Or maybe I should have titled this, "How I Cope," because that's what I really mean. You may use the same defense mechanisms as me, but I'll let you speak for yourself, and I'll try to tell my own story here. And I do mean that -- feel free to share if you have a different way of getting through the tough situations life throws at you. That's what the comments section is for. :)
Today was tough for me.
Since my initial conversation with the genetic counselor, I have spent the past weeks preparing myself mentally for surgery. I am a "squishy" person, and by that, I mean I am not very good at watching medical videos, much less thinking about procedures being performed on me. I can take a shot, I can watch them insert that one inch needle into my port every three weeks, and I can deal with the tug and pull of having stitches sewn into my flesh after a mole has been removed.
But having my breasts cut off, and my ovaries and tubes sucked out . . . that just seems like I'm giving up huge pieces of me, and maybe for nothing. I don't know about you, but I'm not all that great at handling a piece of raw meat when I'm preparing it to eat, much less with equating parts of my own person to said piece of meat. And yet, that's really what I've become. If you don't believe me, just look around on ye olde webbe at what a mastectomy and lymph node dissection consists of. Or better yet, look at reconstruction procedure photos if you really want an eyeful.
Not for the faint of heart. Or at least, not for the squishy people like me.
So today was a lesson in how prepared you think you are to hear more hard truths when really you're not. I promise I will take the time to go into what my day brought to me, but not in this post. I have to process all the information that I took in, think about it, roll it around in my mind, make it something that I can wrap my brain and my emotions around, before I can write about it.
This post is about how I have been dealing with all this hateful medical stuff that has to be done just in the hopes that I'll outlive this cancer. I'm not going to lie to you -- my doctors haven't given me any percentages about how long I'm likely to live based on my treatment plan or what rate of recurrence there is for my staging and my age. I haven't asked, either, because I don't want to think of myself in terms of statistics, unless they are the kind that give me a 100% chance of survival if I jump through all the hoops presented to me. But I think we all know that life doesn't come with those guarantees even for the most healthy of us, so I am not going to wait around for someone to whisper sweet nothings in my ear along those lines.
No, instead, I'm going to talk about how I've been managing. How I've stayed positive (for the most part), in the face of knowing that reality could be so ugly in the end. How I've made chemo and all the other procedures that have come thus far seem tolerable.
You.
You all have lifted me up, with your words of encouragement and your thoughtfulness. They mean more to me than any of you will ever know.
I'd like to be able to say my religion has done this for me, how prayer is the thing that has worked, but I can't go there. I saw something the other day on another woman's post to a forum about breast cancer, and she said that she was surviving because so many people had prayed for her. I wish I could believe in that, but my mother got a lot of prayers and was worthy of God answering them and allowing her to live.
That didn't happen.
Her death was ugly, drawn out, and horrifying. I hope that's not the way I go out of this world, all yellow and withered with nails like talons, a shell of my former self. I most certainly don't want to live in so much pain that I groan constantly despite a drug-induced coma dragging on for weeks throughout the holiday season with everyone standing around my bed waiting for me to die. I don't want it for myself, and I don't want it for those that I love.
So please forgive me if you are one of the faithful. I want to be in your camp, I really do, but I hear people make comments about how prayer saved them, and I can't get past the fact that prayer did not save my mother at a time in my life when both I and my sister needed her to live. I'm sure that many of you will have the answer that God does everything for a reason. I wish I could believe that, too, but I still see no value in the death of a woman who taught little kids with learning disabilities, and who went to church every time the doors were open. I still feel her absence in my life, and the scars from our last real conversation are ever-present.
That conversation involved her sitting on my roommate's bed in my dorm room and telling me that she was terminal and would not be around to watch me graduate.
Prayer, if it works, seems to work for only the select few, and if there's one thing I know, I'm not half as worthy as my mother when it comes to belonging to that group. So to me, prayer doesn't feel like an honest solution for my situation. It makes no more sense than random DNA picking me to be tumor-prone from birth, and that's why I have to stick with what I know.
