Did Not

I did not call SuperTherapist today. I was going to. I told my Oncologist NP I was going to. I told Kris I was going to. I told Libby and Dad too.

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But I didn’t.

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I didn’t even get UP until 2pm. And I spent most of my day trying to pretend nothing is wrong. Except it is wrong.

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Everything is sore. Everything. Especially my lower abdomen. jesus. You’d think I’d done crunches except it’s not even like… exercise sore it’s like… sore and vaguely uncomfortable and I know that’s radiation related because they told me it would happen.

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My hair’s texture is completely weird. Like, overnight… totally different.

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I’m fucking exhuasted. My whole body is tired and even though I keep trying to power through it and ignore it, it’s just always there this… hit-by-a-train exhuastion.

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My port is so… present right now. There’s this one tiny corner from the incision that I am having to fight so hard not to pick at. Because the picker in me just wants to pick pick pick pick pick at any loose end and i’ve popped all my damn zits and itched open every mosquito bite which is a whole different level of annoyance.

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And I didn’t call SuperTherapist because I don’t know what to SAY. I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. Hey, so, I guess I should come in… even though I can’t pay you right now, and talk about having Cancer even though I don’t really know what to say about it, and about getting treatment which everyone already knows is going to suck so what is there really to talk about…

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But everyone says… you have to imagine that the medication is tigers in your blood, tearing at the cancer and destroying it. You have to imagine warriors in your blood. But it’s not… it’s poison. It’s poison in my body that kills the thing that tries to kill me except while it does that… it kills me a little too and if we’re lucky (and in my case odds are we will be).. if we’re lucky the Cancer will die before I do and everything will be right with the world except for the part that for the rest of my life I’m the girl who had Cancer.

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Which I suppose, is better than being the girl who died of Cancer.

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So what do I say to SuperTherapist? What am I supposed to talk about? Am I supposed to go in and shed all the fucking tears I can’t in front of other people? To bitch and whine and moan about how bad I have it when I know there are people who have it so much fucking worse?

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What can she do for me? What can anyone do but throw me another prescription to handle whatever side effect comes next?

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I’m not some tragic Cancer victim like you cry over in a fucking Jodi Picoult novel. I don’t deserve anyone’s pity. I’m not going to die from this. I mean, I’m probably not going to die from this. And my father asks the question I haven’t asked them yet: how do we know it’s done? How do we know it worked?

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But I try not to think about it. About what happens in 5 years if it comes back. What happens if we go merrily along thinking this worked but it moves and we don’t catch it again in time. Because how the fuck do we know? I had to fucking hemmorage in her office before they even found the tumor in the first place and that was after 3 physical exams and a D&C… so tell me… what’s the marker here? What is our tell-tale sign?

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Is this what I should be talking about? About how depressed I feel? How anxious? How fucking scared I am that for the rest of my life I’m going to have to constantly be worried that maybe it comes back and nobody can see it?

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And how does she help me with that exactly? Is she going to wave a magic wand and install some kind of… Cancer Detector? This is my Cancery-wancery detector, it goes ding when there’s stuff. I mean.. what am I supposed to do exactly?

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And at the end of the summer, when I (presumeably) get this clean bill of health… am I supposed to just… walk back into work (if they’ll have me) and pretend it didn’t happen? Pretend that I haven’t seen that I deserve better than that fucking stressful thankless job that ran my life before Cancer? Am I supposed to finish this up and then step back into all that stress for the next year? or 2? or 5? How the hell do I do that?

How do I pretend to give a shit if some executives car takes an extra day to get from NY to San Diego and don’t I know he can’t be seen in a rental at his new fancy job and I just finished fighting for my goddamn life and losing everything inside me that could have produced a living, breathing, person that I may or may not have wanted someday? And who gives a SHIT.

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I have a lot of anger these days. A lot of fear. A lot of uncertainty. And I’ve had 2 doses of radiation, and one dose of chemo and if this is what it’s like after 2 and 1 then jesus… 5 weeks later is going to be absolute shit.

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It’s all well and good and powerful and hopeful when it’s fucking theoretical. But it’s not that many steps from… oh my hair’s different… to oh my hair’s gone. And maybe this is what I should be talking about with SuperTherapist except I can’t seem to bring myself to pick up the phone.

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And when people ask how I am I want to scream, “I HAVE FUCKING CANCER AND IT SUCKS HOW THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I AM” but instead I just say, “fine, it’s fine, I’m going to be fine.” Except I don’t even know what that word means anymore and at least when I was fucked up in the head I felt like I had some control but my body doesn’t LISTEN to me anymore. And even if I plow on through and make it through dinner… there’s still me dead asleep on the ride home and blazed awake at night when I should be sleeping because my second winds keep coming to me at the wrong times and they’re too goddamn short anyway to be of much use to begin with.

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And I’m torn between telling the truth, and keeping up the lie that everything is fine. Because I don’t want people to think… oh it’s no big deal… but I don’t want their Cancer-Pity either and I don’t know how to draw that line without screaming and I just want so desperately to go to bed and have someone just wake me up when it’s over. Just wake me up when my life can start again ok? My body can fight Cancer on it’s own and I’ll just be here sleeping so wake me up when it’s ready… I’m changing my name to Aurora and I’ll be here in this tower waiting so just send a pretty girl my way and tell her to kiss me awake when she’s done fighting my Maleficent.

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I want to be sleeping beauty, and prick my finger with a chemo stick and sleep while it fights without me, rest while around me everything else is in turmoil and just wake up for the hero’s entrance at the end. Let my heroine wake me with a kiss and I will figure out how to deal with my changed body, and my tired limbs, and my poisoned blood and as long as I don’t have to do the fighting it will all be ok.

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Call me Aurora and sing me a lullabye and when I wake up drain the poison from my blood and pour it into an apple for another fairy tale. I just want to sleep until it’s over, and then I can start again.