had a dream a month ago or so in which I was taking an online quiz where the multiple choice question was based on the Andrew W.K. song and my options were: “What kind of partier are you? A) It’s time to party, B) We will party hard, C) Party hard, party hard, party hard.” But I felt as if this recent dream was trying to tell me something. I’ve had a hard time dealing with the passage of time lately. I think I’m belatedly dealing with the issue of mortality, something I pushed away during treatment.

Eventually, I know I’ll emerge from this. In the meantime, I’m going to keep my chin up and remember that this is normal and it will pass.

Photo note: I realize I said it’s difficult to cheer up, but in case you do need cheering up, here is a photo of my cat wearing tiger shoes.

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