My friends and my family care. You care enough to read what I write here, and you care enough to support me with comments and song links when I'm wallowing in my own self-pity on Facebook. You care enough to send me quilt blocks even though you have never met me. You care enough to mail me funny hats, pretty fabric for head scarves, homemade cookies to tempt me to eat. You care enough to send me cards, some of you every week, some of you every chemo cycle, some of you every once in a blue moon.
You care enough to pray for me when I don't have enough faith to pray for myself.
And that is what keeps me going, even when I have a tough day like today.
11 comments:
I also have a very hard time coming to terms with why God answers some prayers & not others who are much more deserving than some of the beneficiaries of answered prayers. For many years, I couldn't fathom how anything good could possibly come out of my mother's death when I was 14. Then about 10 years later, a dark secret was revealed about a family member who had sexually abused other members of my family. I don't believe this would have been revealed if my mother was still alive & this needed to happen to stop this person from getting the opportunity to abuse again. So I just have to keep telling myself that if I understood God's ways, then I wouldn't have any need for him to be my God.
I completely understand what you are saying, and even somewhat how you feel, but I have come to realize in latter years that it is not the fact of being sick and giving up on our faith in God. It is that simplicity of knowing that it is the strength that you bring to someone wlse in the same situation. I know it was hard for you and Penny when your mother died. God is our strength and even though we may not understand why something happens to a wonderful person like your mother, it is not our place to question His reasons. I Am praying for you, not only for your health but your strength of body and mind, for you heart that love never leave, for your husband to be there for you in your trying times, for your father and sister that they stay close and be with you, for God to take control and guide you in everything, and most of all, that you touch someone's soul with your witness of strength. God is an Awesome God. <3 Patricia
I am still praying for you! I have been in your position with uterine cancer. I know what it feels like to go through chemo and have your guts cut out. But I am also still here 6 years later. And so will you be. If there is something I can do let me know. The power of positive thinking is SOOOO important.
@Brian, I am glad you have made your peace with that, and feel like you know the reason for your mother's death at an early age. I still am bewildered at the ways of God in my mother's death. I have yet to see anything good come of it. If anything, it only brought on destruction to those around her, and for that I'm very sorry -- sorry that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, and therefore knew what would happen and just let it happen anyway.
@Patricia, you really have no idea how hard my mother's death was on me, nor on Penny. I do not say this unkindly, or with a mean spirit, but unless you have lost your mother at a young age when you had no one else you could count on, then you can't know. In fact, I only know what my sister suffered because she has shared with me. Even though we experienced the same event, we did so from two different points in life. So I don't really question God's reasons -- I just don't see that there were any. If he had shared with me some purpose, I would have accepted it, even though it was a very high cost to pay. He has all the power, and I have none. When you say God is an awesome God, I want you to know that I feel the same, but I use the word awesome in the terrifying sense.
God is all-powerful and all-knowing, and He can prevent bad things from happening to good people, and He can provide what is needed here on earth. I most certainly did not get what I needed when my mother was ill. She wasn't healed and when she died, I was left with NO ONE that I could rely upon for support or comfort. Penny and I had to prop each other up, and we were both ill-equipped to do so at that time. Yes, God is supreme, and we are here to go through various situations so that He might be glorified. And to me, that is the scariest thing of all. I am not a strong person, I don't want this illness so that people can tell me how strong I am, and I can't wait to get past this chapter of my life, IF that happens.
I take nothing for granted, and that's what I wanted my post to be about -- even with sincere and heartfelt prayer, and lots of it, it could all be for nothing. No one knows that better than someone who has prayed like crazy for something she desperately needed, and who still failed to get it because God had other plans.
This is why I do not have any faith in prayer. If you knew what my life was really like right after my mother died, you might understand my point of view better. But I try not to talk about that period because it really doesn't reflect very well on other people, people who should have been dependable and who weren't.
Maybe you are one of the fortunate few, and God answers your prayers, which is why I wanted to thank those that do pray for me, who do provide me with support. But I cannot include myself in that group that prays because it has never worked for me, no matter how sincere I have been.
@Colleen, I appreciate that more than you know. I read your blog, and I see how you have moved beyond cancer, and I think to myself that I can do it, too. Been trying to stay focused on the positive, but the closer I get to surgery the harder it becomes, partly because I know it may all be for nothing, and therefore not worth what I'm giving up in terms of feeling able-bodied, which I'm pretty sure I won't afterward, not for quite some time. So keep writing your blog and showing me how it's possible to push through this! You are a hero to me for that alone.
Ahhh.. I never knew you had a blog. Just found it today. I really want to just give you a big ol' hug!
God does answer prayers - yes, no, wait a little longer. Why he heals some and doesn't others is beyond me and my comprehension. I do know that God's ways are not our ways. God loves us when he sees the best of us and when he sees the worse in us. Humans aren't like that - alot of how others love us is based on how we've treated them. Anyways - all that to say that I understand where you are coming from on God. I watched my granddaddy die from cancer - it was the single most painful thing I've ever watched. Why God didn't save him, I'll never know.
With all that said, I've seen the other side of it too. I've seen the bad things turn into great things and how it glorified God in the end. Not easy to hear. Not easy to understand. But being someone that was pulled from the depths of despair and in a constant suicidal state due to being sexually abused as a child - I've seen that turn around into a blessing. If you ever wanna hear my testimony, just let me know and I'll share it.
I'll still pray for you, but my prayer has never been for healing. It's been for His will in your life. It's been for your family. It's been for your day to day survival. It's been for you on how to deal with all this. And that... that prayer is being answered. It amazes me how many "admin" or other groups I've been in on flickr that you've had a positive impact in. Your sincerity and positive outlook in the midst of a stormy gloomy situation has been so inspiring to so many others.
The honesty of this post grabbed me and made me tear up. I'm going to start adding to my prayer that your faith be strengthened through all this. I'm so happy that seeing how many people care for you has lifted you up!
:)
Kandra aka mindboggld on Flickr :)
Maria, I love your honesty! This post made me tear up just a little. I really hope that you continue to cope in the way that suits you best :)
I will continue to uphold you in my thoughts and prayers. Thinking of you love xxx
I discovered your blog via your comment at The Bloggess, and since my mom called me Emily Beezus, I had to come look!
I am trying so hard not to bawl my eyes out over your entry. I don't know you at all, but my heart goes out to you, not just because of your diagnosis, but because of your mom. I lost mine almost two years ago, and I have lost a lot of my faith since then. My mother was beautiful and strong, and we prayed our hearts out for her, and nothing happened. And I am still so angry about that because my mother was NEEDED. Not just by me, but by my dad and my siblings, especially my youngest sister who has Down syndrome and was constantly with my mom. Everything has fallen apart since her death, and it is just absolutely unfair.
Anyway, I'm sending you lots of good thoughts and positive energy, and maybe that won't change a thing, but know that there is at least one stranger out there who is thinking about you and hoping for the absolute best and your complete health.
Emily, I so wish you weren't a no-reply blogger so I could email you. You are so sweet and so caring, and I thank you for sharing your own story with me. It really sucks when the person that we need the most walks out of our lives, whether they choose to or not. I always said that it would have been easier for me had my mom been killed by a drunk driver because then I would know who to direct my anger toward. Instead, I had to spend a lot of time getting past my anger and fear that anyone that I cared about deeply would leave me all alone. I literally spent the first five years of my married life thinking that something awful would happen to my husband every time he walked out the door. I just felt like I must be one of those unlucky people who was constantly destined to suffer loss. It's only in the past few years that I've sort of let that go and relaxed a little, now to find out that my husband is instead stuck with someone who might leave him. Sometimes that makes the cancer seem so much worse. Not that being sick is bad enough, but that you make all those around you suffer, and in the end, I know I may be the one to disappoint everyone who is counting on me. That's the worst -- but here's the good news. I don't think about that all the time because mostly I'm focusing on getting better. I take each day at a time as best I can, and I hope that that's good enough.
Kandra, I appreciate you more than you know. Don't ever change or let go of your own faith -- your honesty is beautiful.
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